Alright, y'all.
Welcome back to the dang old radio show.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's anti-war radio.
And our first guest on the show today is Nima Shirazi.
He keeps the blog wide asleep in America.
Welcome back to the show.
Nima, how are you doing?
I'm doing very well.
It's really hot up here in Brooklyn.
Yeah, well, I'm in Austin, Texas, so you don't know what you're talking about.
Yeah, you probably have air conditioning, huh?
Yes, that's true.
All places around here come with air conditioning.
We couldn't live here.
Or I guess we could live, but we'd have to stay at Barton Springs all day.
Sure.
Alright.
So, hey, listen, thanks for coming on the show.
I love the stuff that you write.
I should interview you about it more often.
I want to go back a couple of weeks here, a week and a half or so, to this piece about the Iranian weapons in Iraq carousel.
Around and around it goes.
Go ahead.
Tell them.
Oh, well, let's see here.
It seems that every few years, if not every few months, the news media, basically because of specific orders from government officials, goes on and on and on about how the Iranian government is funneling weapons across the Iran-Iraq border to pro-Iran, pro-Shia militias in Iraq, and that these weapons are responsible for killing U.S. soldiers who are occupying Iraq.
And so what winds up happening is when these reports surface, which we have again and again and again for years, there's kind of a renewed public sense of this Iranian threat, this Iranian menace.
You know, they can't even stay in their own country.
They have to go into one of the ones we are occupying and then kill us there.
That kind of fear-mongering is consistently reported after these reports come out, usually by someone like Gareth Porter, who you, I think, interview a lot.
He consistently debunks all of these myths about the Iranian weapons, saying actually, despite what the U.S. military has said, the findings actually show that the majority of the weapons come from China or from Russia, or even if they are, in theory, from Iran, the Iranian government has actually no role in this, which actually would then be a very important distinction to make, that if there is a black market weapons trade in that region, which undoubtedly there is, you know, who's quote-unquote responsible for it?
And when you say Iran is funneling weapons into Iraq to kill U.S. troops, what are you actually saying?
So these stories keep popping up.
There's a new push this summer with it.
It seems that every time maybe the nuclear issue kind of recedes because of new reports or because it's, you know, the dog days of summer and people want to talk about something new, instead of talking about something new, they just regurgitate something from the past that seems new to kind of get that hype up again.
Right, well, you know, it really was amazing back in 2007 and 2008.
It really was just like that, where, you know, they would switch off back and forth between whether we were supposed to fear the open, declared, inspected, above board nuclear electricity program or whether we were supposed to fear some secret program that must exist that we have to bomb, even though we have no idea where any of it is because it's so secret and that's how we know it's there and all that kind of thing.
And then all of a sudden they just dropped the nuclear issue and even pretty much, I would say even before the NIE came out, it had pretty much gone to the back burner and they spent most, certainly of 2007 and the dawn of the surge, accusing Iran, basically they just wanted to switch from, you know, fighting the Sunni-based insurgency to fighting Muqtada al-Sadr's guys at the same time that they were really fighting to put him in power, but they were preferring the same guys Iran preferred at the time, the Supreme Islamic Council, the more professional upper middle class Hakeem clan, and there was no even sensical reason that made any sense whatsoever why the Iranian government would want to arm up Muqtada al-Sadr more than the Bata Brigade, the one that we were fighting for and with and kicking the last of the Sunni Arabs out of Baghdad.
And the whole thing was not just a lie, a pile of assertions unproven, but it made no sense on its face, the whole thing was a giant joke and it went on for a year and a half or something, now here they are again, they never even have to prove it, do they?
They just say it five times, oh a bomb went off, it must have been Iran, and then that's it.
Exactly, the issue of evidence has never really come into it when the United States is accusing another country of doing something.
Basically it's just a matter of how many times it can be repeated by the same people.
Now the truth is that only Persians are sophisticated enough to use copper when they make a bomb, an Arab could never figure out how to use copper in a bomb, and there are 500 reports of these bomb factories being found in Iraq, well they must all be in error.
Exactly, and what we're seeing this summer is actually a kind of surge, no pun intended, to actually ramp up all of these accusations at once.
As you mentioned it kind of went back and forth, there will be nuclear issues, then Iranian weapons in Iraq, and then this and then that.
This summer, for I think a variety of reasons that people may disagree on, we're seeing all of them all at once, like the weapons in Iraq is obviously one thing which has been repeated by Leon Panetta, and Todd Military Brass, and that is kind of running in tandem with more allegations about the nuclear program.
I don't know if people are just bored in Washington, and just are kind of scrolling through their email for the past six, seven years, and are just picking on things to kind of reprint, but just today actually I was sent an article that's posted on the Fox News site, which actually they picked up from the AP, and the headline is, Iranian President Wants to Openly Develop Nukes.
I mean that's the headline.
And what the story goes on to say is that the comments made by Ahmadinejad point to basically a change in tone, which has previously been secretive about their nuclear weapons program, which obviously doesn't exist, but whatever, to this kind of open declaration.
And this is actually a rehash of a news report that came out of the AP in June, which essentially said the same thing, but now it's kind of being propped up a month later.
Maybe they felt it didn't get enough traction, not enough people were sufficiently terrified at the time.
And what this hinges on are comments made by the Iranian president, which basically boil down to his saying that Iran is, quote, not afraid of making a nuclear weapon, but doesn't intend to do so.
And then he continued and said, if we do want to make a bomb, we're not afraid of anybody.
And this set everyone off.
So many people were so terrified, and this is where the story comes from, that that's an open declaration.
If we want to do it, we are going to do it.
But the entire premise of what he's saying is that we have no intention of doing it.
Iran has no intention of doing it.
This is also in no way a new sentiment.
So this is not a break from previous comments that he has made.
Like, for instance...
Look, he's a politician, he could be a liar.
The fact is there's just no evidence of any secret program.
And the declared program, all the uranium is sitting there.
Every atom of it is accounted for, true or false.
Exactly.
And there are upwards of 40 other countries which have the so-called breakout capacity that Iran doesn't even have.
All right, we're going to have to take this break.
We'll be right back, everybody, with Nima Shirazi from whytosleepinamerica.com.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton and I'm talking with Nima Shirazi.
His website is whytosleepinamerica.com.
We're talking about the war party's lies on the Iran issue.
Same ones as always, and I guess that's what makes them true as they've been saying them all so long.
All our problems in Iraq are Iran's fault and their nuclear program could kill you in the middle of the night if you're sitting so peacefully in your jammies, and so maybe we need to have a war against them in order to prevent that.
So what I wonder, Nima, is whether you think that this latest scare going on in Israeli media, well, starting in Israeli media, with Meir Dagan saying that Benjamin Netanyahu's crazy and stupid enough to try to cause a war with Iran, Bill Giraldi and Bob Bair, former CIA officers, seem to be agreed that the Pentagon is getting ready in case this happens, that Barack Obama wouldn't stop it.
What do you think's going on here?
Do you think we're really facing this danger this season?
I don't, in short.
I think this is a constant hyped-up threat about a potential Israeli assault, airstrike, whatever, on Iran, its nuclear facilities, its military installations, and I'm sure its civilian population centers.
But this too has just been one of the many repeated stories that keeps popping up whenever anyone needs to further demonize Iran and get that back to the headlines.
You mentioned the Robert Bair prediction, which he made on the radio last week, and there was a flurry of media excitement.
Oh, my God, former CIA agent says Israel's definitely going to bomb Iran by September to divert attention from the U.N. vote for Palestine.
And then as soon as this got enough attention, he wrote an article in Time just the other day saying, Whoa, whoa, whoa, everyone.
Why is everyone taking me seriously?
I have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about.
Basically, I was just talking to a friend of mine on the radio and didn't expect anyone to really be listening, so I just kind of spouted some nonsense off the top of my head because, I don't know, for all I know, Netanyahu's going to bomb Iran in September, but really I don't know anything because I haven't been a CIA agent in over a decade, so don't take anything I say seriously.
But that kind of retraction or kind of addressing of a previous claim isn't going to get nearly as much traction as the initial claim, as the initial report.
So the damage is already done through, I mean, basically no fault of Bob Bair's, but by the news outlets that actually lend credibility to these kinds of claims.
But I personally really do not think that Israel is in any position to bomb Iran.
They probably really want to because that's what they like doing.
They like bombing people.
But Iran is not a country that's going to be susceptible to that right now.
And even in terms of beltway politics, looking at it not from a purely, that would be illegal, that would be a war crime, that would be a crime against humanity, it would be immoral, etc., etc., it would be ineffective.
Even in beltway speak, in terms of policy and taking the human element out of it, it would not achieve a single goal that Israel or the United States would actually have.
It would galvanize a population that Israel and the U.S. is intent on casting as being very divided right now, whether that's true or not.
But it would certainly unify the country in a different way against an external threat or an actual attack.
And so in no way would it achieve any of the goals other than possibly finally making Israel have to be accountable on the world stage for its crimes.
Though, of course, that's very debatable.
Well, it would accomplish, it could, I guess, perhaps accomplish the destruction of the Natanz facility.
I mean, I'm not saying it's smart, but if that's a short-term goal...
True, however, people who follow this stuff have said, well, then that would just be a setback that Iran would face, and they would redouble their efforts to actually pursue a nuclear weapon, which, of course, that alone assumes that they are, which there's no evidence for.
But again, in terms of that kind of analysis, people look to the Osirak reactor in Iraq in 1981.
They don't kind of say the same thing.
Well, you know, when Israel goes in and destroys something that actually has been proven to not be a nuclear weapons-producing facility, it kind of makes that country want to defend itself in a different way against a nuclear-armed Israel, and so certain different decisions might be made in the future.
Right, well, that's what drove Saddam Hussein's nuclear program underground.
He had an IAEA-inspected, declared facility, and then he embarked on a secret nuclear weapons program to prevent that kind of thing from ever happening again right after that.
Exactly.
That was stopped in the first Gulf War.
Right, so it's basically just a self-fulfilling prophecy, which may very well be the Israeli game, but I think even in terms of military capacity, it would be an absolute disaster for Israel, and then were the U.S. to be dragged into that, which undoubtedly it would be, it would be an unmitigated disaster for the U.S. as well.
Well, yeah, you certainly got no argument there.
I just, you know, Phil was on the show and said that, well, Mayor Dagan wants America to bomb Iran.
He thinks it's crazy, the idea that, you know, Netanyahu should just start it and basically just push us into the war.
Although, you know, in the past, he's threatened to do that, and in private, it's in the WikiLeaks that he told Nicholas Burns that we have our own red line and we know yours is different, but we don't care.
And wouldn't, basically, you know, wouldn't you prefer to start the war on your own and do it your way than have us drag you into it, which we're perfectly willing to do to you?
Sure, I mean, again, I think that...
Although that was about four years ago now when he said that.
Sure, exactly, and that kind of thing, you know, pops up again and again, just like all the other allegations, it's really just to potentially keep pressure on Iran.
I think that may be part of the theory, as Netanyahu has said in the past and also repeated recently, I think when he was talking to AIPAC or possibly Congress or whatever, that, you know, Israel and the United States need to consistently escalate the threat against Iran and to have it be a credible military threat or else Iran will just ignore the, you know, imperial dictates of the West and basically continue not to bow down to whatever we say.
And so, basically, they need to really think that we're going to do this so that we don't have to do this and that they will do what we want them to do.
And I think what we see in terms of official statements made by, you know, the Iranian president or members of his cabinet or Khamenei, it's essentially consistently saying, look, Iran is a sovereign country and you can disagree with what you disagree with.
That's fine, but you can't tell us what to do and we're not threatened by you.
And I think the fact that Iran is not showing itself to be threatened and to be worried about an attack, saying, you know, who could possibly attack us?
Israel's going to attack us?
That's ridiculous.
We don't even take them into account when we consider our own foreign policy and military defense doctrine.
We don't even think about Israel because they have no chance of doing that to us.
That really riles people in Washington and in Tel Aviv.
Well, one last issue here before I let you go, and that is Iraq.
And you have this great piece about the neocons and their position on, you know, what could happen, what will happen if the U.S. leaves.
The whole place will then fall into the hands of the Iranians.
Is that basically the claim here?
Yeah, that's essentially what we're seeing.
It's yet another one of the fun predictions that we hear all the time.
And this has specifically to do with the Status of Forces Agreement, which is set to basically call for the, quote-unquote, complete removal of all, you know, U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of this year.
Obviously, there would be a permanent military base, obviously.
Not everyone's going to leave.
But in theory, that's what it calls for.
And so what the neocons are saying, and Democrats and other people as well, is that if that actually is allowed to happen, if U.S. troops leave, Iran will completely take over.
Iraq is going to be a Persian fat trap, to use, you know, ancient terminology, clash of civilizations kind of stuff.
You know, oh, my God, all the gains we've made occupying this country and stealing their oil basically is all going to be for naught.
It's going to be a decade of just wasted blood and treasure because we're not even going to get, you know, Iraq out of the deal because Iran will.
So that would be a massive failure.
It would turn a victory, quote-unquote, into a failure because Iraq would then fall into the hands of Iran, God forbid.
And so that's the new threat to kind of address what the legal treaty between the U.S. and Iraq is, which is that the U.S. troops need to leave at the end of the year.
And obviously many people in Washington do not want to see that happen.
Yeah, but I mean, still, that is just amazing, these neocons, that they would really, you know, posit the argument that way.
I mean, I guess I shouldn't be surprised, and yet still I am, I'm shocked at least, that, you know, I guess they don't ever have to confront because no one's ever arguing out loud against them, near them, where they have to respond that from the very beginning of the war in 2003, America backed the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the Dawah Party, the two most Iran-backed factions of Iraqi traders who had fled to Iran during the Iran-Iraq war when Ronald Reagan backed both sides, but especially Iraq, and that then now they're going to sit here and say, oh no, somehow Iranian influence has increased and this is why we have to stay?
Yeah, I mean, it's completely hypocritical to say the least.
I mean, when proponents of an aggressive foreign policy who have been successful in, you know, having this country invade and occupy Middle Eastern countries for the past decade at least, you know, turn around and say that a country next door to one of the ones that we've occupied isn't allowed to have friendly relations with that country.
I mean, it's completely bogus, and it kind of, you know, let's say Iran had been occupying, you know, Canada and Mexico for the past decade, and then the U.S. is consistently accused of interfering with Canadian politics.
None of it makes sense.
Yeah, I mean, you know, they ran that article in Salon.com how Chalabi conned the neocons, and that was late.
I mean, that was just for the general public, and it has the picture of Chalabi shaking hands with, at that time, President Khatami, I believe, and that was in 2004, I think.
And, you know, for those of us who were paying close attention, we knew in 2003, I don't remember anymore if I knew before the war actually broke out, but certainly in 2003 I knew at some point that the Iraqi National Congress had been based in Tehran.
You know, from the point of view of the CIA and the DIA, at least one report they put out, they said that Chalabi didn't just give Iranians our secrets, like that we'd broken their codes and that they needed to change them, but that he actually was on a mission from Tehran to lie us into war with Iraq.
Saddam Hussein, their greatest enemy.
Yeah, I mean, the United States military campaigns have certainly helped Iran in one sense, but also, obviously, destroyed a large part of the region that Iran is in, and so it's kind of, you know, removing the Taliban influence.
I mean, now, obviously, it's back, but, you know, Taliban and al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, I mean, all of these were traditional enemies of Iran, and then the United States is completely shocked and appalled that Iran may now have more influence in those countries than they did before.
So, you know, the sheer audacity of these people here in the states who, you know, can't understand how everything went so wrong for them, you know, clearly just weren't paying attention from the beginning or are, you know, unbelievably stupid.
Yeah, or unbelievably cynical.
Yeah, these Office of Special Plans guys lecturing us on what we've got to do next.
I just love it.
All right, well, anyway, we're over time here, but I really appreciate your time.
Thanks very much.
Thanks so much, Scott.
Take care.
Everybody, that's Nima Shirazi.
The website is whytosleepinamerica.com, and we'll be right back.
