Alright, welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton, and our next guest is Trita Parsi.
He's founder and president of the National Iranian American Council.
That's niacouncil.org.
And he's got his own website at tritaparsi.com.
A recent article, I think it's featured on antiwar.com today, or maybe it was yesterday, is the coming Republican push on Iran at salon.com.
Welcome back to the show, Trita.
How are you doing?
Very good.
How are you?
It's a good day, as you know.
Shane and Josh were just released.
Yeah, I saw that.
That's great news.
I guess we talked about this before.
I interviewed Shane once on the show, after he wrote that great piece about the Bata Brigade inside the Iraqi army and all that.
And it's been troubling to know he was captive over there, and they finally have released him.
Do you know when he's expected to be back?
I think they have landed in Oman right now.
They're going to stay there for a couple of days, recuperate, be with the families before they return to the U.S.
Cool.
Well, it'll be great to hear from him about what was going on there.
Great to know he's back here in America.
Relative freedom compared to Iran, right?
We're doing great compared to Iran.
They got worse inflation than us.
Now, to this piece, and they got their own Republicans to deal with over there, I guess.
It ain't paradise.
The coming Republican push on Iran.
Well, there's a couple of things here, and I'm sorry to start with the red herring, but I guess I got to.
For some reason, this matters.
The comment section of every Iran article would have it, on the entire Internet, would have it that if you're in Iranian America and you are opposed to war with Iran, it's because you are a front man for the Ayatollah, or else why wouldn't you want the U.S. to come and liberate your people over there?
So, I'm sorry for such a stupid question to start, but what's your answer to that?
Well, you addressed this issue before on your show, that you have this violent terrorist organization called the Mujahideen-e-Khal, who are on the U.S.'s terrorist list because of the many Americans they've killed, because of all the ethnic cleansing that they did for Saddam Hussein back in the 1990s.
They're out there, and they're trying to create this false choice, saying that if you oppose bombing, then you have to be with the regime.
Obviously, that's complete nonsense.
The vast majority of the Iranian-American community oppose any military confrontation, and they also oppose the regime in Iran.
They wouldn't be in this country if they didn't.
It's about finding smart solutions to complex problems.
This is an organization whose only advantage is when there is complete mayhem, and when there is a military confrontation.
That's their only chance, in their own estimate, to be able to get anything in Iran's future.
Well, and there are certainly interests in America, as we've talked about before.
Some of the most powerful people think they're just great, because they want to use them.
In fact, I think it's since we've spoken, it was ThinkProgress, probably, had the video of General McInerney talking about how, yes, we want to use them as terrorists in Iran.
Yeah, he was giving a speech.
It was actually, I think, first covered by my organization.
He was giving a speech at the National Press Club at an event in favor of the Mujahideen, and he made it very clear that if anything happens in Iraq, if an American is killed in Iraq, then something should blow up in Iran.
And he was saying that in the context of why we need to take the Mujahideen off the terrorist list, which I think made it quite clear that this is about utilizing them for military purposes in order to either start a war or to continue this proxy war that goes on between the United States and Iran.
It has nothing to do with getting rid of the regime or democracy or the poor folks who are now trapped in Camp Ashraf in Iraq.
Right.
Yeah, and you're right.
It was your website where I first saw that.
Sorry about that.
Yeah, incredible.
All right, well, now, so let's talk about the case against Iran.
I guess the major pillars are that they're building nukes, and even though there's no proof, everybody knows it anyway, so something's got to be done at some point, I guess, although I don't know about the immediacy of the threat as we're supposed to believe in it at this point.
And then, of course, the never-ending tales about their bombs being responsible for all the violence in Iraq, that kind of thing.
But it seems like it would take something new to really get a war started, no?
I think it's important to keep in mind that this is not necessarily about actually starting a war right now.
As I described in the article, for purely political reasons, I believe that the Republican candidates at the end, and this is the Republicans except Ron Paul, of course, have several different incentives to try to make Iran a major issue in the elections, perhaps the main foreign policy issue.
One of it is because, you know, at the end of the day, the Republicans tend to be quite divided on a lot of different foreign policy issues.
They were divided about how to handle the Arab Spring.
They were divided on how to handle Libya.
Iran, however, tends to unite them.
Their strategy is just essentially to continuously and indefinitely escalate.
Furthermore, Iran is something that divides the Democrats.
You have a lot of elements in the Democratic Party who tend to be closer to the Israeli view of how to deal with Iran than the Obama administration view.
And, of course, Iran is something that the Republicans believe they can use to show Obama as weak.
His diplomacy, they will say, has failed.
His sanctions are insufficient.
So there's only one option left, and that's military action, but he's not strong enough to order it.
So it's not necessarily about pushing him to do it.
It's to use it to describe him and portray him as being so weak that he can't do it, and as a result use that to their advantage in the elections.
Yeah.
Well, and I'm sorry because I was skipping ahead to my own, you know, speculation about it, which is that his reaction to that is to prove he's a tough guy after all.
That's what a Democratic president has to do.
And, you know, the threat of war over there has remained this whole time.
I don't know why he wouldn't escalate into Iran at this point.
From Obama's perspective, I think one thing I'm a little bit concerned about is that instead of actually being able to have an intelligent conversation about how to handle Iran and the problems we have with Iran, we'll immediately run into this rather silly conversation in which the metric for success is who can be most extreme and who can be most hawkish on this issue.
And if he enters into that arena, then there's no way he's going to win because however hawkish he may present himself or however hawkish he may be, there's always going to be a Republican that can out-hawk him.
So it's a losing proposition, but it's nevertheless what I think seems to be taking place right now.
Well, and yeah, we've seen that exact dynamic in the case of Palestine this week.
And, of course, this really goes par for the course about, you know, as far as believing in any good intention on Obama's part on so many different occasions.
If he had only taken the right stand against the Republicans instead of bowing to their pressure, he could have whooped them.
I mean, he's got the bully pulpit of the presidency up there, and he could have beat them on so many of these issues from the Patriot Act to Guantanamo Bay to aggressive stance against Iran.
I mean, if we left it to the Senate and the House right now, we'd already be at war with them, I think, right?
I think there has been a tendency, and I obviously follow the Middle East and Iran closer than I follow other issues, but I think there has been a tendency to give up a little bit easily on these issues.
And, for instance, in the case of diplomacy with Iran, you know, the main problems that he faced was the problems that was caused by the internal infighting inside of Iran, in which the Iranians were not really ready to negotiate in October.
But six, seven months later, they were ready to sign a deal.
In fact, they signed a deal, but then Obama wasn't ready, because he had entered into the sanctions phase, and he didn't have the strength to go back to diplomacy and say, look, at the end of the day, resolving the issue will not come about by us imposing another set of sanctions.
It will come about by us actually getting an agreement with the Iranians to be able to curtail their nuclear program, add transparency, etc.
Well, you know, he took advantage of the whole trumped-up controversy about the comm facility in order to say, see, they're cheating, and when he only had a couple of months left on his own imposed deadline at the end of 2009 for them to agree to his deal.
And then, I guess we can talk about the difference between the version they wanted and his at the other end of this break.
But it doesn't sound to me like there was much daylight between them at all, actually.
It's Trita Parsi from the National Iranian-American Council.
We'll be right back.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton, and I'm talking with Trita Parsi.
He wrote this article at Salon.com, The Coming Republican Push on Iran.
And I hope what you say is right there, Trita, that, you know, this is a great talking point for them, but nobody's really serious about having a war.
But, you know, I wonder...
No, that's not what I'm saying.
I'm just saying that it's important to differentiate when they're pushing for this for political reasons and when they're pushing for it actually to get a war.
Right now, I think they're pushing...
They will be pushing for it primarily for political reasons.
And at some point, I fear they will push for it precisely because they want a war.
Yeah, the war party certainly never sleeps there in D.C.
It's just, you know, I guess a few websites and magazines and newspaper editorial boards that, you know, still to this day contain the echo chamber of neoconservative consensus on this issue.
And it's all about laying the groundwork now, I guess, to make it seem like anybody but the Israel lobby and the Air Force want this thing.
Yeah, they've had a relatively easy time, I would say, in the last year and a half.
There's only been bad news coming out of Iran.
It's been easy for them to push.
There hasn't been much of a resistance.
But I think it's still kind of interesting when you take a look at the poll numbers, in spite of the push that they've had, in spite of the lack of real pushback, systematic pushback, they've really been utterly unsuccessful in convincing the American people that this is the right way to go.
Now, there was a recent offer a couple of weeks ago where they said they would accept absolute inspection or something.
They weren't specific, I don't think, about whether they were talking about an additional protocol to their safeguards agreement with the IAEA exactly.
But they seem to be opening the door to new nuclear negotiations about, you know, as long as you let us keep our uranium enrichment, we will let you inspect to your heart's delight.
Do you take that seriously?
Well, I think at the end of the day, there are some efforts right now to send out feelers and see what can be done regarding diplomacy.
I'm not sure if the Iranians are completely serious at this point.
There may be various motivations behind what they're doing.
But I wouldn't be surprised if one of their motivations is that they know quite well that the United States, or at least the Obama administration right now, does not seem to be particularly interested in diplomacy because it's focused on the elections and he just wants to look as tough as possible on Iran.
So for the Iranians to come out with offers at this moment is almost certain to be rejected by the United States.
And the more Iran makes offers and the more the United States rejects them, the more Iran will be able to make headway when it comes to world opinion on the international stage about whether it is in the wrong or whether it is in the right.
Well, now I kind of unfairly oversimplified my characterization probably of the controversy over Qom, but basically I guess I'd like to get your opinion on what seemed to me like a fake controversy over a declared facility that Obama used as his excuse, basically, to refuse to accept Iran's acceptance of his deal at almost face value.
What do you say about that?
Well, actually, I don't think the facility in Qom was much of a factor as to why the United States didn't go along with the Tehran Declaration in May 2010.
In fact, in my forthcoming book, Scott, A Single Roll of the Dice, The Obama Administration's Diplomacy with Iran, which will be out in January of next year, I do describe in detail what happened prior to the talks in October 2009 and also why the United States unfortunately rejected a deal that had been signed in May 2010.
Qom was more of a nuisance than a key factor in any of these things, I would say.
Yeah, I guess I was only referring to the smokescreen.
It seemed like Obama didn't want to accept their more or less acceptance of his offer.
I mean, the way I understand the only real controversy was whether they were going to give up their 3% uranium or 4% if you round it up, to be generous to the war party, whether they were going to export that uranium to the Russians to be enriched and then sent to the French to be fuel rods and then sent back to them, or whether they would swap their 4% for the finished fuel rods with the French at the same time rather than giving up all their uranium and having to risk the French saying, well, we're just not going to give it back to you, basically.
So, in other words, they were ready to accept the deal with a pretty obvious and fair difference if you believe in the motives of the Democrats at the time, right?
No?
In fact, they were not just ready to accept the deal.
They accepted the deal.
They signed an agreement with the Turks and the Brazilians.
Now, some facts on the ground obviously had changed because now Iran had more 20% uranium.
It had started 20% enrichment.
They had a larger stockpile of low-enriched uranium.
But nevertheless, this was supposed to be a confidence-building measure.
It wasn't supposed to be the end deal.
It was just supposed to be something that opened the way for further negotiations.
The reason why the United States essentially did not accept this at the end of the day was because we had now embarked on the sanctions track.
We couldn't muster a return to diplomacy.
Obama was under pressure from Israel and from Congress to get sanctions.
Otherwise, they would impose unilateral sanctions.
And I think the administration chose between sanctions and an actual solution.
They chose sanctions.
And I think it's partly due to their weakness politically.
Well, I guess, not to get too lost in the details here, but I guess as far as I can tell, the only point of confusion is I was talking about Obama's refusal to accept their offer, I'm thinking the fall of 2009.
And then when the Turks and the Brazilians came up with their separate offer, that wasn't until 2010, right?
Yeah, but in 2009, the Iranians really didn't have much in offer.
There were some counter-offers in the negotiations.
The Iranians wanted to do the fuel swap, but in batches, and they wanted to have greater guarantees that they would be able to have guarantee that they would get their end of the bargain.
And that wasn't why I brought up Qom, because it was at that point that they said, oh, but look at Qom as the example of, you just can't trust these people or deal with them.
And the time's running out on the deadline of 2009 before new sanctions kick in, at the end of 2009.
Yeah, but I think, to be frank with you, I think the real problem at that point was inside of Iran.
I think there were some problems on this end, that we had this artificial deadline that the administration had accepted that put pressure, we put pressure on ourselves to end the negotiations sooner than we had to.
There was also a genuine concern about whether the Iranians were in a position to be able to make up their mind, because they were under such tremendous internal political division, so it wasn't clear whether they ever would be able to, under those circumstances, put their signature on anything.
Yeah, they certainly did have all their own problems.
And what exactly do you think now, because I think there's been some revisionist history of that time about which side, the Ayatollah or the president over there, were pushing harder for the deal.
That was something that you had written about in the last time.
Well, I think it's actually become quite clear by now, and I think this is actually a view held within the U.S. government as well, that Ahmadinejad did lead the faction that favored the deal more than others.
Eventually, however, Khamenei decided to go against the deal because of a lot of protests within Iran.
And, you know, much of these protests, I think, were perhaps motivated by a perception of injustices within the deal.
They were not fully comfortable with some of the details.
But I think most of it was simply political.
Opponents of Ahmadinejad didn't want him to get a victory, and I think, mindful of what Ahmadinejad had done just a couple of months earlier, I don't think that's very surprising.
Well, now, there's very little opposition, certainly not organized opposition on this issue.
I mean, we have the Race for Iran blog, and we have your National Iranian-American Council there.
But Gordon Prather's retired, and not too many people.
Seymour Hersh is still churning out articles on the issue.
That's good.
But it seems like there's not much of a voice.
You mentioned Ron Paul as an aside there talking about the Republicans.
There's not too many other people who are willing to say, actually, you know, your case against Iran is a little bit thin.
Let's talk about their nuclear program with some detail here.
It's inspected, and it's electricity-grade, not weapons-grade uranium, etc., like that.
Otherwise, pretty much the War Party has their run.
You can tune in Fox News on a daily basis and hear them talk about the Boucher Light Water Reactor as a nuclear weapons threat to the homeland, and the narrative just simply continues.
There is no up-next Trita Parsi to explain why that ain't exactly right, you know?
Well, I think that's going to change in the next couple of months.
I think the elements who really view this as a very dangerous development are starting to organize much better than they have been in the last couple of months.
Oh, that's good news.
Tell us more about that.
Or can you?
I think you'll get to see it soon.
Let me put it that way.
Well, good.
Because, you know, I don't have any special love for this government over there or anything like that.
It's just another land with some people on it, just like everywhere else to me.
But it seems like the lies against them have been so consistent for so long, and they're so easy to disprove, mostly, that, you know, it's a fun issue.
It's an important issue and a good one to tackle, I think.
So, thanks for, you know, chipping in.
Thank you.
Thank you, Scott.
All right, everybody, it's Trita Parsi from the National Iranian American Council.niacouncil.org
