All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton, and I'm on the line now with Mohamed Sahimi.
He teaches chemical engineering at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, and he writes for PBS Frontline's Tehran Bureau as well as Antiwar.com, original.antiwar.com/Mohamed-Sahimi.
And his latest piece, it's right there on the highlights section at the very top of the page today, is Deconstructing Lieberman's Iran Resolution.
Welcome back, Mohamed.
How are you doing?
Good morning, and it's good to be back in your program, Scott.
Well, I'm very happy to have you here, and I always appreciate your work on Iran nuclear issues, and this is a good one.
We talked just the other day, actually, with Robert Naiman about this resolution that Joe Lieberman is pushing, and the question was, what's AIPAC going to say about it, since it really pretty much calls for war rather than just more sanctions and says that even just the capability to produce nuclear weapons is a red line.
That's not the exact words, but it is something about America's most dire interests or whatever.
In other words, we have to have a war if they even have the capability to produce a nuclear weapon, and now you've gone through and deconstructed all of the false premises, at least you're calling them false, all the premises of Senator Lieberman's resolution.
And whereas this, and whereas that, he cites before concluding that this is the policy we need to follow.
So I wonder if you could just take us through this Senate Resolution number 380 by Joe Lieberman, and I'll try to interrupt and ask follow-up questions if necessary, but otherwise just see if we can take us through and see what we can learn here.
I mean, the resolution starts with a totally false premise, and that is that Iran, since the late 1980s, has been trying to develop nuclear weapon capability.
This is absolutely not true.
What we do know about Iran's nuclear program is that Iran has been trying to set up the complete fuel cycle for producing fuel for its nuclear reactor that is operating in Bushehr and other reactors that it's going to build, and one of them is under construction.
That's what we know, and according to every report that the International Atomic Energy Agency has issued on Iran, it has certified that all the nuclear facilities that have been declared by Iran to the agencies are in full compliance with the safeguard obligations that Iran has under its safeguard agreement with the IAEA, and all the nuclear materials that Iran has produced are under safeguard of the agency, and we are dealing with an agency that actually weighs every gram of material that goes into those facilities and every gram of enriched uranium that is produced in those facilities.
So there is no evidence that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon capability the way the resolution describes.
As I said in my article, it is obvious that any country that has a complete fuel cycle for a nuclear reactor can potentially use it as part of a larger weapon program, but there is no evidence that Iran does have any weapon program.
In fact, the IAEA itself doesn't make a claim.
It says that if there was a nuclear weapon program, it stopped in 2003.
The National Intelligence Estimate of November 2007 and February of 2011 said the same thing, and the only thing that the IAEA says is that Iran may have restarted some research work after 2003 that may have application to nuclear weapons and has asked Iran to clarify it.
Let me mention here that Seymour Hersh had reported in the past that Israeli intelligence, not necessarily the very highest levels, but the mid-level guys, that they agreed with that same assessment as the CIA, and of course we've had the former heads of Mossad coming out and complaining about Netanyahu's Iran policy or the threat of war, but just in the last few weeks we've actually had the leaders of Mossad putting stories in Haaretz, the Tel Aviv liberal daily, that in almost the exact words of the American intelligence agencies, the Iranians have not made the decision to begin to make nuclear weapons.
So that's the official position of the intelligence agencies of Israel, that we're still only talking about a civilian nuclear program that could one day be turned into a nuclear weapons program, if of course they kick the inspectors out and withdrew from the treaty and the entire non-proliferation regime that they've been cooperating with this whole time.
Let me add to your precise statement two more points.
One is that Seymour Hersh also reported in his article of last June that the US and Israel have apparently sent some special forces into Iran secretly, where they installed some sensors, measurements, instruments, at sites that were suspected of being involved in nuclear programs, but they hadn't been declared as such by Iran to the agency.
And they found nothing.
In other words, all those sites that apparently they were suspicious about, they tried to check it and found nothing.
In addition, the Los Angeles Times just reported today, I think, or last night on its website, that according to highly classified information that it has obtained, US officials believe that Iran hasn't tried to make a nuclear weapon in the past and is not trying to make a nuclear weapon.
And in fact, as you said, there has been no decision regarding making a nuclear weapon.
And just two days ago, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has emphasized again, as he has in the past, that making a nuclear weapon is against Islamic teaching, and he rejects it.
This is, of course, again, I mean, we have to separate this from whatever Khamenei has, whatever policy Khamenei has regarding Iran's domestic affairs.
We are only talking about Iran vis-à-vis the United States and Israel.
So there are all these evidence.
At the same time, the Resolution 380 makes, you know, statements that are half-truths and so incomplete that if anybody who doesn't know what's going on would interpret it completely the wrong way.
For example, it says that Iran has produced this much low and rich uranium and that much 20% uranium.
Yes, Iran has produced those.
And in fact, the latest IAEA report on Iran that was just issued, and I was just looking at it on the internet a few minutes ago, it states that all the nuclear materials that Iran has are under safeguards of the agencies.
In other words, Iran cannot do anything with those other than under the supervision of IAEA making fuels for a nuclear reactor.
And as you pointed out, if Iran were going to use it for making nuclear weapons to enrich it to 90% or higher, it would have to first kick IAEA inspector out of the country, leave the NPT, and then start a crash program to convert these low and rich uranium to 90% or higher.
And then assuming that Iran actually has succeeded in a design of a nuclear warhead and the delivery system that Iran would need if it were ever going to use this nuclear warhead against any nation, which I absolutely reject.
So when you read this resolution, it's just one false statement or another or one half-truth or one exaggeration.
It also makes insinuations that are just totally uncalled for.
For example, it says, we know that Iran started the Fordow enrichment facility near Qom in September of 2009.
Yes, we do know that, but Iran also duly informed the agencies on September 26, 2009, just when it was supposed to, according to its safeguard agreement, that it has been building Fordow facility and invited the IAEA to go in there.
And in fact, the latest IAEA report that was just put on the internet this morning again said that.
But the resolution makes it as if Iran has been doing it in secret, which is totally untrue.
Right.
Well, and that's a lie that's really prevailed ever since September, October 2009.
That's a good place to pick this interview back up, I think, on the other side of this break.
Stay tuned, everybody.
It's Mohamed Sahimi from Frontline PBS Tehran Bureau on Antiwar.com.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Antiwar Radio.
And, well, I was just explaining it to Zoe during the break here, and I realized it took the whole break.
I hope Mohamed Sahimi can do a much shorter version than I just did because there's more to get to here.
But I think you need to retell us the story, Mohamed Sahimi, if you could, please, about the big fake outing of Iran's secret nuclear work at Fordow near Qom back in the fall of 2009.
Well, if you read the mainstream media, for example, the New York Times, David Sanger and William Broad consistently say that after the Fordow facility was discovered by U.S. and Western intelligence agencies, which is totally nonsense, because Iran actually sent a letter to the IAEA several days, or I think even several weeks, before the press conference that President Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy and then-British Prime Minister Gordon Brown had in Peacebook in which they announced that they, quote-unquote, had discovered the Fordow facility.
But Iran had already reported to IAEA that it has the Fordow facility under construction and invited the IAEA inspectors to go in and to look at it.
And, in fact, in the latest IAEA report that was published this morning, the IAEA says precisely the same thing.
It doesn't say after the Fordow was discovered by Western intelligence agencies.
You have to remember, this is an IAEA that has been politicized completely by its Director General Yukio Amano that makes totally political statements without any basis.
But even these people...
Well, they scotched their negotiations with this.
Obama came into office saying, we're going to deal with these people and whatever, and that's how he broke their near acceptance of his offer.
And he had told the Israel lobby, I'll stop negotiating with them.
They have until December 31, 2009, and after that it's sanctions and violence.
And so here was his chance to work out a deal about a nuclear fuel swap to keep the Iranians from enriching up to 20%.
And then he just lied.
Obama lied and pretended that he was outing them for some secret nuclear program when they had declared it themselves four days before.
And then they came up with this atrocious lie, speaking of David Sanger in the New York Times and Broad with him, that, well, they only declared it four days before our press conference because they knew that we were about to out them for it.
But how did they know?
What, they had a spy on Obama's speech writing staff or something?
It was the most ridiculous lie.
And they got away with that.
That, oh yeah, those dastardly Iranians and their secret nuclear intransigence, you know how they are.
And that was how any possibility of a deal with the Iranians broke down in the fall of 2009, based on this ridiculous lie.
Yes, and Iran always said that if the IAEA and the Western countries are willing to supply fuel for Tehran Recess Reactor, which is, by the way, is a very low-power reactor, is operating right now at only 5 megabytes, and produces medical isotopes for 850,000 Iranian patients that use that isotope every year, and in addition it also produces isotopes for agricultural applications.
Iran always said that if you supply the fuel for the Tehran Reactor, we will not enrich our uranium to 20 percent.
We will stay at 3.5 percent.
And there was some sort of preliminary agreement, but Iran put some very reasonable conditions, such as having the swap taken place on Iranian soil, because they were worried that Iran would send its low-enriched uranium outside and would not get anything in return.
This would not be the first time that the West has, you know, tried to promise something to Iran and not deliver it.
Remember, Iran suspended its nuclear program completely from October of 2003 to January of 2006, according to the Saadabad Agreement of October 2003 and Paris Agreement of November 2004.
According to which, in return for complete suspension of Iran's nuclear program, the European Union was supposed to make major economic and political concessions to Iran.
But when they came back in August of 2005, they didn't promise, they didn't deliver anything, they didn't promise anything.
The only thing that they said is that, we promise that we will not attack you with nuclear weapons.
That's all they promised.
So Iran made a major concession, and in addition, the IAEA and the US and all these guys emphasized that Iran must implement its additional protocol obligations.
First of all, Iran did do that from October 2003 to January 2006.
Again, on a volunteer basis, it was a volunteer basis, as acknowledged by European countries, and it was a volunteer basis because the Iranian parliament had not ratified a foreign agreement that Iran had signed, and yet Iran implemented additional protocol completely.
And in fact, it was because of implementation of additional protocol by Iran that enabled the IAEA to conclude that Iran's nuclear program has remained completely peaceful.
And as Mohammed Al-Baradei, the former director general of the IAEA, put it, the Iran nuclear program underwent the most intrusive and extensive inspection of any nuclear program of any nation in the history of IAEA.
So we hear all these lies and exaggerations and half-truths, half-fake half-truths and so on, and this Resolution 380 that has been proposed by Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, and remember, Lindsey Graham is a senator that has said publicly that, I want to destroy Iran.
I mean, there is a video clip that people can go and listen to it.
He has talked about destroying Iran several times.
He has said that we should bomb it to destroy its infrastructure completely.
And when you read this resolution, I mean, if you know anything about the fact about Iran's nuclear program and what has transpired between Iran and Assad, your blood pressure really will go up.
And when I read it the first time, it really made me angry, because as I indicated in the article that was posted by Antiwar.com this morning, there is not a single paragraph in this resolution that this resolution makes a declaration about that is completely factual and without any ifs, buts, or however, or whatever.
Every whereas paragraph that they have put in is either false completely or is exaggeration, or it just says half of what has happened.
For example, as I pointed out before the break, it says that Iran has produced this much low-energy uranium.
Yes, it has.
But that low-energy uranium is under safeguard.
Iran cannot do anything with it unless, as you said and as I said, they expel IAEA from Iran, they leave NPT, and they do all sorts of things.
But even in that case, under the best scenario case, Iran would need at least a year to 18 months to produce any nuclear weapon, which means that the world will have a year to 18 months to negotiate with Iran, to backtrack and not do this.
And this is why every U.S. official over the past several weeks, from James Clapper to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, they all have said that Iran is not making nuclear weapons, and Iran has not made any decision to make nuclear weapons.
And yet this resolution is just full of lies, exaggerations, half-truths, and then it also sheds crocodile tears for Iranian people, saying, oh, yeah, their human rights have been violated, and they have been repressed and oppressed.
I agree, the human rights of Iranian people have been violated by the Iranian regime, but how will tough sanctions that are hurting every ordinary Iranian on a daily basis, and how the threat of war and how actual military attacks will help these repressed and oppressed people of Iran?
It's nonsense.
I mean, what they want is just war against Iran.
They don't give a hoot to whatever happens to Iranian people, to their children, to the infrastructure of their countries.
All they want is war.
And Lieberman, in particular, does it only because of Israel.
I mean, he has been the most consistent, the staunchest supporter of Israel.
He has always supported and defended every action taken by Israel.
And he's using his last few months in the Senate just to try to provoke a war with Iran, or at the minimum imposing tough sanctions that are similar to sanctions that were imposed on Iraq during the 1990s, that according to the United Nations UNICEF killed at least 500,000 Iraqi children.
It would impose the same type of sanctions on Iranian people.
And yet at the same time, this Lindsey Graham guy that says, I want to destroy Iraq, sheds crocodile tears for Iranian people's human rights and their violation of citizens' and political rights.
Iranian people don't need these crocodile tears.
If these senators are really interested in helping Iranian people, then they should remove the threat of war, because if the threat of war with Iran is removed, then there is a good, a strong democratic movement within Iran, which will use the opportunity to push the regime back and make the country more democratic, which will be good for peace and stability of the Middle East in the long run.
Well, Pepe Escobar is saying here in his latest piece that they offered to reinstate the additional protocol just last October.
If you will just lift the sanctions and promise not to bomb us, we'll go ahead and give you the unlimited inspections you've been demanding of all things nuclear and not and everything else.
But yes, isn't good enough for Barack Obama.
It never has been, Mohammed, I guess.
I mean, this is not a new proposal.
Iran made a proposal back in May of 2003, where it proposed that it would put its nuclear program under a strict supervision of IAEA.
It would disarm its ally, Hezbollah, in Lebanon and convert it into a purely political organization.
And it offered peace to Israel in return for, you know, Iran's right under NPT and its safeguard agreement to have uranium enrichment facilities on Iran so that it can produce nuclear fuel for its medical and as well as industrial nuclear reactor.
But the George W. Bush administration rejected it because this was May 2003.
It was just Bush had announced that mission accomplished.
He had thought that because U.S. forces had taken Baghdad, so it was easy to overthrow the Iranian regime in Tehran also.
So they rejected it.
And in fact, the reports indicate that they said that, no, we don't negotiate with an evil regime.
So they rejected a comprehensive program.
Since then, the Iranian government has made repeated offers that if sanctions are stopped and if Iran's nuclear dose is returned to Vienna, Austria in Europe, the headquarters of International Atomic Energy Agency, then Iran in return will put its nuclear program under a strict supervision of IAEA.
It will implement additional protocol and it will agree to all other legal obligations that Iran has.
But sanctions must stop and threat of war must stop.
But these proposals have been consistently rejected, simply because despite what President Obama or President Bush and all these U.S. officials say, that we recognize Iran's right to peaceful nuclear energy or technology, they don't want anything.
They want to deny Iran its right under NPT and its safeguard agreements.
And the only thing they want is the disarming of the Iranian nation, disarming in terms of the technology.
And the way Ronald Reagan put it, when he was talking about Nicaraguan rebel and Nicaraguan government, all they want for Iranian nation and Iranian people is to cry until and just throw their hands up and say, well, come in and do whatever you want.
But that's not going to happen.
So if that's the plan, that's not going to happen.
Now, this resolution is even going against what apparently the official policy of the Obama administration is.
Leon Panetta a few weeks ago said that the red line for the United States is for Iran not to produce any nuclear weapon.
And Iran hasn't produced it and hasn't made a decision to do it.
But the Resolution 380 goes even further.
It says that Iran should not have the capability to produce it.
Well, I have news for the resolution.
Iran already has a fuel cycle.
Yes, it can be used at some point in the future for making nuclear weapons.
But in order for that to happen, a lot of other things must happen beforehand, and there is no evidence that they are going to happen at all.
So if we are going to go according to the resolution, we should already start a war with Iran.
I mean, this is the fact.
So this resolution is basically closing door on diplomacy and wants Iran to be attacked.
That's the bottom truth of this resolution, Scott.
Well, that's always been the way that the moderates in Iran are the enemy.
They've got to be marginalized so that the very worst people can be pointed at so that we can have the war.
I don't know whether it was an accident or not.
It really may have been an accident, but it clearly was a case of cause and effect in July of 2005 when George W. Bush declared to the people of Iran, you better not vote for the right-winger.
And so they all did.
And that was how Ahmadinejad became the president in the first place.
Actually, it wasn't an accident.
Right before the Iranian presidential election of June 2005, George Bush told the Iranian people not to vote at all, because he said that the Iranian president has no legitimacy, it has no power, and so on.
And given that Iranian people are, you know, very nationalist, given Iran's long history and the existence for thousands of years, Iranian people actually went to polling stations and voted in large numbers.
So that goes to show how nationalist Iranian people are and how they despise interference of the United States or any other power in their internal affairs.
As I have said, we have to separate these from whatever the Iranian regime policy has regarding its people.
Yes, I mean, I am in the opposition myself, and I want to have a democratic regime in Iran.
But a democratic regime in Iran will not develop unless the threat of external war imposed by Israel and the United States is removed.
Because just like in this country, when in September of 2001 we have the terrorist attacks and the George W. Bush administration used the attack to make it unpatriotic for anybody to oppose, for example, invasion of Iraq, the same thing happens in Iran.
When the United States invaded Iraq, that helped the hardliners in Tehran, because they used this as an excuse to impose much harsher repression and oppression on Iranian people.
So long as there is a threat of external war against Iranian people, and so long as there are all these tough sanctions that the hardliners in Tehran can use as an excuse to justify their own corruption and their own incompetence, we are not going to have a democratic regime in Iran.
And a democratic regime in Iran will be a blessing to the Middle East, because it will be a model for the rest of those countries in that region, most of which right now are dictatorial governments supported by the United States, from Saudi Arabia to United Arab Emirates to Qatar to Kuwait and all of those.
So if we are going to...
Those people who advocate in foreign affairs, for example, as you know, and other people, have advocated a regime change in Iran as a solution for Iranian nuclear programs.
They are under the illusion that if there is a regime change in Iran, the new regime will stop Iran's nuclear program.
It will not, unless the United States is willing to go to Tehran and occupy Tehran and occupy a large country, 1.7 million square kilometers with 80 million people.
No regime in Iran will stop Iran's nuclear program, because on this issue my understanding is, based on whatever I know, that on this issue the Iranian people are actually very unified.
They may have questions about its cost.
They may have questions about the approach to the West in negotiation and so on.
But regarding the essential and fundamental rights of the Iranian people and the NPT agreement that Iran must have these facilities in Iran, the nation is unified.
So those people who have illusions about regime change in Iran as a solution for Iran's nuclear program, they just don't know what they're talking about.
Because, as I said, unless the U.S. and its allies are willing to occupy Iran for decades, that's not going to happen.
So we better find a diplomatic solution for it.
All right.
Thanks very much for your time, Mohamed.
We're way over time.
I've got to cut you off here.
But thanks again.
Appreciate it.
Thank you very much, Scott.
That's the great Mohamed Sahimi, everybody.
Antiwar.com/Sahimi is right there on the top of the page today.
