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Okay.
First guest on the show today is our friend Mohammad Sahimi.
He's a professor of chemical engineering at USC in L.A.
He writes for PBS Frontline's Tehran Bureau and, of course, AntiWar.com.
Here he is with a piece co-authored, a guy who I'm not going to insult by trying to pronounce his name, at AlJazeera.com.
It's called The Unfolding Human Catastrophe in Iran.
Sanctions imposed on Iran's banks and financial institutions could lead to a humanitarian crisis.
Welcome back to the show, Mohammad.
How are you doing?
Good morning, and it's good to be back in your show, Scott.
Well, it's great to talk to you again.
It's not great reading your article here.
I'm afraid I don't like it at all, but it's very important stuff.
People need to know, so why don't you go ahead and tell us.
This is kind of a follow-up to an interview that we did, I guess, a couple of months back about the sanctions and their toll already hitting the people in Iran.
So what do the people need to know here?
Well, actually, since the last interview that we had, things have got much worse in Iran.
The reason is that the type of sanctions that the United States and its allies have imposed on Iran have started to affect all aspects of lives of ordinary Iranians.
As we said in that article, the scandal started in Buruj-Erdi, my friend, because, in our view, the United States and its allies wanted to sort of avoid the type of criticism that they encounter when they impose total sanctions on Iraq, which led to the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children in 1990s.
And by the way, these statistics is not by libertarians like you or leftists like me, but by United Nations UNICEF organization.
And what they decided to do was to impose sanctions on Iranian financial institutions, like a central bank and other major Iranian banks that basically are involved in trade with Europe and the United States.
Whatever that Iran wants to import from Europe or the United States, if it is allowed to, has to go through these banks because they open line of credit, they guarantee payment for whatever is imported into Iran, and so on.
So although, for example, the United States hasn't actually sanctioned sale of medicines and important drugs for critical illness to Iran, because financial institutions have been sanctioned, they cannot actually find a way to pay for this.
So as a result, there is a great shortage of critical medicine for a lot of serious illnesses.
For example, in Iran, we have a very large number of cancer patients.
And in fact, Iranian medical experts, as well as Iranian medical experts that live outside Iran, have said that Iran is going to face a tsunami of cancers.
Every year, tens of thousands of new cases are identified, and the tsunami is supposed to arrive by 2015, three short years.
But, for example, if a patient wants to get chemotherapy in Iran for his or her cancer, the chemicals that are used in chemotherapy cannot be found in Iran.
There are other serious illnesses, including those in my own extended family, like multiple sclerosis, for which there are advanced medicines in Europe and the United States that now cannot be imported into Iran, and without these, the person loses all ability to walk and do anything, and then eventually dies.
There are other medications, and this situation is becoming worse and worse by the day.
When I first reported this on AntiWar.com in the middle of August, some people criticized me, saying that I was exaggerating the extent of the crisis.
But since then, a lot of other people have actually started talking about it, both inside and outside Iran.
I have many contacts in Iran, including my own relatives that are in the pharmaceutical industry, and they told me that there is a great shortage of practically every important medicine in Iran.
As one of them put it to me, he said they have sanctioned financial institutions, which means that it's very difficult to import them.
But even if we can import them, because they have imposed sanctions on oil and everything else, we are running out of money also.
So even if they claim that we can still import them, we don't have any money to pay for them.
So that's the situation, and this is not just restricted to medicine, critical medicine for serious illnesses.
It's spreading to all other aspects of economic life in Iran.
Brad Sherman and some other Democrats have made it clear that this is the purpose of the sanctions, and they know it, and it's not an accident.
This is what they want.
Well, but when the Obama administration started to impose these sanctions, they promised the world, and in particular Iranian people, that these sanctions will not hurt the ordinary Iranian people.
They said that these sanctions would be smart, these sanctions would be targeted.
Which means that they will sanction only those organs of the Iranian government that in their view was involved in Iran's nuclear program.
And let me just add to this that although they supposedly targeted Iranian nuclear program, because the Iranians are supposedly trying to develop nuclear weapons, they themselves have been saying that Iran is not producing nuclear weapons, Iran has not made any decisions to go forward to make nuclear weapons.
So every statement they have made has been contradicted by their previous statement or will be contradicted by the next statement that they make.
These are not smart or targeted sanctions.
These are sanctions that have affected the lives of practically every Iranian.
And at the same time, it hasn't had the effect that it's supposed to have, namely changing the policy of the Iranian leadership, simply because they haven't offered anything to Iranian leadership that would actually change their mind.
What they want Iranian leadership to do is basically surrender whatever they have, and in return they're not promising anything.
A lot of Iranians believe that even if Iran's uranium enrichment program is stopped completely, the sanctions will not be lifted.
They will find other excuses to continue imposing the sanctions.
And the reason is that their real target is actually regime change, and a nuclear program is just an excuse.
Now, a lot of people may believe, a lot of Iranian people living in Iran may believe in regime change and want a regime change, but they want to do it by themselves through a democratic, peaceful process, not by imposing sanctions by outside powers that have affected their lives and are ruining the Iranian economy and in the future will kill tens of thousands of Iranians, if not more.
All right, now, I read a case somewhere, I forget if it was that foreign policy or something, that said, hey, you know what?
I don't think it was trying to justify, morally speaking necessarily, at least not this part, but they were saying, you know, wow, look, these sanctions are actually working, because Ahmadinejad, the president, is really suffering politically that this is all happening on his watch and, you know, the currency is being made worthless, which means across the entire society, like you were alluding to before, savings are just wiped out, the division of labor and the division of trade is being completely disrupted, because basically all wealth is being, or all wealth denominated in their currency is being, you know, evaporated right away by all of this.
But what I wonder is, well, first of all, is that even really right?
I mean, how bad is Ahmadinejad suffering?
But then secondly, would you guess, I mean, is it possible that this could lead to the fall of the Ayatollah?
I mean, say, even if they, never mind the morality of hurting innocent people to do it, we all know the U.S. government are terrorists, but I'm just saying, practically speaking, could the Ayatollah's regime be made to fall and the mullahs lose power over getting the Iranian people into this mess, which is the theory of the sanctions, right, just like in Iraq?
Yes, as I said, people like me believe that the real goal of the United States is regime change.
Now, whether that would, the sanctions that they have imposed will lead to regime change, I don't believe so.
I don't believe that these sanctions, even if they become much tougher than they are, and it's hard to think how much tougher they can get, is going to overthrow the mullahs.
Now, is Ahmadinejad suffering because of these sanctions, and are people blaming him for it?
Well, people do blame him to some extent for whatever is going on inside Iran, but the reason they are blaming him is the mismanagement of the economy by him.
But at the same time, people are well aware that whatever difficulty the Iranian economy was experiencing before the sanctions were imposed have been made much worse by the sanctions.
And at the same time, they don't see any logic in imposing the type of sanctions that the U.S. and its allies have imposed on Iran, which in effect have blocked import of the most neutral or mandun products into Iran.
Let's say, for example, as I said, medicine or raw material that have nothing to do with nuclear program or even the military industry in Iran.
Even they, such products and such materials cannot be imported into Iran.
First, because the financial institutions have been blocked from carrying out any transactions with outside world, and secondly, the wealth is evaporating.
There is not much money left, so they cannot even pay for it, even if they can import it.
So, people do realize that these are, to a very large extent, the United States and its European allies' fault, and they are imposing sanctions on the Iranian leadership for a non-existent nuclear weapon program.
A non-existent nuclear weapon program that they themselves say doesn't exist yet.
They themselves say Iran is not making nuclear weapons, Iran has not made a decision to go ahead to make nuclear weapons.
And the International Atomic Energy Agency, although it has been totally politicized under Yukio Amano, even the agency says consistently that after extensive inspections, it says periodically that it hasn't found any evidence for diversion of nuclear material from peaceful to non-peaceful purposes.
And in fact, as I and others reported on Antiwar.com, if anything, Iran has diverted its stockpile of enriched uranium from peaceful purposes to another peaceful purposes.
In other words, they did what they had said they would do, namely, they produced enriched uranium at 20%, and then they started fabricating fuel rods for Tehran Research Reactor, which produces isotopes for medical applications for 850,000 Iranian patients every year.
Which the Israelis are now admitting and recognizing as well.
Exactly.
I would perhaps acknowledge that.
Unfortunately, when the IAEA reported this in August, the mainstream media in this country either didn't mention it or just mentioned it in passing deep within whatever article they published.
I read, for example, the article by David Sanger in the New York Times, and he barely mentioned the fact that Iran has used about half of its 20% enriched uranium stockpile for producing fuel rods.
And we know when you convert this to fuel rods, it is practically impossible to bring them back in order to enrich them to higher levels so that you can use it in bomb making.
Right.
No, I was just saying, right, and sort of implying like, yep, ain't it hilarious or something, because we have this whole pretend controversy over breakout capability and the amount of uranium they have, and yet the Iranians just keep doing exactly what they said they're doing all along, which is using it for civilian purposes.
In this case, for the United States of America built medical research reactor in Tehran.
Precisely.
This is the research reactor that the United States sold to Iran in 1967.
It was rebuilt to some extent by Argentina in 1992, but basically this is the same reactor.
You know, Mohammed, yesterday our friend David Swanson, the great anti-war activist, apparently had a chance to confront Madeleine Albright, and he asked her whether the price was worth it for half a million Iraqi children to die under the sanctions.
And of course her answer, and she's answered this question now three times, and her answer is always that, I wish I hadn't have said that.
And that was a very poor choice of words.
And I'm very, very sorry that that was the choice of words that I used.
And then the way she responded to Swanson yesterday was, tell me you never said anything that you regret, but what he didn't do, unfortunately, and he does it later kind of in the YouTube, he makes up for it a little bit, but what the question really is, is so are you taking back the fact that you think the policy was worth it?
Because if you're saying that the policy wasn't worth it now, then you're saying that you wish you hadn't have killed all those kids and whatever, whatever.
Are we talking about you're just sad that you said it, or you're sad that you killed all the kids, you know?
Exactly.
But that's the model for the current policy, is in the 1990s, in George Bush Sr. after the first Gulf War, and then throughout Bill Clinton in the first nine months or first year and a half or two of the George Bush Jr. administration, America kept these sanctions on Iraq, basically this total blockade that killed, roughly speaking, a million people, half of them children, and it didn't work, Mohammad.
To get rid of Saddam Hussein, they had to send in the 3rd Infantry Division and sack Baghdad and then turn it over to the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran.
Precisely, and this is what people like me and a lot of Iranians are worried about, because these sanctions are going to kill a large number of Iranians, and then at the end of the day, they will not change the policy of the Iranian leadership, and it will give an excuse to warmongers and neocons and Israeli lobby and all of their allies in the United States to say that, well, we tried sanctions, we tried to solve this through peaceful diplomatic means, it didn't work, so let's attack them.
So this is basically the same scenario that they used in Iraq and now, as you said, is a model for setting Iran up for a war in the future.
Let me also point out something else that really makes me upset when I read it in the mainstream media.
When the IAEA reported in August about the status of Iran's nuclear program, it said that Iran had increased the number of centrifuges in the Fordow facility from something like 1,000 to 2,050.
And then the mainstream media took this as a great leap forward by Iran's nuclear program, saying that Iran had accelerated its nuclear program and is putting itself in a position that it can produce bombs on short notice.
Whereas, in fact, Iran had told the IAEA that it is going to install 3,000 centrifuges in Fordow, and therefore there was no surprise that they had increased the number of installed centrifuges.
But at the same time, as the IAEA reported, most of those centrifuges that had been installed in Fordow were not even connected to each other, which means that they had not made a cascade out of them, which means that they cannot be used for enrichment.
And only roughly about a third of them were producing enriched uranium, which was at a low percentage, 3 to 5%.
But all of this was ignored by the mainstream media.
The only thing that they said was that Iran had accelerated the development of its nuclear program and is rapidly approaching the point that it can produce weapon-grade uranium on short notice.
And this is the type of propaganda that we see practically every day by The New York Times, The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and all of these outlets that basically prepare the public for justifying a war on Iran, whereas the reality on the ground is something totally different.
And I'm afraid that if this continues, whether the president is re-elected next week or whether Romney is elected, this is not going to change.
I watched the debate between the president and Romney, and when it came to Iran, they were basically in complete agreement.
And the president talked about how his administration has imposed crippling sanctions on Iran's economy, but he didn't say a word.
He didn't even express a superficial regret about the fact that these sanctions that he's so proud of and he throws at Romney in his debate have been hurting millions of Iranian people.
And this is the same man who said that he wants to solve the issue of Iran's nuclear program with Iran through diplomatic means.
This is the man who said that he recognizes the legitimacy of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and this is the man that promised the world that the sanctions that are going to be imposed on Iran are not going to hurt ordinary Iranians.
But whatever that has happened on the ground is the exact opposite of what he has said.
And at the same time, he doesn't even say a word about the fact that his administration realizes, recognizes that these sanctions have been hurting Iranian people, but, for example, he hopes that, for example, Iranian people recognize that the U.S. is regretful about this, and he hopes that, you know, he can make up for it.
Nothing.
There was nothing about this.
So to me, it doesn't matter whether the president is elected or reelected or Romney elected.
The war party and what they want to do in the Middle East will be the same, regardless of who is the president.
Yeah, Fred.
So, well, and, you know, I want to get back to what you were alluding to before about how even when they had these talks, the talk, the premise of the talks is, no matter how badly you capitulate, we will still never lift the sanctions.
As far as whatever we've done to you so far, none of that's ever going to change.
And the rules for the negotiation are do everything we say, or at least eventually we're going to kill you.
And that's it.
And then even when the Iranians, and you correct me if I'm wrong, I can only think off the top of my head of twice, but then again, it could have been three different times that the Iranians have gone ahead and accepted the deal anyway, right?
In October of 2009, and then in the spring of 2010, the Iranians said, you know what?
Fine.
We'll do what you say.
We'll export.
We won't enrich above 3.6%.
We'll have all that done outside of the country, and we'll only ever have finished fuel rods and plates and whatever above 3.6% enriched U-235.
And every time that they accepted Barack Obama's deal that he offered them, he refused to accept their acceptance of it.
And that's where we are today.
It's not just a nuclear weapons program that doesn't exist.
Even as far as the substantive nuclear programs, such as it is, he won't even accept their acceptance of his offers.
I totally agree, and this is not just limited to October of 2009 and the spring of 2010.
Remember that in the spring of 2003, the Khatami administration submitted a comprehensive proposal to the Bush administration saying that they are willing to negotiate Iran's nuclear program and all other regional issues that somehow have to do with Iran.
For example, Hezbollah in Lebanon and so on.
Now this was the golden offer, as it was called, burnt offering by Gareth Porter in The American Prospect.
Exactly.
But this is a real important thing.
Because just after the Gulf War II and the fall of Baghdad and the occupation of Iraq, and the Iranians said, we want a deal not just about the nuclear program, we want to put anything you guys want to talk about on the table, especially including helping you occupy Iraq.
Exactly.
And this was rejected.
Then a few months later, the same Khatami administration suspended Iran's nuclear program completely for nearly two years, according to the agreement that they signed with three European powers, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom.
And the European Union was supposed to come back and make a proposal to Iran for a comprehensive agreement between Iran and the European Union, which was basically acting on behalf of the United States.
But when they came back in August of 2005, what they were suggesting was just nothing.
It was just vague promises for the distant future, but in return they wanted Iran to give up everything.
Then Gareth Porter reported just a few days ago that in 1998, a year after Khatami, the reformist president, was elected, he authorized a visit by American scientists, including nuclear scientists and nuclear experts, to Iran, and they could go anywhere they wanted to go, but the Pentagon and Clinton administration rejected the offer.
In 1995, the Iranian president at that time, Rafsanjani, announced that an oil contract had been awarded to the American oil company Conoco, even though a European company had actually won the betting for the contract.
But Rafsanjani wanted to make an overture to the United States, and he wanted to improve the relation between Iran and the United States.
The Clinton administration not only prevented Conoco to actually start working on the contract, but imposed total sanctions on Iran.
So, as you can see, there have been many, many opportunities where Iranians have come forward and said, we are willing to negotiate not only Iran's nuclear program, but also every major issue in the region that somehow is connected to us, or you make them connected to us.
And in all cases, the only thing that Iranians have been after was security guarantees.
In other words, there would be a guarantee that Iran would not be attacked.
Each time the U.S. administration, whether it was Clinton or George W. Bush or Obama, they have rejected the offer.
And yet they talk constantly about Iran carrying out its international obligations, Iran doing what the international community wants it to do, Iran is violating its obligations.
There is never a single word about the fact that Iran has tried to do this.
Iran has come forward with these proposals.
Iran has offered to do a lot of things that these guys want, but it has been turned on each and every time.
Because, as I said, the goal is not nuclear program.
The nuclear program is just an excuse.
The goal is to create a condition for regime change to topple the mullahs in Tehran.
And not just that, but transfer Iran, transform Iran into a client state, which Iran was before the Iranian revolution of 1979.
That's the real goal.
They want Iran to go back to being a client state of the United States and, by extension, Israel, so that the U.S. and Israel can be hegemon of the Middle East and do whatever they wish to do.
That's the real goal, in my opinion.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I was going to ask you if you saw this thing by Julian Borger in The Guardian.
U.S. warns Israel off preemptive strike on Iran.
Did you see that?
Yes, I did.
Yes.
So, I mean, it seems here this is Martin Dempsey, who everyone, including me, interpreted as a really big deal about, what, a month and a half ago, six weeks ago, somewhere like that, said, I don't want to be complicit.
America does not want to be complicit in an Israeli strike on Iran.
And that was interpreted to mean, oh, damn, you better be quiet, Netanyahu.
You just got told by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that you better be quiet, that this is not happening, that we are not in favor of it.
In fact, we are actively opposed to you doing this.
And it seemed like that was the end of it.
But now, so this piece is also about the same guy, Dempsey.
And yet it seems like the message is a bit different.
It seems to me the message is, look, if you guys start the war now, well, first of all, it seems to be taking it, the threat seriously, that the Israelis might just start the war and try to drag us in, kicking and screaming, even now.
This is, you know, the date on this is Halloween.
But then it seems like the meat of the story is, if you guys start the war your way or do it yourself without us, then it's going to really screw up our ability to do it our way, the really effective way, later.
If we're going to have a war with Iran, we want to be able to do it big and bad enough that it doesn't jeopardize our relationship with the rest of the Arabs on the Israeli peninsula and all of that kind of thing.
Is that the way you read that?
I read it exactly that way.
And let me just say this.
Let's say that General Dempsey meant what a lot of people claimed he had meant.
Namely, the U.S. does not want to be complicit.
Namely, the U.S. does not want to be part of this.
Well, whether the U.S. actually participates in any attack by Israel on Iran or not, it is still complicit in anything that can happen to Iran if Israel attacks Iran.
The reason is obvious.
It is the United States that provides Israel with $3 billion a year in financial aid.
It is the United States that provides Israel with the most sophisticated weapons that it has in its own arsenal.
It is the United States that protects Israel in every international organization, from the United Nations, Security Council, and everywhere else.
It is the United States that goes along with the occupation of Palestinian lands by Israel and doesn't do anything to prevent it.
It is the United States that allows American Jews to send billions of dollars from here to Israel every year.
It is the United States that imposes sanctions on Iran because Israel claims that the Iranian regime is an existential threat to Israel, which is total nonsense.
So even if we assume that General Dempsey really meant what a lot of people claimed to have meant, the United States is still complicit.
It was the United States that overthrew the Iranian government 60 years ago.
It was the United States that supported the dictatorship that was put in place after the CIA overthrew Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh.
And that led to the Iranian Revolution.
Sorry to interrupt, but the thing I'm getting at here is, it sounded to me like what Dempsey is saying here is, just wait, we want to have a war too.
Oh, I totally agree.
I totally agree.
And this is how I read it myself.
But what I'm saying is, even if Dempsey meant it the way a lot of people claimed that he had meant it, the U.S. is still complicit.
The U.S. will still be responsible for whatever that Israel might do.
What Israel wants to do is to provoke a war and have the U.S. fight its war for Israel, spend its resources, spill the blood of its young people, and do whatever Israel wants in order to attack a country that hasn't attacked any country for nearly 300 years, a country that is not a threat to Israel.
I know that Iranian leaders use rhetoric about Israel, but these are just for internal consumption and for popularity in the Arab streets.
Iran hasn't actually taken any action, any practical action to threaten Israel, and Iranian leaders will never do that because they are very pragmatic, and they recognize that if they do anything physical, if they actually attack Israel, the counterattack will be devastating, and it will completely destroy Iran.
So Israel doesn't want to stop there and continues to provoke, make provocation for war in Iran, and wants to drag the United States into Iran.
So that's what people like me are very worried about.
Yeah.
All right, now, I'm already keeping you over time, but can I keep you some more?
Sure.
Okay, good, because there are two articles here.
I guess I really only have time to ask about one, but I want to at least mention them both.
And we've already covered this on the show, but I hope people will go and look at your take on it.
Israel Lobby Calls for an Iranian Pearl Harbor.
And this is, of course, about the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and Patrick Lawson proposing that, you know, what we need is to figure out a way to look like a victim here, like the Downing Street Memo calls option B, running start over Iraq.
Bush's proposal, maybe we should just shoot down our own plane and say Saddam did it.
Which they went for option A.
Just go ahead without an excuse, I guess, anyway.
But anyway, so now the other article is Stop Supporting Separatist Groups in Iran.
I'm for that, stopping, that is.
What separatist groups are you referring to here, and what's so bad about supporting them anyway?
Because after all, I know already that you're no friend of the Ayatollah.
The reason you live in California and not in Iran is because of the Ayatollah.
So why not support people inside the country who want to overthrow him?
It's better than carpet bombing, right?
Well, if it were really meant to support the true democratic opposition in Iran, I would wholeheartedly support it.
But that's not the goal of this.
People have talked, in the United States, the neocons and conservatives have talked for decades about how Iran's population is made up of several ethnic groups, like the Kurds, like the Turks, like the Iranian Arabs, the Baluch, and so on.
And people have advocated, these people have advocated, to support groups that supposedly speak for these ethnic groups and make claims to want to separate Iran and set up their own mini-estate.
That's what I'm talking about.
So they have been supporting, for example, a puppet group based in London that supposedly speaks on behalf of Iranian Arabs that live in the province of Khuzestan in southwest Iran, where most of Iran's oil fields are.
And they have carried out a lot of bombing and terrorist operations within Iran.
They have supported Kurdish groups that don't even represent the mainstream Kurdish people of Iran, because the mainstream Kurdish people of Iran have always considered themselves as part of Iran.
And they consider, in fact, themselves the purest type of Iranians over the past thousands of years.
But these groups, their base is in the Iraqi part of Kurdistan, claim that they want free elections in Kurdistan, and they want to have the right to determine their own fate, which is the language for separating from Iran and set up their own state.
Then the U.S. and Israel have supported the Republic of Azerbaijan in northern Iran, and in the Republic of Azerbaijan there are people who have called to change the name of the country from Republic of Azerbaijan to North Azerbaijan, implying that Iran's province of Azerbaijan is South Azerbaijan, and therefore it shouldn't be part of Iran.
It should be separated from Iran and join the present Republic of Azerbaijan.
And interestingly, the present Republic of Azerbaijan was actually part of Iran for thousands of years until the Russian Empire, after the war with Iran in 1828, forcibly separated from Iran.
And interestingly, while Iran's province has always been called Azerbaijan over the past several thousand years, that part, which is now called the Republic of Azerbaijan, was not even Azerbaijan.
It didn't even have that name.
But still, that hasn't stopped the U.S. and Israel from supporting the Republic of Azerbaijan.
In fact, there have been many reports that the Republic of Azerbaijan has given an air force base to Israel near the Iranian border, so that in case Israel decides to bomb Iran, they can, on their way back, they can go and refuel in that air force base within the Republic of Azerbaijan.
But the support hasn't stopped there.
The Kurdish group in Iran, these tiny groups that are supported by the West, have been carrying out terrorist operations.
The Baluchis in Ceyzan and Baluchistan that are based in Pakistan's side of the border in southeast Iran have been carrying out terrorist operations through the Jandala group.
These are the groups that have been carrying out terrorist operations within Iran, and supposedly they speak for Iranian ethnic groups, none of which actually does that, none of which actually represents the ethnic group that they claim to represent.
But yet they are supported by the U.S. and Israel and even some Arab nations of that region.
And the goal is to disintegrate Iran and to break it up into small, mini-states so that they can control them, and at the same time they can control Iran's natural resources.
For example, let's say that the Khuzestan provinces, where most of the oil fields are, let's say it separates from Iran and forms an Arab Republic of Khuzestan, or whatever they want to do.
Then obviously that's most of Iran's oil fields, and if it separates from Iran, then the rest of the country will suffer greatly.
So the idea is to break up Iran into mini-states, the way, for example, it happened in the Balkans in the 1990s, in order to not only break Iran as a large country, but also to control its resources.
In the article that you mentioned, that I published on antiwar.com, I mentioned a quote that is widely attributed to Ariel Sharon, former Israeli prime minister, who in 2003 said, even if Iran becomes a totally democratic country, it is still too big, and therefore it represents a real threat to Israel.
So the goal is not to support democratic opposition within Iran, which exists, but the goal is to break up Iran into mini-states so that Iran, as a large country with a sizable population and a lot of natural resources, will not be a threat to their hegemony and what they want to do for the Middle East.
That's the point.
Otherwise, of course, I support opposition groups within Iran.
I have been writing articles in their support for many, many years, and in fact, as you pointed out, I live here because I cannot go to Iran, and in fact, my own brother was executed by the Iranian government.
Now, would you identify with the Green Movement, the big pro-Mousavi guys, the protests of 2009?
Absolutely.
I am a strong supporter of the Green Movement, and the reason I support it is because it is homegrown, it is independent, it doesn't have any link with any outside power, and it is led by people that I support.
Hossein Mousavi has been a very good man over the past 30 years.
Mehdi Karoubi, the other leader of the Green Movement, has been a very good leader, a very popular leader, and Mousavi's wife, Dr. Zahra Rahnavar, a philosopher as well as an artist, has been a wonderful force in the feminist movement and among Iranian women that have been trying to get rid of discriminatory laws.
So I support the Green Movement in Iran, and I reject any interference by the United States and its allies in Iran's internal affairs.
And let me tell you that there are Iranians living in the United States that are supposedly part of the opposition, but all they want to do is get U.S. help to overthrow the mullahs in Tehran and come to power.
I and people like me also support a change of government in Iran.
We also support a movement towards democracy.
We also support rule of law, but we don't want this to be done by outside forces.
We want this done by the Green Movement or whatever else, whatever movement in Iran that is homegrown, that is independent of foreign powers, and it does it according to its own pace, according to its own interests and the way it wants to do, not at the barrel of a gun by the United States and its allies or through sanctions or through attacks on Iran that will kill Iranian people and will hurt Iran, and the recovery from which will take tens of years, if ever.
That's what I support.
It seems like this and that about the great Satan is really the best talking point that the Iranian police state could ever hope for.
Anybody who ever points out their flaws, and they are legion, their flaws, well, you're just a CIA puppet, and so you're worse than us no matter what because you're a foreigner.
Exactly.
I have always said that whatever they do, whatever the U.S. and its allies do and Israel do, in fact, although they claim to want democracy in Iran or help Iranian people, in fact, has the opposite effect because the Iranian police state, as you said, can easily use it and has been using it, labeling people, labeling legitimate opposition, labeling legitimate popular leaders of the Iran Green Movement as lackeys of the U.S., as lackeys of Israel and the European country.
I think that's deliberate, too.
I think that's always been the policy is to try to marginalize the moderates in any way we can.
I'm sure you saw, and we talked with Gareth about it on the show the other day, the new Gareth Porter piece, about how back in 1998 the Iranians came to an American nuclear scientist and said, hey, why don't you bring all of the best nuclear scientists in America and bring somebody from the DOD?
We don't even care.
Come on over and look at everything we've got.
And the DOD themselves, the Pentagon, said no, no, no, because they just don't want any information that can be used to show that there is no threat there.
And I think this is, Gordon Prather and others figured, and I think it's correct, that this is why, this is the main reason that Dick Cheney outed Valerie Plame and destroyed the CIA front company Brewster Jennings.
They got to kill two birds with one stone and embarrass the ambassador, who was embarrassing them about the missing pretended uranium from Niger.
But really they got to destroy the CIA or at least make a big blow against the CIA's ability to collect intelligence inside Iran by shutting down their group.
And it's easier to lie about Iran if you don't have a bunch of truth coming in.
And so they would rather just have no talks, no embassy.
If we had an embassy, then we could have a whole fleet of CIA spies to tell the truth about what's going on in Iran all the time.
So we can't have that.
We just rather have ignorance and we rather have extremists to point at.
Because it's easier to continue this satanic policy of murdering hemophiliacs and cancer patients to make Benjamin Netanyahu feel better about a nuclear weapons program that even Netanyahu agrees doesn't exist at this point.
I totally agree with you, Scott.
And in fact, I agree with you that some of the things that are done here and by Israel are deliberate in terms of making conditions for the true opposition in Iran, the true democratic, homegrown opposition in Iran practically impossible to work.
And the reason is that, for example, in this country, neoconservatives and Israel lobby, they have their own Iranian man that they want to bring to power.
And they have been working with them behind the scenes.
They help them to be brought to the United States.
They support them.
One of them that I don't want to name, one of them was taken to court because he had made all sorts of baseless allegations about some Iranians that are active against war and against sanctions in this country.
And all of his expenses were paid by Israel lobby and the most extreme anti-Iran elements among neoconservatives in this country.
So they don't want any homegrown movement in Iran.
They don't want any...
Well, now, wait a minute.
Are you talking about the Pahlavi family?
Or who are you talking about?
Well, yes.
I mean, Reza Pahlavi, the son of the late Shah, has been very active.
He has been trying to put together something akin to what happened in Libya and Syria, namely Iranian National Council.
He has set up a website.
He has been interviewing right and left.
And he has been asking Iranian people to support this Iranian National Council.
But when you go to his website, it lists the supposedly political organizations of Iran that support his cause.
But when you look at those organizations, there are all these separatist groups that I talked about in my Anti-War.com article, and I talked about it a few minutes ago.
These are the people who are supported by the West in order to partition Iran into many states.
And Reza Pahlavi doesn't distance himself from such people.
At the same time, his call for, you know, joining the Iranian National Council has been met by dead silence by the credible, legitimate opposition people in this country.
I, for example, never joined it.
I never intend to join such a thing, because I know this is something that has to do with, you know, if not directly U.S. government, but, you know, neoconservatives, Israeli lobby, and so on.
And I'm not going to join anything like that.
You know, as I said, it is in the interest of the United States not to have a homegrown democratic movement in Iran so that if push comes to shove, they will have their own man, the way they thought they would have their own man in, for example, in Libya or Syria or Iraq.
They would have their own man come into power and control the country for them.
So that's why, for example, they never say a word about Hossein Mousavi, the guy who has been under house arrest for nearly two years.
They never say a word about Karoubi, his comrade, and Mousavi's wife, Dr. Zahra Rahman.
The three of them have been under house arrest for nearly two years, but there is not a single word of support by the U.S. government, by the State Department, by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
All they say is just empty words and, at the same time, imposing harsh sanctions on Iranian people that is damaging millions of Iranians and hurting them and ruining Iranian economy.
All right, everybody, that is Mohamed Sahimi.
He's a professor of chemical engineering at USC in Los Angeles, and, of course, he writes for PBS Frontline's Tehran Bureau, Antiwar.com, and the latest in Al Jazeera is called The Unfolding Human Catastrophe in Iran, and two more right here.
Oh, yeah, here we have Israel lobby calls for Iranian Pearl Harbor and stop supporting separatist groups in Iran.
Both of those are at Antiwar.com.
Thanks very much for your time.
It's always great to talk to you, Mohamed.
Thank you very much for having me on your program, Scott.
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