07/03/15 – Muhammad Sahimi – The Scott Horton Show

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I'm Scott Horton, this is my show, the Scott Horton Show.
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That was Dr. Ron Paul.
Up next, it's our friend Mohammed Sahimi from USC.
He teaches chemical engineering there, and also he writes all over the place, has a gigantic archive at antiwar.com, and formerly at PBS Tehran Bureau.
I know he doesn't write there anymore, but he's got a great archive there, and quite a few other places as well, and he's got this brand new one coming out for antiwar.com tomorrow.
It's called Demonizing Iran to Prevent the Nuclear Agreement.
Welcome back to the show.
How you doing, Mohammed?
It's great to be back in your program, Scott.
Thank you very much for joining us.
Very important article, and really appreciate your time as always.
So, nuclear agreement.
Looks like they about got it, if this demonization campaign fails.
Am I right about that?
You think as far, at least as far as the leadership of the P5 plus one and Iran are concerned, they more or less got this thing hammered out, right?
Right.
That's what my impression.
Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif, after some preliminary meeting in Vienna, returned to Tehran and then came back after a day.
So, according to Iranian press, what he had done was bringing to Tehran the latest proposals and the latest ways to address the disputes between the two sides, and apparently he has gotten the the permission of Iranian leadership, including the Supreme Leader and President Hassan Rouhani, how to address these disputes.
This morning, Zarif said that considerable progress has been made.
Secretary of State John Kerry has also said that.
And France's Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius also said that they are hoping to wrap things up by Sunday.
But of course, we all know that even if the agreement is signed, then it will be sent to Congress for examining it and voting on it.
So, the fight or the war is not over yet.
We still have a long way to go, but the thoughts from Vienna are very encouraging.
All right.
Now, so let's try to not go too far into this, but we got to explain for the people who really don't know or their terrified mom who's been watching Fox News all week long or whatever about this.
And I've been seeing some propaganda, some of the paid advertising and some of the statements in the press and in the op eds, and you quote some of them here where they're just they're not really clear in their accusations.
You know, they say things like a nuclear Iran would be a disaster.
And so, you know, my mom is supposed to be terrified, right, that Obama is signing a deal to give the Iranians nuclear weapons, right?
That's what that's supposed to sound like.
But that's not exactly what's in this deal.
Am I right?
Well, of course, the agreement will limit Iran's nuclear program for a long period between 10 to 15 years.
And even after 10-15 years, Iran will still have very significant limits on what it can do.
So, for example, in addition to the fact that Iran's known nuclear facilities are under constant inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran has also agreed as part of the agreement to implement the additional protocol of the safeguard agreement, which means that the IAEA will have intrusive power to go to more places and inspect whatever they call, you know, a suspected site.
And let me remind your listeners that Iran, in fact, had implemented additional protocol between 2003 and 2006, which allowed the IAEA to get a very good picture of what had been done in Iran prior to 2003, which prompted former IAEA Director Mohammad Al-Baradei to present a report to IAEA Board of Directors in February of 2008, saying that all the outstanding issues had been resolved and put Iran's nuclear dossier on a normal basis, which, of course, was prevented from it.
So, it is not like, you know, the Obama administration is going to allow Iran to make a nuclear bomb, never mind that there is no evidence that the Iranian leadership wants a nuclear bomb.
But even if they want, the restrictions on the program and the intrusive inspections that will be imposed on the program, and the constant watching and satellites and intelligence and all of that, will make sure that even if the Iranian leadership wanted a nuclear bomb, and I emphasize that there is no evidence that they do want a nuclear bomb, they won't be able to do that.
So, it's not, like, the scary pictures that neocons and Israeli lobby and Saudi Arabian lobby in the United States have been presented to the public.
Just like you said, they are very vague about it.
They say, oh, it would be a disaster if Iran gets a nuclear bomb.
Well, it may be a disaster if Iran does get a nuclear bomb, but Iran is not going to get a nuclear bomb, and Iran has no intention of getting a nuclear bomb.
So, there are many major differences between what is the reality and what they present to the public.
Yeah, and of course, you know, here's the thing about this too, and not to you necessarily, but to the audience, to the general public especially, you know, people who aren't really specialized in this kind of thing, you ought to be able to tell that the accusations all raise a lot of questions and don't necessarily answer them.
Whereas the people who are saying, no, it's okay, they all have very specific explanations about what's going on.
As you just heard Mr. Sahemi explain, Professor explain, yeah, additional protocol, this, expanded inspections, that, and the IAEA record says that all their uranium is accounted for, and all these kinds of things that are actual things.
But, you know, meanwhile, the war party is saying nuclear, be afraid, and they're just counting on you to shrug and say, well, I don't know that kind of math, so I guess I have to leave it up to the experts, and the experts are telling me that, oh my God, that Obama's done it again, he's going to give nuclear bombs to the mullahs, and why not?
If you hear that 50 times, and you don't hear anyone contradict it, it begins to seem like maybe it's plausible or something like that, but it's clearly just not the case, you know?
I totally agree, and a case in point is the nonsense about possible military dimension.
The New York Times and other mainstream media have been talking about how the IAEA thinks that there was a military dimension or possible military dimension to Iran's nuclear program in the past, and they claim that Iran must come clean and explain everything that it has done in the past.
At the same time, Kerry says that we absolutely know what Iran has done in the past.
Well, if you know what Iran has done in the past, first of all, provide the evidence and documents that indicate that Iran did something nefarious in the past, so that everybody learns about it.
But the reality is, that's not the case.
It is all speculation that there could have been some work done in the past, way before 2003 in Iran, regarding nuclear weapon research.
And all these speculations are based on that laptop of death that was supposedly taken, stolen in Iran, taken outside Iran, and given to Western intelligence agencies.
And nobody has even seen the laptop or the original documents in the laptop.
All we know is that they claim that such and such information existed in the laptop.
So these are all speculations, and places like New York Times, and in particular David Sanger and Michael Gordon, have been just advancing this narrative that yes, Iran has something to hide, and it did do some work in the past.
And in fact, as I pointed out in the article, Sanger still insists that there is still some work being done in Iran, without ever presenting any evidence.
He doesn't even, for example, quote an anonymous official, or an anonymous CIA official, telling him that they believe that Iran's research on nuclear weapons has been sporadically continued.
He just makes the statement, his own opinion, as a fact.
Yeah, just like always.
Yeah, this is the same reporter at the New York Times who spent years referring, as you say, not quoting someone else, but just referring to Iran's illicit nuclear weapons program.
And they're just leaving it at that.
I'm sorry we've got to take this break.
We'll be right back with the great Mohamed Sahimi in just one second, y'all.
Hang tight.
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All right, you guys.
Welcome back to the show.
It's the Scott Horton Show.
I'm on the line with Mohamed Sahimi, professor of chemical engineering at USC, Iranian expat and peace activist, especially on the nuclear issue here.
And we got a good deal.
Look, we already had a good deal.
It's called the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
And under that, the Iranians, who have signed it back in 1971, I think it was, they have a safeguards agreement with the IAEA, and the IAEA has forever continued to verify, over and over and over again, hundreds and hundreds of times now, the non-diversion of nuclear material in Iran to any military or other special purpose.
The deal we're getting now is just double, extra, super that.
It's just expanded inspections and reductions in the size and the quantity and the quality of Iran's civilian already safeguarded electricity nuclear program that they have there.
So now, but the problem is, is like we're talking about the confusion about nuclear weapons.
And because it's such a complicated matter, and because nuclear weapons are so dangerous, it makes this propaganda against Iran from The New York Times and everybody else that they're in the rest of the war party, that they are working on nuclear weapons makes it very powerful propaganda.
It makes it not just propaganda for the people of this country, but of course, to justify our government beating Iran over the head all the time for supposedly being in violation of these things and adding on all these layers of sanctions and all these things.
And of course, ultimately, the Israelis would like to see an American war and a regime change in Tehran there.
And so what Obama is doing in negotiating this deal is he is taking away his own best and the rest of the war parties own best talking point against Iran, the outstanding fake, but still outstanding issue of their nuclear program.
And once that's all put to bed, then we live in a new world where maybe not only are we going to relieve some sanctions pressure on the Iranian regime and that kind of thing, but we might just have to let them live in the world with us and get along with them.
This could be the beginning of a rapprochement of a piece, and it could be the end of any real chance of a war.
And so that's why, as you document in your article here, sorry for going on so long, but I'm setting up a complicated story here.
That's why, as you document in your article here, Mohammed, why the war party is at full tilt right now, doing everything they can to propagandize against this nuclear deal.
And they'll change the subject from the nuclear deal to any old other thing to whatever they can say negative about Iran.
Tell us more about it.
Oh, yes.
And for example, what they have been saying is that, look, if the economic sanctions on Iran are lifted, then Iran is going to have access to its own money, which is about $120-$150 billion frozen in a Western financial institution.
And then what they say is that if Iran gets access to its own money, is going to spend all of it in the Middle East on its proxies and allies and so on, and therefore make the Middle East far more unstable than it currently is.
First of all, Iran is not going to do that because Iran is besieged by a lot of economic at home.
Iran's state of economy is dire.
President Hassan Rouhani has promised Iranian people that after nuclear negotiations are concluded, he's going to address the problems with economy, high unemployment, inflation, and so on.
And therefore, he's going to spend every bit of resources that he can get his hands on on shoring up Iran economy.
But at the same time, the other point that the World Party does not mention is that the United States staunch ally in the Middle East, namely Saudi Arabia, which has a foreign currency reserve about $800 billion, has been the worst source of support for all sorts of terrorist activities in the same region.
Saudi Arabia, according to Vice President Joe Biden's speech at Harvard University last October, has been supporting terrorist groups in Syria.
Saudi Arabia gave a political legitimacy to NATO alliance to attack Libya and transform that prosperous country into a no man's land where all sorts of terrorist groups now have a base there and from there send arms all over North Africa and the Middle East.
Saudi Arabia supported the military coup in Egypt that overthrew the democratically elected government of Mohamed Morsi and has been supporting and shoring up the CC regime in Egypt by granting it billions of dollars in annual aid, while CC has been torturing and imprisoning thousands of political prisoners.
Saudi Arabia intervened in Bahrain to suppress democratic movement in Bahrain.
And we all know that rich Saudi citizens not only help terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda financially, but a large number of them also go to Iraq, Syria and elsewhere to fight alongside these terrorist groups.
So while we are talking about things that Iranian regime hasn't done, we forget and don't mention what our ally in that region, namely Saudi Arabia, has been doing with its money with support of these terrorist groups.
These are the type of lies that they put, they propagate about Iran in order to distract people's attention to the real problem in the Middle East, namely what the United States, Saudi Arabia and other and its allies in that region, dictatorial regimes in Jordan, in Egypt and so on, have been doing to that region.
This is one type.
And of course, they have all sorts of other propaganda.
Hold it for a second, because I want to go back to what you talked about with about the, well, they'll have their own money.
I actually got in a fight with David Rothkopf, who you quote here, who's the editor of Foreign Policy magazine, foreignpolicy.com there, when he first was trying this out on Twitter, the trial balloon.
In fact, I may have provoked him into using it for the first time because he was desperate to come up with an excuse to oppose the deal.
And so it seemed like he resorted to, well, but if they scale back their nuclear program like this, then they'll get sanctions relief.
And then what might they spend their money on?
And I'm going, hey, man, talk about moving the goalposts, buddy.
I thought we were at the world's greatest crisis ever was that they might get the atom bomb and that and you're saying, yeah, this deal will do a great job of keeping them from getting the atom bomb, but they might send some more money to Nasrallah in southern Lebanon.
And so now that's why to scotch the deal and let them go ahead and be closer, theoretically speaking, to an atom bomb than before.
It just goes to show.
And Rothko is not the worst of them, actually, but it just goes to show the dishonesty of the war party here.
Well, they'll move their goalposts all around to wherever they want when the real point is just keep Iran the enemy.
That's all.
And let me mention since you mentioned him, let me mention that a friend of mine, a very distinguished Iranian journalist, wrote a response to what he wrote in Foreign Policy regarding Iran's use of extra income if the sanctions are lifted and send it to Foreign Policy, but Foreign Policy refused to publish it.
So he has to send it somewhere else to publish.
So the point that you're making, and I totally agree, and I have also tried to explain in my article is that they move the goalposts all the time, they make all sorts of claims, unsubstantiated claims, and they confuse people.
And whatever they say, they throw in nuclear bomb, nuclear weapon program, and so on, hundreds of times, just so that people who are not informed, get confused and scared and say, oh, yes, this is this is really a bad regime, and it's really a threat to our security and so on.
Whereas the reality is far from what they have been claiming.
And we all know that Iran's nuclear program is under tight inspection by the IAEA.
We all know that the IAEA will have even more access to Iranian sites for inspection.
And let me also add one other point that nobody mentioned, and that is, if the United States, the George W. Bush administration had won it, it could have had a better deal with Iran, far better deal than the current excellent deal that they are going to get back in 2003-2005.
At that time, Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, and his chief nuclear negotiator, Hassan Rouhani, who is the current president of Iran, made a comprehensive proposal to the West, whereby Iran would severely limit its nuclear program.
The limitations that they had accepted at that time, are far stricter than anything that the present agreement will give the West.
But because the Bush administration, this was in 2003, and they were drunk with the victory in Iraq, supposed victory in Iraq, they rejected that compromise.
And the result is Iran made a lot of advancement in its civilian nuclear program.
And therefore, the limits that you're going to get on Iran's program are excellent.
They are not any better than what Iran had already agreed to do in 2003, between 2003 and 2005.
Because at that time, they thought that they can attack Iran and get rid of the program.
But then the problems that the U.S. had after its illegal invasion of Iraq, they start to increase, and the casualties increase, and so on.
And therefore, they couldn't do what they wanted to do to Iran.
All right.
Now, I'm sorry, we're over time.
I got to let you go, even though I got a few more questions for you.
But thanks for coming back on the show, Mohammad.
I sure appreciate it.
Thank you for having me on your program, Scott.
Great job again.
And everybody, check out this great article.
It'll be running over the weekend at antiwar.com.
I think probably it'll be the spotlight here.
It's called Demonizing Iran to Prevent the Nuclear Agreement.
It's a very important article.
It covers quite a bit more subject matter in there that we didn't get a chance to go over on the show today, too.
So definitely check it out.
We'll be right back in just one second.
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