All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
Thanks for your patience, as promised.
Here's MJ Rosenberg from Media Matters for America.
You can also find him oftentimes at aljazeera.net.
Welcome back.
Hey Scott, how you doing?
I'm doing great.
Appreciate you joining us today.
Sure, thanks for asking me.
Well, all right.
So what a great headline.
American Enterprise Institute admits the problem with Iran is not that it would use nukes.
So there's a lot of things to unpack in there, whether Iran is trying to make nukes or not, of course, but also the importance of the American Enterprise Institute.
For people not too familiar, how would you give them a thumbnail sketch for us, MJ?
I would say they are the biggest and the oldest and most established conservative think tank in Washington.
I think they were established way back in the Reagan years.
And it's, you know, hundreds of people work there and they put out nonstop, you know, nonstop right-wing or conservative propaganda.
They tend to be real warmongers.
They're not just economic conservatives.
They're the neoconservatives.
They're conservatives and neoconservatives.
And they're not a small or an insignificant or even, I wouldn't even call them like an extremist group.
They're mainstream right-wingers.
They're the leaders of the conservative movement.
They are.
They're not these, you know, we like sometimes we write about, you know, and talk about these really crazy ones out there.
They're not the crazy ones.
They are, they're even more establishment than the Heritage Foundation, which is pretty established.
So those two are the, you know, they're the two big think tanks.
And I would, you know, I hate to, you know, give them any kind of credit for anything, but I would say they're both respected and respectable.
So they matter.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
And then I guess it was Danielle Pletka who got rid of Michael Ledeen and a few other of the more wingnutty types a couple of few years back, right?
Right, right.
Now she's been, you know, there are a lot of reasons, but these guys were really involved with the, you know, crazy, you know, MEK terrorist types and all that.
She is more of a mainstream neocon.
Very Israel-focused, however.
And until now, their big, you know, their big casus belli for, you know, for going to warfare with Iran or attacking Iran, whatever, has been the threat that Iranian nukes pose to Israel.
And all of a sudden, that changed last week.
Right.
Now I have a soundbite here from ThinkProgress.
Oh, good, good.
So let's play this for the audience.
This is Danielle Pletka.
And is she, what is her position at AEI exactly?
Is she the big boss?
I mean, she's Michael Ledeen.
She's something.
Yeah, she's the foreign policy.
She's the big foreign policy person.
Okay.
Yeah.
I think I have that right, because I'm thinking of a Jim Loeb article I read about that.
Yeah, I think she's the main person.
She's also the face of foreign policy AEI.
She's on all the, you know, put her on all the TV and radio shows.
She's it.
She asked some of the questions at the Republican debate a couple of weeks ago.
Yes, exactly.
Yeah.
Okay, so here's that soundbite, everybody.
Danielle Pletka on an Iranian nuclear weapon, which they're not making anyway.
The biggest problem for the United States is not Iran getting a nuclear weapon and testing it.
It's Iran getting a nuclear weapon and not using it.
Because the second that they have one and they don't do anything bad, all of the naysayers are going to come back and say, see, we told you Iran is a responsible power.
We told you Iran wasn't getting nuclear weapons in order to use them immediately.
We told you Iran wasn't seeking regional influence or regional hegemony through its acquisition of nuclear weapons.
And they will eventually define Iran with nuclear weapons as not a problem.
So, in other words, if they made a nuke and didn't use it, it would prove that she and her friends have been lying to us this whole time about how certain they are that they would use a nuke the instant they had it.
Yes, she's sort of like, you know, way in advance, because one, we don't even know if they are developing nuclear weapons.
But way in advance of the time that Iran has a nuclear weapon, they're telling us that Iran probably wouldn't use it.
But that doesn't mean we're not telling you all our warnings are untrue.
We're telling you that they're just as dangerous even if they don't use it.
It's like, wait a minute.
And then if they don't use it, if they have it and don't use it, doesn't that put them in the same category as everyone else who has it, like Israel, which has 200 nuclear weapons and doesn't use them?
I mean, so in advance, she's like saying she's warning us that when they get those nukes, they probably won't use them.
But don't think that that means that they're not bad.
It's really hard to almost follow this.
Yeah, well, you know, Thomas Donnelly elaborates.
It's my friend Sheldon Richman at Free Association has the quote here from Thomas Donnelly saying we're fixated on the Iranian nuclear program, while the Tehran regime has its eyes on the real prize, the balance of power in the Persian Gulf and the greater Middle East.
And in other words, if Iran has nukes, then Israel won't be able to just, you know, be able to do whatever they want without ever fearing that anyone would fight back against them.
In fact, Jeffrey Goldberg, as I'm sure you remember, I think you quoted this on the show a few weeks ago.
Jeffrey Goldberg quoted Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak saying the very worst thing that would happen if Iran got a nuclear weapon is that Hezbollah might be emboldened on the northern border there in Lebanon, Netanyahu said, and Barak said, there could be a brain drain where young Israelis who travel to America for graduate school might stay instead of coming back.
This is the existential threat they want us to have a war over.
I know.
And so now we see they're coming up with one rationale after another.
I mean, that business is about, so if Iran has a bomb, that would cause young Israelis to leave the country.
I mean, it's just like, we're supposed to go to war over that?
I mean, young Israelis have been leaving the country for a long time and not because Iran has a nuclear weapon.
But the thing that Donnelly says, where he talks about, it's about, you know, we're fixated on a nuclear program while Tehran is focused on the balance of power.
That's also what Israel is focused on.
Exactly the way you put it.
Israel will tie their hands.
They will not have the ability to do whatever they want, whenever they want to.
The fact, nor will the United States for that matter.
And those things that we're talking about them not being able to do are things like the Israelis having guys on motorcycles driving up alongside a car in Tehran and blowing away a scientist who may or may not be involved with Iran's nuclear program.
Or these explosions like the explosion in Isfahan and the other one near Natanz a couple of weeks ago.
These just, all of a sudden, these places just blow up in Iran.
They, basically, Israel and the United States can do whatever they want, when they want to, with Iran and inside of Iranian territory.
I mean, we do it all the time.
And we want to be able to.
That means, and that's what preserving the balance of power is all about.
Our freedom to do what we want in Iran.
And even the way we react to their shooting down the drone plane, we act indecent.
Like, how dare they be going around shooting down things if, in fact, they did.
Shooting down things that we have flying over their territory.
Well, and even, you know, the military's version is, well, we did lose control of one, so it might accidentally have flown over Iranian territory, which I suppose could be true.
But even then, exactly like you say, what are they supposed to do?
I mean, it's just so ridiculous.
And they also admit that if, yeah, it's possible that it wasn't, you know, they say it wasn't over Iranian territory, but these things have eyes that see 200 miles, so they could see Iranian territory anyway.
But what would we do if somebody was flying?
All these things that we do, what would we do to another country like Iran?
How would we react if they, it's like the golden rule.
How would we react if they did it to us?
How much, how long would we tolerate, you know, people flying drones over our country and taking pictures?
Well, the thing is, too, and I guess I do understand if the explanation is just stupidity or something, but from the point of view of Netanyahu and Barack, how in the world do they figure that post-Iran war, that's what's going to make the atmosphere in Israel more secure, where young people are going to want to stay and not run away from there?
I know, I don't understand it.
Because the fact of the matter is, I quoted in the same piece, I quoted something from the former USA Today reporter, Barbara Slaven, who's a big Iran expert.
Real quick here.
Yeah.
And she talked about that Hezbollah would launch, you know, hundreds of missiles at Israel in the wake of an attack.
How does that make people secure?
No, come on.
They just sit there and take it.
That's right.
All right.
Hold it right there.
It's MJ Rosenberg from Media Matters.
We'll be right back after this, y'all.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with the great MJ Rosenberg from Media Matters.
And you know what?
Before we get to the likely and easily predicted consequences of any war against Iran, which I think is a very important part of this discussion, let's go to what's going on right now, which is about halfway to war or more.
The new sanctions passed by the U.S. Senate.
I guess so far, Obama said he doesn't like them and doesn't want to implement them.
But can you explain to us, best you understand, MJ, what these sanctions do and maybe what's different about them than the previous 15,000 rounds of sanctions the Americans have put on Iran since 1979?
Well, this latest version that came out of the Senate targets the, in addition to a whole bunch of other things, the usual things, targets the Iranian Central Bank, which, to put it simply, means that no country would be able to conduct any kind of business transactions with Iran because everything goes through this bank.
By saying to all Iran's trading partners, you cannot, you know, if you deal, if you do transactions with Iran through the Central Bank, we're sanctioning you, which is what they call secondary boycott.
We would make it impossible for Iran to sell its oil or anything else on the world market.
We basically would be shutting down its economy.
We have been really loathe to do that.
I mean, most people, most even the Iran hawks didn't want us to get involved with, you know, with targeting the sanctioned bank, the Central Bank, because that means targeting the entire Iranian economy.
But that's what this one does.
And it's insane in so many ways because, you know, it doesn't, it probably doesn't mean that the Iranian economy would actually shut down.
It just means that the legitimate Iranian economy would shut down and the black market that's run by the Revolutionary Guard and all the more extreme and gangster elements in Iran would still be able to conduct business.
It's an act of war against the Iranian economy, which means against the Iranian people.
If a country can't sell its products or buy or do anything, we're basically at war with them.
It's sort of like it's a blockade.
But it's a it's a it's a blockade.
It's basically a computer blockade.
But it's enforced by guys with briefcases and pinstripes.
Yeah.
Rather than having ships that would, you know, we do that too, I suppose.
But yeah, these are the crippling sanctions that the war parties talked about all this time.
Yeah.
But they have been.
But even for the war party, you know, only the extreme elements in it have spoken about this.
Now, has the past has the House passed legislation already?
The Senate passed this new version unanimously the other day.
But that but the House has yet to take it up.
The House has yet to take it up.
But there's no question it's going to pass.
And it's going to end.
Obama's issue, you know, has, you know, issued a veto threat.
But on anything relating to Iran, his veto would be overwritten.
Well, now, here's the thing.
I mean, I don't know if that's right.
I don't know about, you know, all transactions, you know, foreign transactions have to take place through this bank.
But certainly, no doubt about the large scale transfers, you know, government to government transfers of wealth or, you know, it's the government of Iran, obviously, that owns the oil there.
So even if they're selling to, you know, private multinational corporations or whatever, all those kinds of transactions.
Well, we already have a target.
That's all.
Is it all of them?
Well, even things like we're ready.
It's already impossible for an Iranian American who lives here to send money back home to his mother, for instance.
Yeah.
But can he buy cashews?
Can he import cashews from Iran without paying through the central bank?
That I don't know.
I don't know.
But certainly there's no doubt that all oil transactions, that's what this really is.
Right.
Isn't it right to shut down their oil industry?
Exactly.
And it's funny, too, because you can hear people in the war party saying, oh, yeah, but we don't even buy oil from Iran, so it's not going to be a big deal.
But it's a global market in oil.
That's going to be a terrible shock, right?
Oh, my God, yeah.
And the experts are already saying that, are they not?
And they are saying it.
And the crazy thing with, like, gasoline prices here, I don't know if you've noticed, they've dropped a lot in the last couple of days.
You know, I mean, here in Washington, they dropped around 13 cents a gallon.
Nobody understands why these gas prices go up and down.
It's a world market.
It's also manipulated.
But boy, oh, boy, if we try to shut down the Iranian market, it would impact here, not only because it actually would, but also because it's an opportunity for the oil companies to jack up prices and say, look what's happening in Iran.
Obviously, oil is scarcer.
Well, yeah, I mean, everybody making the bets on the market will be betting that instability is going to mean higher prices.
And with such a fragile world economy, you really want to take the chance?
Maybe we don't know what effect it would have, but you don't want to take the chance?
Well, now, this gets us to the consequences of an actual war, which apparently you have even a couple, two or three former heads of Mossad saying that the consequences of a war against Iran would be disastrous.
And as you mentioned, it's in your article here at Media Matters.
You quote Barbara Slavin, the great journalist and expert on Iran issues, with a short list of the most obvious early consequences of a war with Iran.
Yeah, I mean, the fact she, you know, Barbara Slavin says that before Israel attacks Iran, they would first have to attack Lebanon to neutralize Hezbollah because Hezbollah has around 40,000 missiles, which would be, in theory, launched in solidarity with its patron in Iran.
I mean, the fact of the matter is Hezbollah has enough missiles and its range now is the entire country.
So they're going to sit there and let their, I don't know what you want to call it, its patron, be attacked that way.
Of course, they're going to let the missiles fly.
And ultimately, they won't fly either.
I mean, how can anyone who cares about the existence of the people of the state of Israel favor a policy like this?
Oh, Barak, Barak, the defense minister, said, yeah, he admits that Hezbollah has missiles and they let them fly.
But he said only 500 people would be killed.
That's really nice of him to say that.
And it's based on absolutely nothing.
Why would it just be 500?
And are there really 500 Israeli civilians who are prepared to die on this adventure that has no upside?
I mean, at the same, you know, even the biggest hawks are saying that the most Israeli attack, a totally successful Israeli attack, can delay the nuclear production of a nuclear bomb by a couple of years.
And that's a statement that they're making, one which nobody has any evidence of.
But everybody does think, Barbara Slaver makes the point, if they have no intention of developing a nuclear weapon, they sure as hell will have that intention once they're bombed.
Right.
I mean, it's like, I mean, at that point, they'll probably, you know, drop out of the whole, you know, NPT regime.
Well, and there's the lesson from Iraq and the Osirak attack in 1981 right there, where they were members of the NPT.
They had inspectors there.
And then after Israel bombed their reactor, then the nuclear program went underground.
And he was still a long way off from a nuclear bomb, but he was trying to enrich weapons grade uranium for a nuclear bomb.
And they accidentally blew the damn thing up during the first Gulf War and then found it when they were scoping the remains.
It's incredible.
I guess that's why you were playing that song about learning from history.
Of course, we don't learn from history.
This would be an exact repeat, except infinitely worse.
I mean, we're dealing with a much more powerful country.
But, you know, the other thing I really worry about, I don't really think that the Israelis are going to attack, and I don't think the United States is going to attack either.
I see what's likely to happen is, and this could be quite intentional on the part of the United States and or the Israelis, is that the situation gets out of hand.
That, in other words, we keep pushing Iran and pushing Iran and pushing Iran, and they somehow respond.
I mean, how many times are they going to have these mysterious explosions in their country before they don't respond in some way?
And as soon as they respond, we have the pretense and the American people will then go along and say, well, we were attacked.
Right.
You know, this looks, assuming these sanctions were to be passed and signed and implemented, this is how Franklin Roosevelt got us into a war with the Japanese.
Exactly.
The Secretary of War wrote in his diary, but they must be maneuvered into firing the first shot.
So we put a complete stranglehold on all their imports of fuel, and then they'll have no choice but to do a Hail Mary, a last gasp attempt to start the war by sinking as much of our navy as they can so they can get those islands, so they can get their oil, so they can keep up their war in China and the rest, you know?
Yeah, exactly.
It's just like, I mean, we're counting on, you know, we call them maniacs and we call them religious fanatics and maniacs, but we're basically, we're counting on their patience.
We keep it, you know, we keep doing one, you know, attack after another, but we assume they're going to do nothing in return.
Right.
Yeah, and just like, you know, every comment section about any Iran issue says, they say they're going to kill us all, they say they're going to kill us all, but our guys threaten them every day in real life, you know?
Exactly.
All right.
M.J. Rosenberg, everybody, politicalcorrection.org, Media Matters there.
Thanks very much for your time.
Okay, thanks, Scott.
