08/06/15 – Muhammad Sahimi – The Scott Horton Show

Hey, I'm Scott Horton here.
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All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show, here on the Liberty Radio Network, live, noon to two Eastern time, 11 to 1 Texas time here on the weekdays.
Next up is our friend, Mohamed Sahimi.
He's a professor of chemical engineering at USC.
Go Bruins!
But other than that, he's a great guy.
And sorry, I'm just playing.
And he's written, I don't know, 10,000 articles debunking lies about Iran's nuclear program and promoting war and these kinds of things.
And very happy to welcome him back to the show.
Hi, Mohamed.
How are you?
Hi, Scott.
It's good to be back in your program.
And I'm sorry for the insult there.
I was raised Bruin and I'm kind of stuck like this.
No problem.
But anyway, you darn Trojans.
Hey, great dental school there, though.
Tell the boys I said hi.
Hey, man, so ever since the Iran deal was announced, the war party's been running around like chickens with their head cut off, trying to come up with any reason in the world, plausible or otherwise, why this deal should not go through.
And it looks like they're making some traction.
As the president noted yesterday, there are tens of millions, hundreds, really, of millions of dollars being put up by the war party, the Israel lobby, to be redundant in order to try to turn public opinion against this deal.
So I'd like to give you a chance to, I don't know, admit whatever truth of these accusations you have to and debunk the lies.
Can we start with Iran can do whatever they want and get away with it.
And if the Americans come up with any suspicions, they'll have 24 days to pack up, sneak out the back door and clean up their mess.
And and then even then, the inspectors will be relying on them to bring them samples and these kinds of things.
Why don't we start there?
That is sheer nonsense.
First of all, Iran's program currently, at this time, is under tight inspections by IAEA.
IAEA is present in Iran.
IAEA, you know, takes samples, IAEA reports to the board of directors and IAEA issues reports.
And these reports time and again have said that the program is peaceful, there is no diversion to non-peaceful purposes and so on.
It's not like IAEA has left Iran.
Secondly, it is a sheer lie that Iran is supposed to provide the sample.
Nobody who knows Yukio Amano, the director general of IAEA, and how tight and close he is with right-wing, you know, the neocons and U.S. administration here, according to WikiLeaks, knows that even if that were possible, according to safeguard agreements and additional protocol, Amano would not have allowed it.
So this is sheer nonsense that Iranians are supposed to take samples.
Even if they are somehow involved, it has to be in the presence of IAEA inspectors that are in Iran, and their number will be greatly expanded to about 150 when the agreement will be put into effect.
Now regarding the 24 days, that's again nonsense.
It's in place so that Israel and Mujahedin organization, the opposition that has been basically a channel for Israel to spread lies about Iran, will not be able to report one suspicious activity after another every day.
The mechanism is that IAEA has to submit to Iran credible documents or evidence that Iran might have committed something that could be interpreted in violation of its agreement.
Then Iran can respond.
This is called day zero.
And they have 14 days to make arrangements between IAEA and Iran to either visit this suspected site or for Iran to provide documents and to refute the accusations.
Now it doesn't mean that they are going to take 14 days, but 14 days is the maximum number of days that they have.
Then if they haven't resolved it by the 14 days, then they go to the joint commission that is going to be set up.
And the commission will have eight members.
One from each of the P521 and Iran.
And the eighth one is the representative of Federico Mogherini, the European Union foreign policy chief.
And whatever the commission decides, it has to be based on the vote of the majority.
And the vote of majority means five or more, which means that Iran, China and Russia by themselves cannot block any decisions against Iran by the commission unless one of the European Union members, France, Germany and Britain or the United States agreed with these three.
So again, here the path to, you know, blocking the commission decision by Iran and China and Russia has been blocked.
Then Iran is supposed to carry out whatever the commission orders.
It may exonerate Iran.
But if it orders Iran to do something, Iran has, this is from day 15 to day 21.
So Iran will have three days, day 22, day 23 and day 24.
And if at the end of day 24, Iran does not do what the commission asked it to do, then the matter is sent to United Nations Security Council.
If after the 30th day Iran is still insisting that it has done nothing wrong, then the sanctions that the UN has imposed on Iran will snap back.
Now during this entire time, the IAEA inspectors are still in Iran, they are still inspecting everything, they are still monitoring everything, and those advanced technologies and cameras and everything that they are supposed to install are still working.
So there is no way that this could be an advantage to Iran and Iran could, you know, make nefarious use of these 24 days or 30 days or whatever it is to hide something or do something.
This is just totally nonsense.
Anybody who is familiar with this type of work and knows how complicated they are, knows that this is just sheer nonsense.
But of course, as you said, War Party has picked on this.
And they have also made another baseless claim, and that is that the agreement between Iran and IAEA regarding resolving such issues is secret, and because it is secret, so there has to be something bad in it, you know, some sort of concessions, major concessions that the IAEA and the United States have made to Iran.
These embassies don't know that.
The safeguard agreements between any agency member with the agency is secret.
Agency safeguard agreements are not published.
Therefore, any other agreement that relates to the execution of safeguard agreements are also secret.
They can only be published if both IAEA and that member state agree to it.
So when John Kerry was in Senate and he was asked about it, he said, I don't know because it's a secret.
When Enes Mourin's energy secretary was asked about it, he said, these type of agreements are secret and their secrecy is the standard practice between member states and IAEA.
So these are all just totally baseless, but they are making a big deal about it just because just sheer propaganda, nothing else.
Right.
Just trying to get you to use your imagination to figure that Obama and the IAEA are in on it with the Iranians to let them get away with building a nuke in there somewhere.
That must be what's in the secret agreement.
But of course, as you're talking about, we're talking about the highest level of classification of anything, even a civilian nuclear program.
Of course, the details regarding its security have got to be dealt with in a confidential manner when they're dealing with the IAEA.
But anyway, yeah, it does make a great kind of talking point as long as you're not trying to be honest.
All right.
Now, what about they're going to take and let's just take the Israelis word for it on the money.
I know it's much less, less than half probably.
But the Israelis say, oh, they're going to have one hundred billion dollars and spend it all on Hezbollah killing Israelis.
First of all, this is Iran's money.
So nobody is giving money to anybody.
This is Iran money.
Iran sold oil, its oil, in the international market.
They bought the oil.
They paid for it.
But the money was not transferred to Iran.
So at the very beginning, we should we should realize that this is Iran's money.
Secondly, of the 100 million or 120 billion that they are talking about, 50 billion, as John Kerry acknowledged, has already been committed.
So Iran will receive about 50 billion.
There, as Akbar Ganji demonstrated beautifully in a long article that was published on Antivirus, I believe, he showed that Iran needs at least a trillion dollars over the next 10 years to shore up its economy and repair its infrastructure.
Fourth, regarding support for Hezbollah, Iran has been supporting Hezbollah since 1980.
Iran has supported Hezbollah during the bad days and good days.
So when there wasn't any sanction, Iran supported it.
When there was sanction, Iran also supported it.
But the level of support that Iran gives to Hezbollah is estimated at most to be a few hundred million dollars.
There is also another aspect of it that most people don't know in the West about it.
And that is the Revolutionary Guards in Iran are involved in a lot of economic projects.
And they make the companies that are linked to the Revolutionary Guards make a lot of money.
These projects were supposed to go to Western companies, but because of the sanction, the Revolutionary Guards came in.
Now, part of that profit is used to support groups like Hezbollah.
So that's part of it that has always existed and will also exist.
So the level of support to Hezbollah is at most a few hundred million dollars.
And it has already been there, it has already been earmarked.
All this talk about Iran will spend it on Hezbollah or Hamas and so on is nonsense.
And by the way, Iran has cut off its military and financial aid to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, both of them.
Because Islamic Jihad and Hamas have both turned to Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia has promised them that it will give them several billion dollars to reconstruct Gaza.
And therefore, they changed their alliance, and Iran cut off its support for Hamas.
And especially when Syrian war started, Hamas didn't take side and move its office from Syrian capital to Qatar, and that angered Iran.
So Iran actually cut off its support to Hamas several years ago.
So this is, again, very, you know, complete nonsense that Iran is going to spend a hundred billion dollars on Hezbollah or similar groups.
The other aspect of it is that Hassan Rouhani was elected Iranian president back in 2013 with a promise that the nuclear agreement will be reached and the sanctions will be lifted, and therefore his administration will be able to shore up the economy, create jobs, reduce inflation.
The exact type of thing that U.S. politicians talk about in this country when they want to get elected.
Now, hardliners in Iran totally oppose him, and they are just looking for an excuse to topple him or prevent his re-election.
If he cannot deliver on his promises of economic improvement and better jobs and so on, then Iranian people will also not vote for him, and hardliners will take over.
So if you put all of this together, you will see that this story that Iran will spend all of its money on groups like Hezbollah is, again, total nonsense and has no basis in reality.
Anybody who is familiar with Iran and what's going on in Iran knows that this is just sheer nonsense.
All right, so now there are two big ones that hit yesterday.
Oh my God, look, the Iranians, the IAEA complains that the Iranians are refusing to make some of their scientists available for resolving the possible military dimensions, and anonymous officials told CNN and David Albright told Reuters that, oh no, look, and this goes back to the 24 days notice kind of sort of issue there, the military base, Parchin, there's a massive cleanup operation going on, and so, boy, I guess Gareth Porter and Robert Kelly and the rest of y'all were wrong to say that there was nothing going on at Parchin, and now look, they're sitting there supposedly running their bulldozers over the place.
Mohammed, you're caught red-handed.
Oh yeah, that means that because the world is watching, Iranians are not supposed to do anything in Parchin, which is a vast complex that Iran has used since the 1930s to produce ammunition and explosives for not only its army, but also for civilian use, like road construction, tunnel construction, and so on and so forth.
Now this is, again, nonsense.
The allegations that Iran, you know, experimented with high explosives is old.
It is supposedly, if it did happen, it was around the year 2000.
So when Iran agreed in 2003 to implement, on a voluntary basis, the additional protocol, Iran also allowed the IAEA to visit Parchin to investigate the allegations.
So IAEA visited Parchin twice, in February and November of 2004.
Each time they had asked to visit five buildings, which they did.
On the second visit, Ali Heinonen, who was the Deputy Director for Safeguard and was leading the IAEA delegation to Tehran, asked for a surprise visit to a sixth building.
He was granted, they visited, and the Iranian press at that time reported that after the visit, Ali Heinonen had told Iranian officials that Parchin's case has joined history, which means that nothing was found.
This issue was mute until U.K. Armando became Director General, and then in November 2011, he brought it up again.
Now, there are no new allegations that there have been no new experiments after 2000, if indeed something happened in 2000, except that now they are saying, no, it was in a different building.
The first time that we visited, we made a mistake, it was in a different building.
And Iran has asked for evidence, and they don't have any evidence, and they said, we just have to visit.
David Albright and people, and his institute, constantly beat on this drum, just like the last time, they beat on the drum of something is going on in Parchin, something is going on in Parchin, and after they visited Parchin, nothing was found.
They never apologized, they never retracted, they never said anything, and just moved on.
This is the same thing here.
Now, regarding talking to Iranian scientists- Wait, hold it right there.
Let me say one thing here, just to help for the audience.
The single best article, if there's just one for you, on Parchin, is by Robert Kelly.
It's at lobelog.com, and he's the former chief of the IAEA nuclear inspectors.
No slouch.
And he's at Jim Loeb's blog, lobelog.com.
It's called The Parchin Puzzle, and it's about how, it's about why that story just makes no sense whatsoever.
Never even mind Gareth Porter's separate but equal debunking, which centered around the fakeness of the allegations about the Russian scientist, or Ukrainian scientist, who supposedly was helping them, etc.
Yes.
Let me add to this, even Ali Heinonen, whom I intensely dislike, because he's totally biased against Iraq, was upset about a year ago, saying that he doesn't understand why IAEA is so obsessed with Parchin.
Right, and he is the most hawkish former IAEA official that any war party guy would quote.
Yes, yes.
He was upset, saying that he doesn't understand why IAEA is so upset with Parchin.
And I just speculate here that the reason they're upset is because David Albert has made all these speculations, and David Albert is known to be close to Yukiya Amano.
He gets funding from IAEA and Japan foreign ministry, you know, this is on his website, so it might have something to do with it.
Well, and it makes a great controversy because it's on a military base, which means it makes it that much more difficult politically for the Iranians to say, fine, just go look at it again.
Yes, exactly.
So they can make a whole giant, ooh, look at what they must be hiding there.
Meanwhile, they'd have to be hiding a Sandia National Laboratory there to be making nukes there.
Exactly.
And all of David Albright's water hoses in the world are going to wash away radioactive uranium atoms.
Even not only that, even if you do experiment with high explosive, it would be very difficult to hide it.
Because we are not talking about finding a kilogram of high explosive somewhere or radioactive material.
We are talking about finding minute amounts of it anywhere, particles per million.
My own research at USC, part of it has to do with cleaning of contaminated soil and contaminated soil.
And we know that we never reach complete purity.
There is always something left.
And with the advanced technology that IAEA has, they can easily detect.
I mean, this is something that even Albright has admitted in the past.
And I don't know why he doesn't go back to what he has said in the past, that these are easily detectable.
So no matter how much washing you do, and no matter how much you remove soil or anything like that, there will be something left that can be detected.
Now regarding talking to Iranian scientists, first of all, as far as I know, there is no article in the safeguard agreement or additional protocol that calls for Iranian government permission or obligates Iran to give permission, make available its scientists to talk to IAEA.
Secondly, there is a long history of assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists and Iranians who have worked on Iran's nuclear program, and there is no reason to have confidence in IAEA and Yukhian Amano that whatever that information that he and his inspector may gain by talking to Iranian scientists will not be leaked to United States or Israel and their intelligence agencies, so that another round of assassination can be carried out.
So the idea that Iran refuses to allow its scientists to talk to foreign people, and especially IAEA, is totally justified and legitimate.
There is no obligation, and at the same time, because of the long history of assassination, there is no reason for Iran to do it.
If I were them, I would not allow to do it.
I would not allow IAEA to do it.
Why should Iran allow to do this when it knows that what might happen?
Well, and by the way, let me just say, not that this got much prominence in all the propaganda that came out yesterday, but the Wall Street Journal piece about this actually contains a quote from Mr. Amano, the American sock puppet head of the IAEA, who says, I guess in this case, it's a good thing he's an American sock puppet.
He says, look, if someone who has a different name than this guy can clarify our issues, then that's fine with us, too.
He doesn't want to talk to the person.
He just has a couple of questions about whatever it was.
And of course, the Republicans are trying to make a Tempest in a teapot about it.
But right there in the original Wall Street Journal article, Amano is saying, look, this isn't a big deal.
We'll be able to resolve it one way or another.
Don't worry.
Exactly.
I mean, there is enough evidence, there is enough inspector, there is enough information and everything to address all of this.
And Iran has agreed to give more access to implement on a volunteer basis for eight years the additional protocol and has agreed to even allow inspections and visits to some sites that were forbidden in the past, provided that the Joint Commission calls for it and provided that the IAEA can present to Iran credible evidence that something might have happened.
So, as President Obama said yesterday, this is the most intrusive and the most complete inspection regimes for any nuclear program in the entire world, during the entire history of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Even Mohammad Al-Baradei, former director general of IAEA, said several years ago that the inspection of Iran's nuclear program has been the most intrusive and the most complete in the entire history of IAEA.
And that still remains to be true to this day.
And the president also acknowledged it yesterday.
And this is going to be even tighter and with much closer scrutiny in the future, once the agreement is put into effect.
And you know, it's worth bringing up, too, probably, that the CIA and the Israeli Mossad officially agree that any research that they were doing into nuclear weapons, which never really did amount to a nuclear weapons program, but any research that they were even looking into ended back in 2003.
And in fact, even the leaked Israeli intelligence files that were published at Al Jazeera from their communications with the South African government backed up the exact same conclusion.
Exactly.
And let me add one point again here, because that, in my view, is important and is very well known within Iran.
Let's say that Iran did have some research done on, related to nuclear weapons before 2003.
The question is, if Iran stopped in 2003, why in 2003?
What happened in 2003 that motivated Iran to stop?
Well, Seymour Hersh told me that the CIA and military intelligence officials told him they believe it's because America got rid of Saddam for them.
Exactly.
Exactly.
I mean, if Iran was doing this, it was because of the fear that Iran had of Iraq.
Iraq had used weapons of mass destruction against Iran during the Iran-Iraq war, and the West didn't protest.
Iran knew that Iraq had the know-how to make a nuclear bomb, except that it was discovered in 1991.
But Iran knew that the science is there, and therefore, if there was any attempt on the Iranian side, it was meant to be a deterrent against Iraq.
Once the Saddam regime was overturned, and the Shiites, who are allies of Iran, came to power, there was no reason for Iran to continue it.
So even if there was something to this, it ended because the reason for it disappeared, and therefore, it's not going to come back.
Well, as Gareth Porter reported at Foreign Policy, from all his interviews with the former officials in Iran, where they explained how they would go so far in the 1980s, America was backing both sides, but mostly Saddam, and backing his use and helping him with the intelligence to target the Iranians with chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq war.
And I believe the way the story was told, that some of the officials in the military, they went so far as to prepare chemicals that, if they were combined, would be useful as chemical weapons, and then went to the Ayatollah and said, is this okay?
And he said, no, it's absolutely not okay, and put his thumbs down on it.
So, again, even if they were doing some research here, there, or the other place, the fatwa against the weapons of mass destruction production goes back to the 1980s, and there's certainly nothing that shows, especially if you read Gareth Porter's book, you can see, there's nothing that shows that there was any kind of coherent effort that you could call a program.
Even if there was a scientist here, there, doing, you know, whatever research under, you know, a certain subsection of whatever bureaucracy there.
And let me add one other point.
There is a letter by Major General Mohsen Rezaei.
Mohsen Rezaei, in the 1980s, was the commander of Revolutionary Guard.
He wrote a letter in 1988, at the beginning of 1988, to Ayatollah Khomeini, who was the leader of revolution, and the supreme leader of Iran at that time, and said that if the war continues, and if Iraq continues development of its nuclear program, we also need a nuclear deterrent.
And, therefore, asked him to have, you know, to allow him to go after nuclear weapons.
And Ayatollah rejected it.
This letter is very well known.
Those who oppose Iran among Iranian diaspora always refer to this letter as an indication that Iran really wanted a nuclear bomb, whereas if there was anything done, in my view, it was just research, as a sort of a, you know, as a disguise, so that it would give the impression to Saddam Hussein that there was something on Iranian side that he should be afraid of.
But there was nothing to it, actually.
So, this is another piece of evidence, in addition to what you said, that Iranian commanders prepared chemical weapons, but Ayatollah Khomeini didn't allow them to use it in the war, even though Iraq was using chemical weapons on a vast scale against its own citizens and Iranian soldiers at the front.
Right.
Yeah, yeah.
We should never leave out the ANFAL campaign that went on there.
The lobbed massacres, one thing, but the whole ANFAL campaign was 100,000 Kurds or more killed by Saddam on Reagan's watch when he was America's pet there.
All right.
Now, I'm sorry.
We're over time, and the show's over, but if it's okay, I'd like to keep recording you for just a couple more questions here.
Of course.
Okay, great.
So, now, one of the things that we keep hearing, and Obama even imitated, I think unconsciously and caught himself, imitated Netanyahu yesterday, saying, better do, we need a better deal.
But better deal is defined as what?
Well, what they call better deal is Iran capitulation.
In other words, they want to ratchet up economic sanctions, increase it to unprecedented level, cut off all exports from Iran, everything else, make Iranians suffer the way Iraqi people suffered during 1990s, where close to 600,000 Iraqi babies and young people died because of malnutrition, so that Iran would capitulate and give up its entire nuclear program, just like, for example, Muammar Gaddafi did in Libya before he was overthrown.
But that's not going to happen.
Iran will not capitulate.
Iran is not Libya.
Iran is not Iraq.
Iran is an old nation, 5,000 years old nation.
Iranians are extremely nationalist.
Iranians are proud of their civilization, the contributions that they have made to humanity, and they're not going to capitulate.
They will rattle its soul to capitulate.
I mean, I know, I'm from Iran, and I know how Iranians feel.
So that is not going to happen.
And the third thing that they talk about is basically war.
They increase the sanctions.
Iranians will not capitulate.
So eventually they will say, look, we tried everything.
It didn't work.
They're not going to give up their nuclear program.
Therefore, there is only one option left, and that's attack, which is what happened to Iraq.
They did all of this to Iraq.
Saddam Hussein didn't capitulate, even though he didn't have any program for weapons of mass destruction, but he didn't leave power.
He didn't capitulate.
He didn't give up.
So they attack Iraq.
They want the same thing with Iran, but they cannot get themselves to say it because of Iraq, because of Libya, because of Syria, because of Afghanistan, because of all other places, where they sold the public so many lies, and every one of them turned out to be a complete lie.
Every one of them turned out to be baseless.
They cannot get themselves to tell the public that they want war.
Because what they talked about is a better deal, which means capitulation, which means war, which is what the supporters of nuclear deal always point out.
And I think I must say that the president has also been doing a good job of saying it is either this or war.
I totally agree with him.
Eventually, no matter how hard economic sanctions become against Iran, if this deal falls apart, eventually we have another war.
But those who want war with Iran, first of all, they should declare it, and secondly, the public should learn that war with Iran will be a war compared to which war in Iraq or Afghanistan or Libya will be child's play.
Iran is not Iraq, Iran is not Libya, Iran is not Afghanistan.
Iran has allies and proxies throughout the entire Middle East.
They don't want war, but if you attack Iran, Iran will respond, and Iran will respond fiercely.
The Pentagon also knows that they always simulate war with Iran, and they always, this simulation shows that the war quickly becomes stalemated, and they cannot defeat Iran.
But the result of it would be that Iran will attack oil fields in the Middle East, Iran's allies and proxies will attack U.S. interests and Israel in defense of their country, not as aggression, not as something that they want, but in defense of their country.
And that will lead to price of oil in the range of $300 to $400 a barrel, and that will lead to the collapse of the world economy.
So those who want war, first of all, they should declare it, and secondly, the public should be made aware of the consequences of the war with Iran, which will be catastrophic for the entire world, including this country.
Well, I want to go back to the first part of your answer there, and which you just got back to again, the dishonesty of the war party's position here.
Again, it's just worth noting, kind of my pet peeve here, that no reporter ever, on TV anyway, would say, yeah, but what better deal, or make them explain what that means.
It's just a slogan, they never have to actually get into the detail, or explain how it is that sanctions that our allies, and certainly the Russians and the Chinese are going to no longer be participating in, are supposed to drive them all the way out of their nuclear program.
They don't believe that, they know that's not true, and so they don't even have to define better deal, much less argue for how it's supposed to be made possible short of invasion.
And again, because they're lying, they're trying to deceive people, and not admit that they're trying to get your son killed, because Israel has different priorities.
Exactly, and what amazes me, Scott, is that the same discredited people who saturated the media, televisions, radio, and so on, back in 2000 to 2003, advocating war with Iraq, which turned out to be a total catastrophe, and which set the entire Middle East on fire, and we are still witnessing it, are now given again time, air time, space, TV, and so on, to make the same arguments about Iran.
It is as if they have just replaced the Q in Iraq with N, so that every argument they made about Iraq is almost completely duplicated and applied to Iran.
And the same discredited people are now presented to the public as, you know, pundits, as informed experts of Middle East, and so on, to make the same arguments about Iran that they made about Iraq.
And the media never asked them, asked these people, what happened to Iraq?
Do you regret it?
Don't you think that what you are saying is very similar to what you said in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq?
Why is it that those arguments about Iraq turn out to be totally wrong, and turn out to be a catastrophe, but now you're saying the same thing about Iran?
But they just don't do it.
Aside from, you know, progressive websites, you know, anti-war, like antiwar.com, your radio program, and some other programs, the mainstream media never asks these questions.
And the mainstream media never informs the public that these are the discredited experts that advocated invasion of Iraq, and we know what that got us.
Yeah.
Well, and you know what, it's not even that.
They won't even bring on partisan Democrats to argue for their president's policy, for crying out loud here.
I mean, never mind bringing on real experts, or real critics, or you, or Gareth, or somebody really honest, but how about just even the other side of the partisan debate on this?
No, it's Josh Rogin right now on CNN.
And you know, CNN has actually been as bad or worse than Fox on this, this whole time.
They have that whole air of pseudo-centrism, you know, moderate respectability.
They're not so partisan like MSNBC and Fox.
And they're completely partisan for Israel here.
And in fact, the one silver lining in this is no one even has an argument for this is against America's interests, other than Ted Cruz's, you know, make-believe EMP blast and all this crap.
So every argument is, yeah, but what about Israel, and what about Israel?
And I think that's kind of my silver lining here, where I'm kind of grateful that people are seeing that, yep, that's exactly what's going on, is that Israel owns two-thirds of your government lock, stock, and barrel, and this is what happens when, you know, the president's policy conflicts with the prime minister's.
Just look how blatant it all is.
They don't even pretend that this is about America's national interests whatsoever.
They haven't even taken the time to think that they need to.
I agree.
When Lindsey Graham goes to Israel and says to Netanyahu that you lead us in the problem with Iraq, Congress will follow your lead.
When Mark Kirk of Illinois says that the whole purpose of me participating in the Senate election is to protect Israel, when, you know, other senators say the same thing, then what do you expect?
Two-thirds of the, like you said, two-thirds of the American government is influenced by Israeli lobby.
It is as if, you know, they were elected to protect Israel, and the sad thing is here is that this nuclear agreement with Iran will ultimately be even good for Israel, except that the warmongers in Israel, led by Netanyahu, don't want to see this and don't want to admit this, and they want Iran's total capitulation, which is not going to happen.
Otherwise, if you really look at this agreement, you will see that objectively it is even good for Israel.
And in fact, many people in Israel's military and intelligence establishment agree with this assessment, that this is actually good for Israel.
It may not be what they want, but it is good for security of Israel in the long run, because this agreement is going to limit Iran's nuclear program.
So they don't even want to see that, and they just advocate something that means war, but they don't say that they want war.
They try to say they want a better deal, a better deal means capitulation and eventually war.
That's what they want.
Yep.
All right, Shaul, that is the great Mohammad Sahimi.
Thanks very much for coming back on the show.
I really appreciate it.
Thank you, Scott, for having me.
Great stuff there.
That is Mohammad Sahimi.
He's Iranian.
He's from Qais Ayatollah, but he loves peace, and he teaches chemical engineering at USC in L.A., and he runs imenews.com.
So, you're a libertarian, and you don't believe the propaganda about government awesomeness you were subjected to in fourth grade.
You want real history and economics.
Well, learn in your car from professors you can trust with Tom Woods' Liberty Classroom.
And if you join through the Liberty Classroom link at scotthorton.org, we'll make a donation to support the Scott Horton Show.
Liberty Classroom, the history and economics they didn't teach you.
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