All right, welcome back to the show, it's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton and on the line is Gareth Porter, investigative historian and journalist.
And he writes for interpressserviceipsnews.net and of course antiwar.com original.antiwar.com/porter.
Welcome back Gareth, how are you?
I'm fine Scott, thanks again for having me on.
Well thank you very much for joining us, I really appreciate you coming on all the time and telling us the what for.
And by the way, what is the deal anyway?
Talks have been scheduled for I guess the third week in May.
And at these talks perhaps we will see the beginning of the end of the manufactured crisis of Iran's nuclear program and then we won't have to listen to this crap or complain about it anymore.
Is that right?
Maybe.
Is it possible?
I wouldn't count on it, I certainly wouldn't rely on David Ignatius as a source to tell us that the way has already been smoothed to an agreement.
That is a very good piece of evidence from my point of view, but it's not true at all.
Yeah, well it does indicate that somebody powerful wanted him to tell us that, that's all you can tell from it, but why did they want him to tell us that if it's not true?
I can't tell you the reason why he's being told that there's a script here.
I mean, of course, they didn't literally mean there's a script, but they were...
Well, wait, wait.
Hold on, tell everybody what we're talking about.
David Ignatius, he's the mouth of the establishment, high-level Pentagon or CIA people talk to him and tell him what to write in the post and everybody knows that.
So he wrote this thing saying, hey everybody, the deal's already pretty much made, we're just going through the motions of it takes a few weeks now, but we got a deal now.
They're going to close down the comm facility and stop enriching uranium beyond 3.6% or whatever it is, and then it'll all be good after that.
Okay, I'll tell you my suspicion.
I don't know, I obviously don't know for sure, but I have a suspicion that this is a posture being adopted by the Obama administration going into the talks that seeks to say, okay, here's the deal that we've brooded to the Iranians.
We have reason to think that they like it, that this is the way things are going to go.
And then, of course, if the Iranians say no, they will say, well, this is like a repeat of 2009 when the Iranians basically reneged.
I mean, they actually made the claim, not officially, of course, but through leaks to the media in 2009, that the Iranians reneged on an agreement to the proposal that came from the IAEA from Al-Baradai, but which in fact came from Gary Seymour and the White House to ship like three-fourths of their low-enriched uranium out of the country in return for the fuel rods for the Tehran research reactor.
And that wasn't true.
I mean, the Iranians never agreed to it.
They said, yeah, we'll look at it, we'll think about it, but we may want to make some changes.
And so I think that it's possible that this is posturing for that purpose, to be able to say, you know, this is the way things should have gone, the Iranians, you know, let us know they were ready to go with this, and then they've changed their mind, they've reneged.
So in other words, they're betting that nothing's going to come of this, even though, I mean, the deal really is that they have to, you know, the IAEA has to be able to verify the non-aversion of their declared nuclear material basically is what they claimed thereafter in the first place.
That's the concession they need from the Iranians, what they've had all along.
I mean, why can't they just make a deal and shut up already?
They should be able to make a deal and shut up already, and, you know, the answer to your question is really very important.
Why is it that the United States has so much trouble coming up with or, you know, basically being willing to reach an agreement with Iran that is a mutual agreement that respects the fundamental interests of both sides?
And I've been working on a piece that I hope to get published very soon, Daljazeera English, which outlines the basic negotiating diplomatic strategy of the Iranians over the last decade, basically, with regard to negotiations with the United States.
And the basic Iranian strategy is to use, to accumulate as many negotiating chips as possible, whether it's basically low-at-risk uranium accumulated or influence in Iraq or Afghanistan or whatever that they think the United States needs to help stabilize things.
Whatever they feel they can get the United States to give something in return for, the Iranians want to accumulate.
But the purpose of it is to get an agreement that will essentially end the official hostility of the United States toward Iran, both the economic sanctions, which have been accumulating, of course, since 1995 in particular, as well as the essentially the terrorist state designation, which the United States has insisted on maintaining all these years.
That is the objective, and that's a perfectly reasonable position for Iran or a set of interests of the United States to basically acknowledge and to act on.
But the fact is that there are some big hangups in Washington with the national security state about agreeing to anything like that, and I think the chances of the United States doing so at this stage of its history are minimal.
And so I think that there's a big problem here that we have that leaves these sorts of step-by-step, piecemeal kinds of agreements, which are, it's not impossible, but it seems to me it's very tricky to get one of those piecemeal agreements that both sides can agree to, because what the United States wants is for the Iranians to give up their negotiating chips in the process of agreeing to one of these step-by-step piecemeal agreements, and the Iranians are not going to do that.
They're simply not going to give up their negotiating chips because of what I've described as their fundamental negotiating posture, which is their strategy, which is the only way that a much weaker state like Iran can actually approach this sort of problem.
But you know, I mean, I guess another leak, was this one Ignatius too?
I think it was, that Obama had told the Iranians through the Turks that he really was ready to recognize their enrichment of uranium to electricity grade, which, you know, this has really been at least implicit in the deal that Obama was offering since 2009, that we really only want to verify that it's not a weapons program, but we're okay with enriching for electricity, which is, you know, contra John Bolton and the policy of Conoleeza Rice and George Bush, right?
Yeah, I mean, that's absolutely right, that that is the fundamental interest that's supposedly at stake here for the United States, which is for the Iranians to be able to demonstrate that they are not interested in nuclear weapons.
The Iranians, of course, have been saying all along that, yes, they're perfectly willing to do what is necessary to demonstrate that.
And in the past, when, for example, when they're negotiating with the Europeans in 0506, before they closed them down, the Iranians were offering very strict limits on the number of centrifuges, which I think I've said this before, but I'll say it again, that looks like a very good deal right now.
But the Europeans and of course, behind them, the Bush administration, they weren't interested.
And of course, we know that the Bush administration really wanted regime change, they were not interested primarily in the nuclear weapons issue at that point.
So I mean, this is this whole problem of reaching agreement with Iran is mired in a history of US aggressive policy toward Iran, essentially.
Hmm.
Well, and they seem so stressed out by Iran's, you know, increase of power and influence in the region lately.
Do you think that in Washington, DC, there's much self-awareness about, you know, how much their power and influence has increased in the region lately, and maybe some of the causes for that effect?
I think what you're asking me is, do they admit that basically, it's because of US aggressiveness in the region that Iran has been able to become much more influential in the region?
Very good question.
I think, you know, there's a growing, basically admission that that's the case, very much against the wishes of the national security state, they'd rather deny it.
Cool.
Well, that's good news.
At least we'll be right back with Gareth Porter after this, everybody.
All right, Shell, welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Warren.
I'm talking with the great Gareth Porter from Interpress Service.
It's IPSnews.net and original.antiwar.com/Porter.
And in fact, that's a lie, because his articles are reprinted all over the frigging place, because people say, hey, here's a guy who's on the right track when they read his great stuff.
All right, so now we're talking about the talks or the taking of talks that took place the other weekend before last there and the talks that are supposed to happen in May and all the obstacles for a real deal to be worked out, even if you accept the premise of what a crisis Iran's nuclear program is, we have a solution right in front of us and we're still not going to get it, I guess, is what you're telling us, aren't you, Gareth?
Well, you know, it's very difficult to know exactly what these people are thinking.
We have only a few clues.
It's insufficient data in order to really draw a firm conclusion about what to expect.
But, you know, I think what we can know here, what we do know, is that the Obama administration and Israel have been engaged in a very big exercise for quite a while in coercive diplomacy.
And the whole crux of the matter has been the Israeli threat to attack Iran combined with these sanctions against the Iranian oil export sector.
And you know, I mean, I've been on your show the most recent time I talked about the fact that I was wrong about the Netanyahu threat to attack Iran.
And I think that now, having been in Israel and talked to some of these national security types, I am convinced that this is essentially a bluff, that Netanyahu has not really seriously had a plan to attack Iran, but that it has been an extremely helpful policy from the Netanyahu government's point of view to force the hand of the United States, to put pressure on the United States, to take a much more aggressive posture toward Iran, and to set up a situation where, of course, the Republican right has a chance to gain the White House and could, in fact, be prevailed upon to take the primary role in attacking Iran, which is what the Israelis really want, so that the retaliation doesn't fall on them.
But I think that it's this bluff that is at the center of the Obama administration's strategy for talks with Iran.
I think that they feel this is the chance that they have to try to get an agreement from Iran, and they are counting on being able to intimidate the Iranians as to soften them up for these talks.
This leak that we talked about at the top of the show, to Ignatius, certainly could be seen as consistent with that idea that the Obama administration's trying to practice coercive diplomacy against Iran, and that they feel they need to do that, because from their point of view, the only acceptable outcome is one where the Iranians give up enough of their low-interest uranium so that they can say, oh, we've triumphed, this is a diplomatic triumph for the United States.
Remember, in 2009, this is the way the Obama administration handled it.
When they thought they had an agreement with Iran, they were trumpeting it as a diplomatic triumph, which was, of course, really stupid.
If you know anything about the Iranians, you know that you never do that, and that could probably be one of the reasons the Iranians didn't want to have anything to do with that agreement, which is that the United States was already boasting that they had bested the Iranians, they had beaten them, they had forced them to accept U.S. terms.
Well, you know, Raymond Govern was on the show and pointed this out, and I don't know how I missed this, or maybe I didn't back then, I didn't go back and check or anything.
I don't remember if you and I talked about this back then, but in October of 2009, Jandala was killing Iranian army officers.
And as Raymond Govern pointed out, this was a really big deal within the different centers of power inside Iran, whether they were going to make a deal with us, and this was an Israeli operation to, you know, throw a monkey wrench right into the thing, and apparently it worked.
Well, there's no doubt that that would have been noted by the national security officials in Tehran with great concern, and that that could have influenced their view of both the timing and the content of their negotiating position in the talks with the P5-plus-1 at that point.
I mean, I know that the Iranians are very sensitive both to the behavior of the United States and Israel when either of them does something aggressive that causes the Iranians to back off of any concession.
And if the United States makes a demand, if it speaks peremptorily to Iran, if it makes a statement that assumes that the United States has the right or the ability to command the Iranians to do something, then they'll do exactly the opposite.
And I know for a fact that that has happened, for example, specifically in the case of when the United States wanted the IAEA to go to visit, to inspect the gum site in 2009.
The Iranians had planned to let the IAEA inspect immediately, but when the United States demanded it, they backed off and said no, and then the IAEA had to wait until al-Baradai went and asked politely, and then they said yes.
So those are the dynamics of negotiating with the Iranians, who are extremely prickly and sensitive about both words and deeds.
Well, and, you know, we talked to Peter Jenkins, the former UK ambassador to the IAEA, and I know that you've talked with him as well, written about him.
And he said that, you know, all things being equal, he was pretty confident that he and some of his colleagues who are, you know, well-versed in these types of things, they could sit down and hash out an agreement, as, you know, perfectly reasonable, I think that they could.
I have no doubt that a well-meaning group of diplomats who are not held back by political considerations such as we have...
Right.
The all-important all things being equal means the politicians have to shut up and let them do it.
That's right.
I mean, there's no doubt that they could reach an agreement quite quickly with the Iranians.
When I say quickly, I mean within a matter of weeks, because I think, you know, you'd have to deal with a large number of issues, which are tricky.
But with goodwill, these things can definitely be negotiated.
I have no doubt about that.
All right.
Now, I'm sure you saw this, Ehud Barak would like to see the fall of Bashar Assad.
I guess we already knew that.
But here he said, yeah, that would be very positive.
Wouldn't you love that on CNN?
What do you make of that?
Well, here's what interests me.
I mean, it's obvious that the Iranians, excuse me, that the Israelis are very, very eager to see some regime change in Syria.
And what's interesting is that Dan Meridor, the vice premier of Israel, was just interviewed the other day.
And the interviewer, which was Al Jazeera English, was saying something about the Israeli viewpoint about Iran and how it wasn't really accurate to talk about the Iranians being so, you know, wanting to destroy Israel and so forth.
And Meridor said, well, there's no other case in the Middle East where a country has declared another state to be illegitimate.
And of course, that's completely untrue, because not just Israel, but other countries as well are openly calling for regime change in Syria.
And of course, there's another country in the region where there were calls for regime change all over the place, and that's Libya.
So I mean, I just find that there's another double standard here that hasn't been talked about, but needs to be discussed.
Well, now, as soon as the Libya thing started, I just knew that we're going to be bogged down in that thing for 20 years.
And I've been a little bit more hesitant to say the same thing about Syria doesn't quite, you know, seem that way, feel that way, quite yet, maybe only because there, I'm just assuming there's a bit more, maybe I have a little bit of indications here and there, that there's a bit more hesitance inside the Pentagon, inside the national security state, as we talked about before, Hillary Clinton, just sort of, you know, I guess told ABC News that yeah, actually, you know what, Al-Qaeda and Hamas are on the side of the revolution there in Syria, too.
And I think maybe we need to look twice at this kind of thing.
There's a lot more hesitation, a lot more hesitation on this.
But what do you think, though?
I mean, they're already, you know, rolling down that hill, it seems like, and especially if that's what Israel wants, too, which I would have thought they would be the most hesitant for having even more instability on their borders right now.
But there you go.
I don't think we're going to do this for Israel.
That's not going to happen.
I think that it would reflect, if it were to happen, it would reflect more the interests of the national security state itself, particularly those people who are close to or, you know, wrapped up with NATO.
I mean, NATO is a very major interest group in the national security state of the United States.
And of course, it was NATO that really was carrying the ball primarily in Libya and pulled the United States into that war.
So if it were to happen in Syria, I would expect it would be roughly similar dynamics, that it would be, you know, our friends abroad who are on the front lines, you know, already intervening in Syria, who...
And our friends, meaning the kingdoms, the dictatorships of Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
Well, it's dictatorships, it's dictatorships...
Well, and the Turks, too, I guess.
Turks, the Turkish, definitely.
And also Europeans.
I mean, there's, you know, very good reason to believe that there are already troops there representing European states, British particularly, French, French and British.
So I mean, I think that that would be the most likely vehicle.
But I still think that it's very doubtful that that's going to happen because of the high risk, low reward.
I mean, okay, that may be unfair to introduce rational calculation into this, but nevertheless...
Yeah, I don't want you to assume too much, but then again, I'm asking you to predict things, too.
So it's fair to be conservative in your estimation.
Yeah, I mean, you know, this is mainly because of the evidence that there has been very strong resistance to the pressures to push the United States into war in Syria.
Well, let's hope it stays that way.
All right.
Now, Zoe's here, and he had a question.
We were talking about Afghanistan earlier and the deal that they're working on to stay to 2024, which, man, we could have all time machines and flying Corvettes and everything by then if we weren't wasting all this money occupying Afghanistan, seems to me.
But anyway, so Zoe had a question about parallel and a previous American war.
If you got one minute here, Gareth.
Indeed.
Shoot.
Hey, Gareth.
Obviously, the Vietnam War and the Afghan war are not the same thing, lots of differences.
But with regard to that story about the U.S. staying in Afghanistan to 2024, I wonder, did back in the day, the American forces have some kind of status of forces agreement with the government of South Vietnam, such as it was to stay until?
No, no.
I mean, there was no there's no status of forces agreement in the case of Vietnam.
But, you know, of course, there's another war and another agreement that are much more parallel and much more relevant here.
And that is, of course, the Iraq withdrawal agreement.
And I think it is quite apropos because I think we can draw a very firm conclusion from that Iraq agreement that what is happening in the case of the Afghanistan agreement is that the United States was forced by the Afghan government to agree to some terms that they did not want to agree to at all, which would would limit, at least apparently limit the freedom of action of U.S. special operations forces with regard to carrying out night raids.
And so the lesson to be learned from the Iraq agreement is that either there is weasel wording in the agreement itself that allows that will allow the special forces to act independently of the Afghan government or they will simply read it in such a way as to allow them to to to act without prior approval of specific night raids.
We know from Spencer Ackerman's story about this a few days ago, April 9th, I believe it was, that that the U.S. military has briefed reporters on the agreement that was reached on the night raids issue and that, in fact, they believe that they will be able to act independently before they get approval from an Afghan court or without the approval of an Afghan court.
So there's no doubt in my mind that this is an agreement that does not, in fact, control night raids at all.
The Afghan government has not gotten control of night raids.
That's, of course, not telling you anything you don't already know, but I think it's worth registering here.
All right.
Well, thank you for answering my question, Gareth.
Very informative, as always.
Yeah.
Thanks for your time on the show, as always, Gareth.
Appreciate it.
Okay.
Thank you, Scott.
