For Antiwar.com and Chaos Radio 959 in Austin, Texas, I'm Scott Horton.
This is Antiwar Radio.
Welcome back to the show, Gareth.
Hi Scott, how are you?
I'm doing great, how are you?
Good.
Alright, I really appreciate you coming on the show this morning, I know you're in a hurry, but we need to discuss this new Iran NIE.
I guess I need to ask you first, in your article, it seems like you're basically accepting the premise that there was a secret nuclear weapons program in Iran that was shut down in 2003.
So my first question is, do you have any information that says that that's true besides this NIE's assertions?
Because it doesn't reveal what information it's based on, and the only other information that I know of that indicated that there was some kind of secret nuclear weapons program in Iran was a bunch of crap.
Well the answer is no, I don't have any independent evidence that what the NIE is calling a nuclear weapons program existed.
And you're right, the estimate itself, the language that has been published, the key judgments that have been published, does not really enlighten us very much about what they mean.
By a nuclear weapons program.
The spin in the media is a sort of bipolar kind of split personality of a spin of the story.
On one hand, oh, see, they don't have a nuclear weapons program anymore.
Gareth and Scott Horton were right, and it's all working out, and see, they don't have a nuclear weapons program.
But on the other hand, the war party is saying, see, we told you they had a nuclear weapons program.
And George Bush said, this changes nothing, what's to stop them from restarting their secret nuclear weapons program?
Well, and the answer to that, of course, and we'll come back to your initial question, which is an important one, obviously.
But the answer to the question, you know, what is to stop the Iranians from starting again, the answer to that is a good policy by the United States has a very good chance of, you know, convincing the Iranians not to begin any work on nuclear weapons.
I mean, I think that is the clear implication of the NIE on Iran.
I mean, if they did, in fact, make a decision, regardless of what it was that we're talking about here, whether it was, you know, the fact that they had some document which pertained to nuclear weapons, which, you know, simply meant that somebody somewhere had given some thought to that, or that they'd read it, even if they hadn't seriously considered it, and they made some kind of decision that indicated, no, we're not going to go there, that's an important finding, that's an important piece of information.
Right, that's the answer to George Bush's question right there.
Exactly, and what it means is that, and this is, I think, the part of the national intelligence estimate that has not been reported at all, or at least not reported sufficiently, the part of it that I think is really crucial here is an analytical paragraph that makes the point that if the United States wants to prevent, I think is the word that's used, an Iranian decision in the future to go ahead with nuclear weapons, then its best shot is to convince the Iranians that they could benefit, you know, from negotiating an agreement that would give them every reason, you know, not to go ahead with a nuclear capability, a nuclear weapons capability, and I think, you know, that's a remarkable paragraph.
It basically says, and I don't have the wording in front of me, but it says essentially that the United States could maximize its ability to minimize, could minimize the possibility of an Iranian nuclear weapons decision by offering Iran a good, solid agreement, which would give it security benefits as well as prestige and political benefits in the region.
Well, and this goes along with everything you've been reporting for years and years now about their attempted peace offers and so forth.
That's right, and I think what, I mean, the only thing about this NIE that perhaps cuts in the other direction is that, you know, if in fact they made a decision four years ago, you know, to drop whatever it was they were doing that pertained to the subject of nuclear weapons, then enough that it convinced all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies that they really did make a decision, which is, you know, has to be something substantive, it has to be something significant for that to happen, then we could probably say that, you know, for the time being, the Iranians really feel that it's not in their interest to have a nuclear weapon, and it would require, you know, probably a major shift in the situation for them to change their mind.
Now, of course, that could be serious threat by the United States on Iranian territory.
That could obviously change the situation.
That stands to reason.
But clearly, this presents us with a much clearer idea of what the Iranian calculus is in terms of their national security about nuclear weapons.
Well, and you make the point in your article that there was conservative dissent in Iran in 2003 when they began to go by an additional protocol to their safeguards agreement with the IAEA, which had not even been ratified by their parliament, but I guess an executive decision was made to go ahead and abide by this additional protocol to cease their enrichment of uranium as long as they were negotiating with the E3 to allow expanded inspections far beyond what was required in their regular safeguards agreement and so forth.
There were right-wing factions in Iran who were denouncing this as treason, which I'm afraid if my government was signing additional protocols to safeguards agreements and had international cops running around all over my country, I might call that treason, too.
But apparently they went along with this.
That's right.
And what we see here is that very clearly the moderate within the Iranian leadership and the national security elite of the country were firmly in control of the policy even though they had these very strong pro-nuclear weapons people nipping at their heels and really accusing them of being traitors.
What this NIE does is to give us greater clarity about the internal dynamics within the Iranian leadership than we've had in the past.
I mean, I think it does validate the point of view that Mohamed ElBaradei, the director of the IAEA, has been putting forward that some other specialists on the Iranian nuclear program, such as Jim Walsh at MIT, have talked about and that I've written about in the past as well, that they have not really been interested in having a nuclear weapon.
They understand that it's not in their interest for a variety of reasons.
And that what they have been thinking about is having the knowledge of how to do it so that there's a certain deterrent involved in that knowledge without actually going ahead with weaponization.
And, you know, if you look at the rhetoric of the Bush administration, really for the past year and a half, I can't tell you the exact date at which this began.
Perhaps two years ago, the Bush administration began to talk more about the capability to manufacture a nuclear weapon.
The knowledge, the technical knowledge of how to do it was what they were targeting.
They have been saying for a long time now that that's unacceptable to them for Iran to have it.
And now I think perhaps we can see more clearly that people in the intelligence community have been saying for quite a while, whether it was in an NIE or simply in more informal or shorter papers on the subject, that they believe that Iran probably was not going for a nuclear weapon per se, but simply to have the knowledge as a deterrent, just as, you know, in fact, Japan has the same capability and is credited with that sort of deterrent capability, just having the knowledge of how to make a nuclear weapon, how to enrich uranium to the extent that it's necessary to do so.
And see, the thing is here, too, is I think this is a subject that's really surrounded in a lot of mythology, as though, you know, if the Iranians were able to get all their centrifuges working just right, where they could enrich uranium to 3.6% for their electricity and everything was just humming along, for them to then turn that into a nuclear weapons program, that is to enrich that uranium to a high enough grade to make bombs out of it, they would have to withdraw from the NPT, which requires six months notice, maybe they wouldn't give six months, but they would have to kick out the IAEA inspectors, turn off all the radiation gear and everything, and basically announce to the world, we're making nukes now, and then start.
I think that's true.
Now, there are some people who would question that, who would argue that that's not true, that they could find a way to hide it, but I think most experts in this field would agree with you that it would be very, very difficult, so difficult that, you know, a very smart group of leaders, such as we know now exist in Tehran, are very unlikely to go that route, that they would indeed, if they were serious about having a nuclear weapon, they would withdraw from the NPT and go that route, rather than risk, you know, trying to have it both ways and be caught in the process.
Now, when Bush says that this change is nothing, is he doing anything but confirming Scott Ritter's assertion that this is simply a pretext for war, that this has never had anything to do with their nuclear program one way or another, that this is all about regime change?
You know, I think it's a bit murkier than that, but, you know, given the degree of murkiness that we face in trying to decipher Bush's intentions and Cheney's intentions, that's a fair summary of the situation from my point of view.
You know, I've talked in the past about the fact that, you know, from 2003, 2004, 2005, this administration clearly had regime change on its mind.
That's what Cheney favored.
That's what the neocons in the administration were talking about, were plotting.
It was not an announced policy, not an official formal policy, but there's very little question that that's what they hoped for.
And what exactly they were doing to promote it, a lot of covert operations, which we don't really know about.
So, yes, I think that, you know, their policy towards the whole Iranian nuclear program has to be viewed, in large part, in light of that objective of regime change that the Bush administration clearly leaned towards.
Now, you know, as I've argued in the past, I think that, you know, they began to come to their senses and realized by 2006 that that wasn't going to happen.
Their dreams of regime change began to fade, and that's when you do get, you know, much more muscular, shall we say, talk by Cheney and the neocons in the Bush administration, and that's where you begin to get the threat of, you know, trying to find an opportunity to use military force against Iran.
I think now that that threat certainly has to have begun to recede in practical terms.
I think it would be much more difficult for the Bush administration now to get away with any kind of strike against Iran, whether it's against nuclear sites or simply, you know, launching an attack against IRGC bases within Iran.
Their myth about Iran has been exposed.
I think the credibility within the political system of the idea of Iran as a threat has been significantly reduced.
I think you're going to see Democratic candidates generally much more aggressive in their denunciation of Bush policy toward Iran as a result of this.
I think it's already started.
I disagree with some people I've heard who argue that Bush could still get away with an attack against Iran if he justified it in terms of, you know, supposed Iranian responsibility for the death of American troops in Iraq.
That was going to be my next question.
Here we are in December.
It's been just about a year straight now of all this propaganda about somehow the Iranians are behind the Sunni insurgency or the rogue Shiite militias or the EFP bombs or whatever, you know, load of half-truth they're trying to shovel down our throat this week.
It's been about a year straight of this.
Do you think that that's no longer really a viable way to get a war started?
I don't think it is at this point.
I think that has begun to recede.
And the reason I think, you know, I've started to make the argument, but let me just continue it a bit further.
I think that this NIE marked a definite shift in the balance of power within the executive branch of the United States between the White House and Dick Cheney's office in particular on one hand and the intelligence community.
If you think about how far we have gone from the NIE of 2002, which was a craven cave-in by the intelligence community, led by George Tenet, to the White House pressures for war.
And I just read Bob Drogin's wonderful book, Curveball, in which he documents, chapter and verse, how the Central Intelligence Agency and the intelligence community was told point blank, those people who were drafting the 2002 NIE on Iraq, were told point blank, we're going to war and you're going to write this as a way of justifying this war.
It's quite astonishing the degree to which this was open, explicit, and, you know, it was perhaps the low point of the U.S. intelligence community in its entire history in terms of its craven serving of power without any integrity whatsoever.
And then they got the blame for it all.
Oh, well, we just had bad intelligence, it's all the CIA's fault.
And to some extent it was justified because they were so craven, they did basically give up their independence.
And to some extent, you know, obviously it was under pressure, it was under duress, but many of these analysts, you know, sort of did a kind of unconscious bending towards power in this process.
Now, I think what you see in this NIE is exactly the opposite.
We know for a fact that the White House and Dick Cheney did not want this estimate to come out in this form.
They put pressure on, they argued, they insisted that the intelligence estimate that was drafted months and months ago, which made this argument, we know now, made this analysis, not just analysis but put forward the evidence of really quite hard evidence of an Iranian decision about weapons, that they argued that this was a disinformation campaign by Iran, believe it or not.
They made those sorts of arguments.
They basically insisted that they had to go back and review this.
This is the same thing that was happening in 2002 in the intelligence community on Iraq.
And this time, essentially, we know that the intelligence community remained united and they didn't cave in at all.
So this represents, in a way, a kind of pushback by the intelligence community.
They were, I think, the long-time professionals in the community, the analysts in the community, felt humiliated by the sequence of events beginning with 2002.
And they've been looking for an opportunity to really reassert themselves.
And I can't tell you how many times I've heard over the last couple of days in private comments in Washington say that they now perceive that there has been a sea change in the intelligence community, that they have regained their ability to remain fully independent of the White House pressure.
See, I can't be as optimistic as you about that because it seems like, well, until I see proof that they ever really had a nuclear weapons program, it seems to me like the CIA went along halfway this time.
Well, I'm willing to agree that inevitably there are negotiations over certain words that are used in key judgments, for example, that make relatively small concessions.
And I'm willing to agree that they're not pristine.
They didn't insist on every word conforming to the original text.
But I think in substance, what they have done is a remarkable turnaround in terms of putting forward an estimate that not just directly contradicts, but completely smashes the political line of the current administration.
