06/09/11 – Philip Giraldi – The Scott Horton Show

All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton and our next guest is Philip Giraldi from Antiwar.com and the American Conservative Magazine.
He's also the executive director of the Council for the National Interest Foundation and a former CIA and DIA officer, a counterterrorism officer.
His new piece at Antiwar.com is up today.
It's in the highlights right there at the top of the page.
Target Iran.
Oh, come on, Phil.
I thought that Dick Cheney and George Bush were gone.
And as much of a dissembler as Barack Obama might be on the Iran issue, he doesn't want to have a war with Iran.
And he's the one who decides, right?
And so this danger is gone.
Why are you trying to worry me with this story again?
Well, you know, I agree with you, actually, that Obama probably doesn't want a war with Iran.
In fact, probably would do almost everything within his capability to stop something like that.
But there are a lot of people that still want this war.
They still see Iran as the principal threat against Israel primarily.
And they're arguing in certain ways that a war with Iran is is something that has to be contemplated in the near future to keep it from getting a nuclear weapon.
It's the same argument we've been hearing for about the past 10 years.
Well, you know, the Rand Corporation came out with a thing the other day that said that the Iranians could have a nuke in two months.
Yeah, I read that.
That was probably the stupidest Rand report I've ever seen.
It was based on the premise that the Iranians were having trouble enriching the uranium that they do have up to a 20% level, which is the level used for medical purposes.
And it's assuming that even though they're having those problems, they'll be able to get the uranium up to a 90 plus level, which is the weapons grade level.
And the two things just don't quite go together.
The Iranians have been having serious problems in their uranium enrichment program, apart from everything else.
I mean, they've been having all kinds of problems because the CIA and Mossad and probably the Germans and French and British also have been screwing around with their supply lines.
Well, and you know, it's funny, too, that he says in there that all this could really happen under the nose of the IAEA, that they could never mind that they would even under his scenario in that Rand report have enough uranium for just one gun type nuke, and then there's no explanation for how they could deliver it to anywhere other than their own territory or something.
But he basically says that, oh, yeah, they could get away with doing all this in a way that the IAEA wouldn't even notice that they're enriching virtually all of their uranium stock up to weapons grade.
Yeah, they'd have to probably do it in a cave, though.
I mean, you know, there are inspectors on the ground there.
It's it would to me his his premise as to where this would all take place was a little bit questionable.
And the fact is that it's again, it assumes a whole lot of favorable things about the Iranian nuclear program, if there is an Iranian nuclear program.
And it's assuming that all these things are going to go right simultaneously.
And you and you they've mastered all these technologies, and they're going to arrive at the point where they have a weapon or the whole thing was ridiculous.
Now, for the record, I invited the guy on the show to defend his case, and he didn't even answer me.
So it's okay if I talk bad about him behind his back now.
Oh, he's probably too busy, you know, cranking up another story about now who will be the next flavor of the week Syria, it'll be Syria, that is probably seven weeks away from having a nuclear weapon.
Right.
Well, and you know, of course, if, if what the war party said about Iran and their nuclear weapons was true, they'd had their first nuclear bomb 1000 times by now, because they're always right on the verge of having a nuclear weapon.
Here we are in the summer of 2011.
Talking about how Oh, yeah, they could soon still.
Yeah, well, the thing is, you know, they always say it's six months away or a year away or 18 months away.
And of course, they never really give any reasons for why they think that's the case, except they they sort of imply that there's intelligence out there that indicates this.
And but as you know, the date slips constantly.
It's been slipping ever since I've started looking at these issues, which, which is probably around the year 2000.
And it's been slipping every time somebody makes an estimate as to when they're going to have a weapon.
And there's no evidence, as Seymour Hersh revealed in his, his article last week, there's no actual evidence that they actually have a weapon, a weapons program.
Well, and back to that in just one second.
But, you know, there's a blogger named Nima Shirazi, who's compiled claims of Iran being on the verge of a nuclear weapon going back to the mid 1980s by the Israelis.
I you know, I hadn't I didn't I wasn't aware of that blog, but I'd like to look it up.
Oh, yeah, you'll love his blog.
It's he's one of the five of us good on the Iran nuclear issue in the country, I think.
Yeah, that'd be sure.
I imagine that's very much true.
And now as far as that Hersh article goes, basically, what he's reporting in there is that since the NIE of 2007, which estimate that there was no secret nuclear weapons program in Iran, just the safeguarded one that we all know about the above board one, that they've had four years of more research.
And he details, you know, DIA on the ground and fancy sensors disguised as bricks and street signs and things in his article.
They've been really looking for four years since then, and they've only been able to conclude the same thing, that there is no secret nuclear weapons program in Iran.
Is that also your understanding, Philip Giraldi, former CIA officer?
Yeah, that's my understanding.
In fact, I reported the same thing that you might recall on antiwar, I believe, back, you know, six months or so ago, right before we talked just before and just after the NIE came out.
But I had kind of picked it up from here and there.
Seymour obviously has either seen a copy of it or has spoken to somebody who actually had a copy.
So his what he's saying is really authoritative.
And, you know, I interviewed him about it.
And I asked all the follow ups I could and seemed to me, in fact, I could tell, especially from his interview on democracy now, how much of his understanding of nuclear technology is informed by our friend Dr.
Gordon Prather, who wrote so many great articles for antiwar.com in the past.
He's retired now.
But this was a former chief scientist of the army.
And you can just hear Gordon Prather talking in Cy Hirsch's explanation about this nuclear technology to Amy Goodman.
Sure.
But again, the important thing is here is that Cy actually has had some kind of, let's say, direct access to the real document itself.
And this tells us authoritatively that, hey, we've unleashed all of our intelligence resources on this.
And we still were unable to come up with anything indicating they have weapons program.
The other interesting, of course, was he also confirmed that something I had picked up that that the intelligence community had dug in its heels and had refused to go along with the White House demands to make the report, shall we say, more flexible.
And that's interesting, because that means that that the Obama administration, for all its talk, really wants to have kind of this threat hanging out there as something that it can play around with.
You know, that's what's scary about all these people.
I mean, you know, you get these politicians and many of them are, by no means, stupid.
And they get into office and they take their brains and they put them in their back pocket and they forget about them for four years.
And that's what Obama's doing.
I mean, this guy is a smart guy.
I think everybody would give him that credit.
And how about using a little bit of that smart, you know, but I guess we're never going to see that.
Well, I think it's pretty telling for people in the general public who maybe don't know Cy Hirsch all that well or whatever, that when this report came out, the worst that the White House could do basically was just try to attack him.
They don't attack at all the premise of the article, which is that all he's doing is reporting the unanimous conclusion of all 17 now American intelligence agencies when they come together at the National Intelligence Council, that there is not a secret nuclear weapons program.
So I say to the White House, you know, to the the the war party, put up or shut up, either challenge Hirsch's assertion in the article or concede that, yeah, that's exactly what the 2011 NIE update says.
Yeah, well, yeah.
And of course, there's another issue here, too, which is that, you know, attacking Iran is is not necessarily going to eliminate the program.
The the former head of Mossad said last week, he said that attacking Iran will guarantee that they will get a weapon.
And of course, he's right.
Well, I mean, just look at the historical example of Osirak when Israel attacked Iraq back in 1981.
All they did was drive a IAEA safeguarded nonproliferation treaty, civilian nuclear program underground and turned it into a nuclear weapons program.
Not that Hussein was very close to a nuclear bomb at the time of Desert Storm, but that was certainly what turned his civilian program into a weapons one.
Absolutely.
The preemptive strike.
Exactly.
You need it for your to defend yourself.
All right, everybody, we'll be right back with more about this.
And there's more.
It's Philip Giraldi.
The article today on antiwar.com is called Target Iran.
All right, welcome back to the show.
It's antiwar radio.
I'm Scott Horton, I'm talking with Philip Giraldi, he's a former CIA and DIA officer, writes for the American Conservative Magazine and antiwar.com.
He's also the executive director of the Council for the National Interest Foundation, the new piece today on antiwar.com is called Target Iran.
And you reference an article in Haaretz, well, actually two things.
First of all, an interview with Israeli strategic affairs minister and deputy prime minister, Moshe Yaelan, and also an opinion piece by a man named, a journalist named Amir Orin, writing in Haaretz.
Both of them, well, I guess the first saying we need to bomb Iran.
And the second saying there's a considerable danger that Israel will bomb Iran.
Right.
The first one was by a politician and he's basically echoing what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is saying.
And if you know, when Netanyahu was in the United States recently, he spoke a lot about Iran.
It was kind of swallowed up in other stuff, but there were a lot of mentions of Iran.
And anyway, so he's basically saying that Iran, his exact words were that Iran has to be attacked by the world community because it is now a threat to the civilized world because of its weapons program.
And then the other report is, I think, more significant because it comes from a journalist who has very, very close ties to the defense and intelligence communities in Israel.
And he's basically saying that the buzz he's hearing essentially is that the Netanyahu administration will look for a window through this summer and into September for a possible attack on Iran.
The timing would be to take advantage of the transition in Washington between the secretary of defense and the CIA director and the new positions and new people coming in.
They're assuming that if there's going to be pushback, the pushback will be somewhat muted for that reason.
So it's an interesting article.
And he's saying very strongly that his sources are suggesting that this is a very, very possible scenario.
Wow.
So now, you know, you take even aside, you know, we're talking about the future here.
We can't know for sure whether this could really happen or not.
But I think at least he's reporting the fact that this is what they're talking about inside the defense and intelligence establishment in Israel.
This is the conversation is how can we blindside the Americans and force them into a war with Iran?
Yeah, that's essentially what it comes down to, because everybody recognizes that while Israel can do severe damage to Iran, it really can't eliminate a weapons program if indeed one exists.
And so you need the heavy follow up by the United States to accomplish the task insofar as you're able to do it at all.
And so, yeah, it's a given that whatever Israel is planning on doing and I, you know, I must admit that you get I get very disappointed, even people on our side who are coming out with the mantra line, you know, Israel can make its own decisions.
Israel can defend itself.
You know, when they say that, the problem is it doesn't work that way because Israel has the United States so tied hand and foot to its policies that the United States would be unable to stay out of anything like this.
Right.
And, you know, that's the premise we saw in the WikiLeaks where Mayor Dagan, the former head of Mossad, who, by the way, has been on the record for six years now saying, oh, come on, Iran is no nuclear threat to us.
Anyway, he's telling Secretary Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns that back in August 2007, an article that was reported by Larissa Alexandrovna in Ross Story, an article that you're quoted in as well, saying that, listen, if you guys don't start the war by wherever our red line is and we take into account that you guys have a different red line than us.
But if you don't start the war by the time our red line is crossed, we will.
And and it's right in there.
Right.
That and we know that you'll be drawn into the war.
You'll have to fight the war for us.
And we're willing to make you do it.
Yeah, I don't see, given given Congress's virtual adoration of Netanyahu, how they would avoid getting involved.
I mean, there would be a resolution in Congress 10 minutes after an Israeli attack supporting Israel.
I don't I have no doubt about that.
I don't think anyone should have any doubt about that.
And the pressure from the media and from Congress will all be on the president to to assist our brave little ally, if that's the way it's going to play out.
And so the only question is, is there any adult supervision in Israel?
That means that they will come to their senses and realize that this is this would be a bad prospect for everybody.
Or are they going to do something stupid?
Yeah, well, I mean, there you go.
When when the voice of reason is Mayor Dagan and he's the one threatening us with this blackmail, then who could be the adult supervision over there?
I have no idea.
It's a it's a mystery to me how that government.
Well, it's clear that that government would have no international credibility at all with Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman if it weren't for the fact that they're they're they're supported hand and foot by the United States.
And now without the U.S., I mean, assuming that their number one target would be the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, in your understanding, is there anything short of a nuclear weapon or maybe the fanciest new bunker buster non-nuke that America has that could take out that Natanz facility?
It would be pointless to bomb it without it being the Americans bombing it, I guess is what I'm getting at.
Yeah, I think unless they used to nuke the Israelis.
Yeah, the Israelis would would have to use a tactical nuclear device to to destroy it because they don't have the heavy bombers.
They don't have the capability of delivering conventional explosives on that target.
So they would have to use a nuclear device.
So they they're counting on the United States basically to come in in a second wave.
And but of course, there's something like, I believe, 500 nuclear sites of one kind or another in Iran, and many of them would have to be attacked.
And of course, the assumption about Natanz is that Natanz is the only place where enrichment is taking place.
I mean, on one hand, Israel and the United States keep claiming there's a secret program.
And if there's a secret program, that's a secret.
It's somewhere else.
So, you know, you wind up hitting the obvious target.
You wind up guaranteeing that Iran will accelerate its drive to get a nuclear weapon.
And you might still have another facility that you didn't know about.
That could quite quite possibly produce the weapon that you've been you've been fearing.
Well, now it's obvious that Congress counts for nothing.
But what about at the Pentagon?
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and even at the CIA, they would be really mad when they the permanent American government, the permanent national security state, if the Israelis blindsided them with something like this.
I think you're probably right.
The question is, to what extent would Panetta or Petraeus in those positions be able to to say no to the White House?
That's a question I don't think we have an answer to.
They might not have that kind of leverage.
Petraeus would probably just email Max Boot and ask him what to say.
Yeah, that's probably that's true.
Yeah, that's for sure.
But I would think the issue becomes if Israel does it, it's going to be the kind of situation where within 12 hours something has to happen.
And if the White House is under pressure from various sources to help Israel, it's going to be very difficult for Panetta and Petraeus to to to take a contrary position, I would think.
But, you know, I don't know.
These things could play out differently.
I would be delighted if for once they would play out differently.
But one has to become, I think, a pessimist in terms of how things happen in that part of the world based on what we've seen certainly over the last 10 years.
Well, now, look, if if it's obvious to you, me and Mayor Dagan and Cy Hirsch and everybody else that there really is no nuclear weapons program there and that's really just the pretext, it's the pretext for what?
I mean, would would it really be that the point of this war would be to start something so big and disastrous that it would have to end up being a march to Tehran?
Well, one of the one of the theories that was voiced in the article in Haaretz was that the the whole idea of of doing this before September would be to to stop the Palestinians from declaring the state.
In other words, you would create a big enough crisis in the Middle East that the Palestinian issue would be on a back burner.
I don't know how plausible that is, but that certainly was what what was suggested in the article.
Well, it's more plausible than them thinking they could really get a regime change and an invasion in Iran from us.
Right.
I don't think anyone believes that that's possible.
And and if anyone is sensible, they should realize that any kind of a major attack on Iran will, even if it's limited in nature, is is going to solidify the the power of the conservative government there.
So I think it's a it's a lose lose proposition any way you look at it.
Yeah, well, you know, we talked with Hillary Mann Leverett earlier in the week about all the new propaganda about Iran and al Qaeda.
And yeah, did you know that there was al Qaeda in Iran?
And let's not focus on the fact that they were being held prisoner in prison, you know, before being traded for, you know, Iranian diplomats kidnapped by al Qaeda guys.
But let's just go with that propaganda line.
Did you hear al Qaeda was in Iran?
You know, that's about as specific as we need.
And that's a great new talking point.
And if we want to get us into war, same as last time.
Right.
Never mind.
We're fighting for al Qaeda in Libya.
We'll just leave that for the Bando interview.
Thanks, Phil.
Appreciate it.
All right.
Thanks, Scott.
Good to talk to you again.
That's Phil Girod, TheAntiWar.com, everybody.