All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton still to come on the show today.
Matt Bargain here and Scott Peterson, author of that great piece about the MEK and the Christian science monitor.
That's at the bottom of this hour, but now we turn to John Glaser, our new assistant editor and more at antiwar.com.
Welcome back to the show, John.
How are you?
Pretty good.
Thanks for having me on.
I'm not sure how much time has to pass before I stopped calling you our new assistant editor at antiwar.com.
But anyway, uh, still seems newish to me.
Um, you've got two extremely important pieces, uh, both covering, uh, different angles of the same, very important story today.
One of them is at news.antiwar.com.
Senators want crippling new Iran sanctions.
And then on the blog, antiwar.com/blog, neocons push for Iraq like sanctions in Iran.
So first of all, give us the straight dope here, the hard news.
Sure.
The story is that a bipartisan group of 92 senators, uh, signed a letter urging president Barack Obama to impose additional sanctions on the Iranian regime.
Now it's important to note that back in May, the U S already imposed a set of sanctions on Iran, uh, targeting foreign companies that dealt with Iran's energy industries in ways that Washington considered potentially illicit and some other foreign companies that might've helped in aiding Iran's weapons and missiles programs, uh, those Iran, those sanctions, uh, were virtually useless.
They didn't change Iran's policy at all.
They didn't influence the regime towards anything else, uh, that, that, you know, the Washington leadership might've wanted.
Um, and now they're suggesting to do a new set of sanctions that would target the central bank of Iran.
Uh, and the sanctions would be basically an attempt to freeze Iran out of the global financial system.
Um, now since the first set of sanctions didn't work at all, uh, even some like Hawks that are now supporting this letter, this letter urging Obama to do new sanctions, even they had already admitted, uh, like, like last week that, um, the sanctions are a dead policy.
They're ineffective.
They won't change Iran's behavior.
Um, yet now these nine, two senators came out, they feel sort of, they get that beaten their chest again, and suddenly they're out in support of this.
Uh, and a lot of them calling it crippling.
That's what's in the title that you mentioned.
They want it to be crippling.
Uh, and they keep proudly referencing the sanctions that were imposed in Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the 1990s, which two things about that.
Number one, utterly ineffective.
Uh, they wanted him to come clean and sort of be open about, uh, dismantling any weapons programs and abandoning sort of belligerent, uh, or at least perceived.
So policies, uh, and he didn't not at all.
And it led to war, uh, or it led to them justifying, uh, the 2003 invasion.
The second thing to note is that those sanctions, which banned the import of things like salt and medical supplies, so on and so forth, directly contributed to the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children.
The number that people usually go to is about 500,000 Iraqi children and even more Iraqi adults to add onto that.
Um, and so these sanctions that, that are being proposed to, uh, to target Iran are just useless and, and, and potentially very, very dangerous.
Hey, I was going to say a real quick there that, um, uh, Saddam Hussein, of course, had abandoned all of his weapons of mass destruction back in 1991 and the UN and the U S and the CNN audience knew that for a fact back in, uh, 1995, uh, when, uh, his son-in-law Hussein Kamel defected to Jordan and spilled his guts.
And then it was in 1997, uh, when Ralph Ekius from the UN was about to certify Iraq as weapons of mass destruction free, uh, that, uh, Bill Clinton, Madeline Albright changed the excuse really for the sanctions and said that no, their purpose is regime change.
And we will not lift the sanctions until Saddam Hussein is removed from power.
There, he, uh, it doesn't matter to what degree he complies with all of the UN's demands at the end of the first Gulf war, we'll never lift the sanctions as long as he's in power, which of course took away any incentive for him to even appear to cooperate with them, which of course made it easier for them to go to war later on.
That's exactly right.
And, you know, oftentimes the sanctions are placed in a, in a sort of paradigm of, okay, we want to influence the regime towards, uh, this sort of behavior or away from that sort of behavior.
But oftentimes the purpose of sanctions is to undermine the regime because they're targeted by, by Washington neocons.
I actually have, I mean, uh, there's a, um, a, a column written by, uh, Andrew Cochran that, uh, he quoted, uh, Gates, uh, secretary of defense, uh, Robert Gates, he was then a national, he was then deputy national security advisor.
Um, and he said, Saddam is discredited and cannot be redeemed.
His leadership will never be accepted by the world community.
Therefore, the Iraqis will pay the price.
So he's admitting now that, uh, that the aim was to basically make ordinary Iraqi suffer.
Uh, and then he said all possible sanctions will be maintained until he is gone.
So you're exactly right.
The aim all along was regime change.
And we'd be kidding ourselves if the aim was any different with Iran.
Right.
Yeah.
And, you know, uh, I got to recommend to people that book, uh, invisible war by Joy Gordon, Anthony Gregory and, uh, Andrew Coburn both wrote great, um, uh, pieces about it, uh, reviewing it.
And in fact, it was Andrew Coburn who broke the story on this show, um, for the first time ever about Rolf Hekius being about to, uh, exonerate the Iraqis basically in 1997, uh, before they changed their story.
Uh, but that book, invisible war is, um, well, these are the kinds of things that, uh, if there was such a thing as a, you know, actual rule of law and balance of power or whatever, these people would be on trial or, or convicted, they'd already be sitting in their prison cells for their war crimes against the people of Iraq.
And of course, this is also the definition of terrorism, right?
Is using violence, inflicting violence on civilians in order to get a reaction out of them in order to provoke political change, that's the Webster's dictionary definition of terrorism here.
And that's exactly what they were doing to the people of Iraq.
As you noted in your blog, John, uh, a million Iraqis died of these sanctions and that's before the war.
And the million that died of the war in 2003.
And, um, now we're going to talk more about the situation with Iran, uh, Russia and China on the security council, et cetera, et cetera.
And we get back from this break.
It's anti-war radio.
We're talking with John Glazer from antiwar.com.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with John Glazer, assistant editor at antiwar.com.
He's been writing up a storm for the last couple of months.
They're at antiwar.com/blog.
And also from time to time, uh, joining, uh, Jeremy Sapienza and Jason Ditz at news.antiwar.com and we're talking about, uh, uh, 92 senators led by Charles Schumer, uh, pushing for, uh, crippling new sanctions against Iran.
And now John, uh, part of what I learned from reading, uh, Joy Gordon's book, invisible war was, um, the difference in how sanctions worked in the post cold war era, you know, we could have a blockade against, uh, or, you know, an embargo against Cuba, but they could still trade with the Soviet block.
Uh, we could put a embargo against, uh, Egypt back when it was, uh, run by people we didn't like back then.
And, uh, they could still trade with the Soviets.
There's still other powers on earth for them to deal with, but in the post cold war world with, uh, especially in the case of Iraq here with Russia and China going along on the UN security council and the way they had it set up, they'd have to have a new resolution to ever lift the sanctions.
Uh, there was no automatic trigger for them to end or anything like that, that this really was a brand new thing in history where you literally had the entire world under United nations mandate, uh, boycotting, uh, Iraq and the global marketplace, uh, as we talked about, uh, leading ultimately to the deaths of, uh, somewhere right around a million people, uh, in the excess death rate and so forth.
And, uh, I wonder whether, uh, you know, from the best you can tell whether the Russians, the Chinese are worried about going along with that same kind of program against Iran.
It seems like they would rather have Iran as kind of the rogue out there for America to deal with distracts us from them.
No, I think that's right.
Um, they have more trepidation with, uh, cause they, they do a lot of economic opportunity in Iran.
Um, and we don't for political and other imaginary reasons.
Um, but I don't think my, my guess right now is that I don't think it's enough.
Uh, and I think that if, if this letter, uh, is taken to heart by Obama and is actually sort of pursued full throttle, uh, I fear they should, they will be implemented quite soon.
The main reason for that is that I don't see, you know, any organized opposition in the political class.
Well, what about the security council?
Well, you know, we'll have to, we'll have to see, but, um, um, even, even so, uh, us sanctions alone without getting the support of the council or, or many of our allies will still be, uh, will still, uh, sort of lead us down the road towards, towards potential ruin.
Hopefully there's enough, uh, there's enough resistance to it.
I'm not sure.
Yeah.
Well, and of course, you know, they also will target private companies and other countries that go ahead and ignore the sanctions and that kind of thing.
They're pretty strict about trying to enforce this stuff as much as they can.
Huh?
That's right.
And what we also have to think about is what will, what, what the U S and Israel will choose to do if faced with international resistance against, uh, sanctions against Iran.
I mean, what they've been doing already for years is, uh, spy operations inside Iran to undermine the regime and the, uh, unsubstantiated claims about a nuclear program.
Uh, we've also, you know, engaged in commercial sabotage, selling things to Iran on the international market that we, that we broke ourselves and, and, and tried to slip in viruses like the sex net virus, um, cyber warfare.
Uh, the, uh, I reported on a, an Israeli agent, uh, just last week who, who admitted in public to, to Der Spiegel that, uh, that they have been the ones that have been planting, uh, bombs in, in cars and on motorcycles to target, uh, Iranian scientists that may be involved in some nuclear program.
Um, that again, as you said earlier before the break, international terrorism, that is the textbook, uh, uh, definition of international terrorism to harm people, to kill people, to, you know, attack civilian populations, uh, in order to get a certain political end.
And, and that's what we're looking at.
If these sanctions don't go through, because I don't see any resistance in the American government against, uh, these belligerent policies towards Iran.
Well, and you know, I appreciate how in this blog entry about the neocons here, uh, how you're most frustrated by the same sticking point as me, that the entire premise of this entire narrative, this entire set of policies going on for decades now against Iran is based on the phony lie that it's not even a mistaken belief or anything.
I don't know.
I guess there are, there are fools who believe the liars, but this all starts with a big lie that everybody knows somehow Iran is making nuclear weapons or is trying to, when in fact they're just not.
That's exactly right.
That's a new reporter on it and had him on the show, Seymour Hirsch, who, who deconstructed the whole big lie.
I actually, I have a quote right here.
He says, despite years of covert operations inside Iran, extensive satellite imagery and the recruitment of Iranian intelligence assets, the United States and its allies, including Israel, have been unable to find irrefutable evidence of an ongoing hidden nuclear weapons program in Iran.
The problem is nowhere in the media or in the political class.
Do we hear someone say, okay, the burden of proof is on the people who want to say that this, this, uh, nuclear program actually exists, what we find instead is fear mongering and then other people sort of joining the crowd and lock step and goose stepping along with this lie that has never been proven.
No evidence has been brought into bear.
Uh, and it's, and it could lead, what's sad about it is it could lead to the harming of Iranians or it could lead to war or it could lead to more, uh, you know, covert operations that lead to innocent dying.
It could lead to a lots of dangerous things all because people are too afraid to say, look, I need you to prove that this program exists as opposed to just being scared.
Well, and the thing that really gets me too is at least half of me, John is worried, you know, seriously worried that the people in DC believe their own BS and really think that they could do this.
You know, this, uh, coming up to the bottom of the air in just a minute, I'm going to be interviewing this guy from the CSM, uh, wrote this article where Giuliani is saying we have Arab spring.
Let's have a Persian summer.
And it's like, man, are you really living in that fantasy world?
You're pushing there or what?
Are these the people really who make the policy?
Yeah, unfortunately I think it's like, I think it's only the top notch, uh, psychopaths that are in the halls of power that actually know this stuff is a lie.
Uh, the rest of them, the rest of their minions who just follow along in Congress and in the media, uh, do believe themselves.
They believe these ridiculous things.
The only ones lying were like the top notch people in the Bush administration who knew full well that Saddam didn't have weapons of mass destruction or that he was at all involved in nine 11 or that, uh, that he committed the crimes that we went after for ostensibly with our money and our support and our weapon.
Yeah.
How about the lie that a war with Iran would be anything but national suicide?
I mean, this is a, this would be the end of a lot of things.
If America gets into a war with Iran, it's not that they can attack us here, but they can certainly attack our interests all over the Middle East.
And that includes, you know, our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan next door too.
That's part of that worries me about Giuliani spouting off.
It's like, yeah, let's just do this guys.
Come on.
You know, learn nothing after this last decade.
All right.
We're all out of time.
Thanks very much for yours, John.
That's John Glazer, everybody.
Antiwar.com.
