For Pacifica Radio, March 2nd, 2012, I'm Scott Horton.
This is Anti-War Radio.
All right, y'all, and welcome to the show.
It is Anti-War Radio.
I'm your host, Scott Horton.
Full interview archives are available at antiwar.com/radio.
And our guest tonight on the show is the great Gareth Porter, independent historian and journalist.
Writes for Interpress Service, that's IPSnews.net.
And we keep all of his archives at antiwar.com/porter.
He's got a brand-new one just out at Al Jazeera.
Who was behind the Delhi bombing?
The bombing of an Israeli diplomat's car in India isn't consistent with Iranian or Hezbollah involvement.
Welcome back to the show.
Gareth, how are you doing?
Good, thanks, Scott.
Thanks again for having me.
Well, I'm very happy to have you here.
And this article, who was behind the Delhi bombing, it kind of coincides, could have just as easily been the Tbilisi and Bangkok bombings as well, which get mentioned in here.
But you focus on the Delhi bombing from, what, two weeks ago, three weeks ago, that was blamed on Iran and Hezbollah, of course.
Right, and that's, I mean, I focus on the Delhi bombing because that is really the only bombing that took place.
There were explosions in Bangkok, but no target was bombed.
Right, they kind of blew themselves up in their apartment like in Spain kind of deal, right?
That's right.
There was a civilian accident in a house in Bangkok, and then one of the people who escaped, apparently in a dazed and completely inchoate mental condition, trying to get away with some hand grenades, started throwing them at a taxi, wouldn't pick him up, and then he cops and blew his own legs off.
So, you know, clearly that's a slightly different situation.
You know, I'm not denying that there could be some relationship here between what was going on there and the Delhi bombing, but that's a more complicated story.
And the Tbilisi bomb, but not a bombing, is very, very sketchy.
To sort of deal with that very quickly, what happened, according to the reports that we have, which are exceedingly thin, is that the driver for the Israeli embassy in Tbilisi, whose car apparently was not parked at the embassy, but at his own home or somewhere else, found, when he went to the car in the morning, found something underneath the car and examined the car and found that there was a plastic bag with a hand grenade in it attached, somehow taped to the bottom of the car.
And so that's it.
That's all we know.
And that's really not a whole lot.
There's not much there.
Again, it certainly can be related, but certainly in a more complicated way than the easy sort of conventional notion that, well, this just shows that Iran had three different terror plots going on in three capitals at the same time.
So, in other words, that's why I focused on the Delhi bombing as the central focus of my piece.
All right.
Now, to get right into it, you say here that there's a distinct possibility, analyzing all the different news that came out about this thing, that this was not really an attack meant to hurt the target at all.
How do you mean?
Well, I was even stronger than that, Scott.
I mean, I think it seems very clear.
The evidence points to the conclusion that whoever was behind this bombing of an Israeli diplomatic car did not intend to cause serious harm to anyone in that car.
And the reason that I say that is that there are four major indications concerning the nature of the bomb and the placement of the bomb, which leave, I think, little room for doubt that this was not an effort at a terror bombing.
It was not an effort to destroy a car and kill people inside.
First indication was the size of the bomb itself.
The size of the bomb, as estimated originally by the Delhi police, was 250 to 300 grams of explosives.
That's pretty small.
That's pretty weak.
But very soon after that initial forensic examination, they downgraded the size of the bomb to 200 to 250 grams of explosions.
So, in other words, they reduced it by 66 percent, by a third.
And the significance of this is that such a small bomb, that it really cannot be expected to do serious damage or to certainly not to kill and not very likely to do serious harm to anyone inside.
The second indication, which goes with the first one, is very closely related, is that that bomb did not contain any shrapnel.
There were no nails.
There were no crushed glass.
There was not the usual metal filings that go into a bomb in order to cause serious harm to the person inside the target, particularly a car bomb.
And, again, that suggests that this bomb was not intended to do that.
The third indication is that it was not placed anywhere on the car where it could do much damage.
The only way that a car bomb that small in size or lack of power could do any damage would be to put it right on the door where the passenger is sitting.
If you're targeting a passenger, you put it right on the passenger's side door.
Or you would put it underneath a fuel pump to cause an explosion that would then be magnified because of the fuel.
Of course, neither one of those things was done.
In fact, the bomb was placed on the rear hatch of this diplomatic car, which is a long diplomatic car.
It has two rows of seats, and then there's a long area where there are no seats until you get to the hatch.
So there is a considerable distance there.
And that is another indication that there was no intention to do harm to the passenger.
Now, the final indication is that, unlike the normal car bomb or magnet bomb, the normal practice by a magnet bomb team, which is that you would place the bomb on and it would go off within five to ten seconds so that there would be just enough time for the motorcyclist who has placed the bomb to speed off.
In this case, the Delhi police learned from the wife of the defense attaché who was in the car, who was the one who was the victim, that the bomb did not go off until 30 to 40 seconds after she heard a bump on the back of the car and turned to her right and saw the motorcyclist speeding by.
So this is a 30 to second 40 delay associated with the bomb, whereas normally it's a five to ten second delay.
This is another instance where it's clear that the bomb team did not intend to actually carry out a terror bombing or a revenge bombing against the Israelis.
Had they done so, maybe one of those four might have been possibly a mistake that might have been made.
Oh, maybe two.
I don't think so.
But anyway, for four of those indicators all to be present, in my view, in my considered view, is a nearly absolute certain indication that this was not a terror bombing.
By the way, I spoke today with a former U.S. intelligence operative who worked in counterterrorism, and he agreed with me on these points, that particularly the size of the bomb and the lack of shrapnel and the placement of the bomb were particularly clear-cut indications that this was not a terror bombing.
Well, look, you know, the Ayatollah and his cronies may be a bunch of first-rate lunatics, but what kind of stupid way is that to start a war?
When they know that there are itchy trigger fingers all over Tel Aviv and Washington, D.C. right now, that's how they're going to get it going, is with car bombing in India?
Well, it's not just that this would give the Israelis more fuel to justify their war, or to try to persuade the United States to carry out a war, but there's something that is even more, I think, directly related to the lack of any incentive for Iran to be involved in any such bombing, and that is that India is the last place on earth that the Iranians would want to have a terror bombing take place.
The reason?
That India is the primary customer of Iran's crude oil exports.
And, you know, the Indians had just replaced the Chinese as the primary customer in January, and having done so, they bought approximately 550,000 barrels a day in January.
And, of course, this is an extremely important point for Iran's economy at this point.
And furthermore, once that happened, the Israelis and their Western allies, of course, including primarily the United States, began to put heavy pressure on the Indians to cut off or at least very strongly reduce their purchases of Iranian oil.
That was precisely the political economic context in which this bombing took place.
And that, in addition to the indicators that I've already given you, I think makes it just impossible to believe that this was an Iranian or Hezbollah operation.
There's absolutely, not only no reason for them to do it, this would have been the last thing on earth that they would have contemplated.
Yeah.
Well, you know, it's actually a lie that Mark Twain said this, but I don't know who the original quote was before they stole it and gave it to Mark Twain, but it's something about how the lie can get halfway around the world before the truth has its boots on.
And here, you're just a week and a half late.
This lie just had to poison the debate for a day or two.
It doesn't matter if it's proven even beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was really Mossad blowing up their own cars just so they could cry boo-hoo.
It only matters if you could have debunked it where everyone could have seen it the day that it hit the papers.
Maybe the next day, if you could have got it out there.
Otherwise, we're already on to the next set of lies here, Garrett.
Well, you're absolutely right in identifying the problem as being one that it takes way too long to ascertain that the original lie is indeed untruth, and to be able to put together the evidence that makes the case.
I had to wait until the Indian investigators, the Indian police, excuse me, the Delhi police, were able to get these clues, which did not come at the same time.
They came seriatim over a period of days, indeed.
Sure.
It was really not until nearly two weeks later that I had all four of those clues and was able to put them together, as well as, of course, the larger context, which I think is equally, if not more, important.
Well, the War Party is never so restricted.
They simply just say what they want.
That's right.
I mean, they can get away with it because the news media are not going to fact-check.
They're not going to investigate.
They're not going to do anything to see if what the officials and the unofficial lobbyists on behalf of the War Powers are saying is, in fact, true.
And so that does indeed create a virtually impossible situation to combat unless you have a very powerful movement to try to make up for it, which I'm afraid to say we don't really have at this point.
This is Anti-War Radio on Pacifica.
I'm Scott Horton, and I'm talking with the great Gareth Porter from Interpress Service.
You can find all of his articles for them and everybody else at original.antiwar.com.
And, in fact, I'm pretty sure just antiwar.com.porter will get you where you're going.
The great war propaganda debunker, Gareth Porter.
Before we move on to the nuclear issue, Gareth, is there anything left on this Delhi bombing you want to make sure to underscore before we change the subject here?
Well, yes, absolutely.
The point that I want to be very clear on is that the evidence that I have been citing here, if you look at it very coolly and objectively, points in the direction of an Israeli false flag operation.
The reason being that the Israelis had a perfect motivation for doing this in that they hoped, and had every reason to expect, that by having an operation like this that could be made to look like an Iranian-slash-Hezbollah terror bombing in Delhi and, of course, linking it then to Tbilisi and to Bangkok, which is exactly what the Israelis did, and having laid the groundwork, if you will, in the weeks before this event took place, by saying to the Indians as well as to the Thais and to the Georgians, we think there's going to be a terror bombing, there will be terror bombings, on the fourth anniversary of the assassination of Emad Mughnia, the Lebanese who was a key security official for Hezbollah and, of course, has been blamed for everything from Buenos Aires to Khobar Towers and beyond.
They were preparing the ground for making the case that this was indeed an Iranian terror bombing, and revenge for Mughnia, as well as in revenge, potentially, for the killing of the Iranian scientist who was murdered, obviously, by Mossad in mid-January of this year.
So the Israelis had every reason to believe that they could get away with essentially blaming this on Iran and thus make it possible to bring enormous pressure to bear, much greater pressure to bear, on India to terminate its contract with Iran for the purchase of crude oil, or at least to reduce them very, very strongly, very significantly, so that Iran would suffer yet another blow to its economic situation.
And there's no doubt in my mind that this is what the Israelis had in mind.
Now, the victim, the person who was in the car, was the wife of the defense attache of the Israeli embassy, and she did have what were characterized as moderate to mild wounds on her body, not from a shrapnel, but from pieces of metal that were thrown from the rear of the car when the explosion took place.
But apparently these were not terribly serious wounds, and she was in the hospital three days, I believe.
You think she volunteered to have her own car bombed, or her husband put her up to it, or what?
I don't think there was any such understanding.
I think that what the Israelis intended here was that there would not be any injury.
I think that they expected that she would not be injured at all between the four characteristics of the bomb and the placement of the bomb, particularly given the fact that she heard the thump on the rear of the car, saw the motorcyclist go by.
I think that it's very possible that they expected that it would be the defense attache who would be in the car.
I don't know, of course, that that's the fact, but I think it's conceivable that it was supposed to be the defense attache in the car, and that they expected that he would get out within 30 to 40 seconds because of the bump on the car and then the motorcyclist going past, and particularly since the Israeli embassy had warned of terror-bombing prospects around the world, including New Delhi.
So that's why I think that this is most likely a false flag attack by Israel, because they had everything to gain from it and really didn't think they had anything to lose either.
Well, besides just affecting politics inside India, it helps with the narrative, the lie, that they're continually subjecting the population of Israel and America about Iran's nuclear program that I guess at any moment is going to be made into nuclear bombs to get us all in our jammies in the middle of the night.
Yes, they are officially committed to the idea that Iran has been trying to get a nuclear weapon as fast as possible for as many years as we can count on both hands, that's for sure.
Boy, you'd think they'd have them by now if they were really about to get them this whole time.
Well, exactly.
I mean, this is not a very credible position to have taken, but it is indeed.
It has been the Israeli position for not just 10 years, but 20 years.
And they have been trying to get the U.S. intelligence community to accept that for all that time, mostly without success, and of course their own people as well.
All right, now Haaretz this week is saying that when Benjamin Netanyahu comes to town for the big AIPAC conference over the weekend, that his primary goal is to push President Obama from his current position that we will not allow Iran to, I guess, complete construction of a nuclear weapon if it ever comes to that, to, we will not, I guess this is the same language as the Lieberman resolution in the Senate, we will not allow, we will consider it a violation of our security, United States security, for Iran to even have the capability to make nuclear weapons.
That's right, and essentially what that means is that Iran has to cry uncle and agree to give up its enrichment, the enrichment that it's already done, in effect.
Because they're already at that breakout capability, so-called breakout.
They already have, they already arguably have that breakout capability, and so what the extreme right is calling for essentially is indeed that Iran must give up what it has already achieved, which, you know, there is zero probability of.
And so what they're really saying is that, you know, we've already got the evidence that we need, what are we waiting for?
Okay, now, so Obama is scheduled to give a speech at the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee, and all the Republican candidates are, well, three of the four are on their way as well, and of course their line is that Obama just won't ever do enough, and apparently, well, I don't know, apparently, is that the position of Benjamin Netanyahu, that he prefers somebody else as America's president now?
So Obama won't change his position on this?
We'll just put Mitt Romney in there.
Well, absolutely.
He has done everything except publicly declare that that is his objective.
He's done everything else for sure, including, you know, some clear-cut actions which constitute interference in U.S. domestic politics.
Most recently, his meetings with Republican leaders, specifically John McCain and his sidekick Lindsey Graham, in which, you know, he essentially gave them talking points for the Republicans to use against Obama in terms of the weakness of Obama's policy around the world, in the Middle East specifically, and how Obama, you know, cannot be counted on to the interests of the United States, let alone Israel.
So, I mean, you know, this is part of a broader tapestry of Netanyahu policies and actions over the past few months, which clearly indicate that he's doing everything possible to tilt the U.S. electoral process in the direction of the Republicans, just so that he can get rid of Obama.
But that, you know, that we should not minimize the importance of the effort to push through sanctions.
And, of course, they did so by having AIPAC line up 100 senators, 100 to zero vote in the Senate, an overwhelming vote in the House in favor of the sanctions on the National Bank of Iran and the crude oil sector of Iran, which inevitably, as, you know, everyone knew, and specifically as the Obama administration pointed out in its letter to the U.S. Congress, would cause a spike in world oil prices, and that means a spike in prices of oil here in the United States, which, of course, now is already a political issue.to try to make hay on the issue of higher oil prices, while at the same time, of course, they're hooping it up for a confrontation with Iran, which inevitably has precisely that effect.
Well, yeah, it's just like Kennedy attacking Nixon over Eisenhower's missile gap kind of thing.
It's a no-lose proposition for him to hawk it up, you know, from the outside of power.
Right, except in this case, you know, the missile gap did not have indirect, well, not indirect, but direct implications for the economy, which then translated into political advantage of one party over the other.
And in this case, clearly that is one of the things, and I would say not the least, of the considerations for Netanyahu's government.
Right.
Well, now, when Mossad put a news story in Haaretz a couple of weeks ago, using the language of the American intelligence community, really, saying that they believe that the Iranian government has not made the decision to begin to make nuclear weapons, that was, I believe, the first we've heard of that from Mossad in at least years and years, where they publicly put out something like that.
We've heard former Mossad directors saying things like that for Meredigin, for example.
This was the sitting head of Mossad, and Flint Leverett, the former National Security Council staffer, was on the show, and he said, you know, reading the Kremlinology tea leaves kind of thing on that, that that was a really big deal, that that was Mossad saying, hey, our hands are off, you know, any war here, we don't want in on it, and if it does happen, it's all Netanyahu's fault, not ours, kind of a thing.
And then, so I wonder whether, I guess you can answer whether you agree with that, but especially, is that what you think is going on, when James Risen, instead of David Sanger, who usually has this beat at the New York Times, but when James Risen instead takes the Iran nuclear beat from him and writes an article all about how the CIA thinks that they're not making nuclear bombs?
I hope that that is the case, and I think there's some reason to believe that it could be, which would be a very interesting development, indeed, that the file is being taken away from David Sanger.
And with regard to Mossad, I think there's an interesting point here to be made, and that is the distinction between the sort of propaganda that Mossad manufactures with regard to the Iranian nuclear program, and has done for many, many years, on one hand, and its actual estimate of, you know, the private estimate of the Mossad intelligence agency about what it really believes to be the situation regarding Iranian intentions.
I think that there has always been some disparity between the two, and I think that this current reading, this assessment that you've just cited, which is that, you know, in agreement with the U.S. intelligence community, that Iran has not made a decision to go for a nuclear weapon, I think that it's probably the case that Mossad has held that for some time, that it's not something that just was decided last week, or last month, or...
Well, that's right.
Yes, Seymour Hersh has told me in the past, I don't know whether it's made it into his articles, but he's told me in the past that when he talks to Mossad, that that's what they tell him.
But that's the best we've had, is hearsay like that.
Yeah, I think that Mossad does, in fact, pretty much tell the truth, both within its own councils and to the head of the Israeli government, as opposed to what they manufacture for the purpose of influencing the IAEA, and even the CIA, for that matter.
But now I think you do have a new situation, in that for the last year or year and a half to two years, you've had a Mossad director, that is, Mayr Dagan, now a former Mossad director, who was clearly very much alarmed about Netanyahu's intentions, and actually went public at the end of his tour of duty as Mossad director, and actually revealed to a group of reporters that he had very grave doubts about the idea of attacking Iran.
And then, of course, later on went public with even more explicit and damning criticism of Netanyahu's idea of attacking Iran.
And so I think that this is a new development for sure, which I think probably pertains to his successor as well, that is, Tamir Pardo, the new Mossad director.
And there are some indications that he is in agreement with Mayr Dagan on that point.
So I think that the decision to leak this is significant politically, that it does indicate that Mossad has become part of the national security opposition to an attack on Iran, which includes certainly some very high-ranking generals in the IDF, as well as people in the intelligence community.
All right.
Well, I'm sorry we're all out of time.
We'll have to leave it there for now.
But we'll talk with you again soon.
Thank you very much for your time, Gareth.
Well, thanks again, Scott.
Bye-bye.
Everybody, that's the hero Gareth Porter from Interpress Service.
That's IPSnews.net.
And we rerun all of it at antiwar.com/porter, including his latest for Al Jazeera, who was behind the Delhi bombing.
Thanks very much for listening.
We'll see you next week.
Again, full interview archives are at antiwar.com/radio.
