Anti-war Radio Chaos 92.7 FM in Austin, Texas.
How serious is the danger of a war with Iran before the end of the Bush term?
Well, I don't know, but I know who's got a pretty good idea.
It's Gareth Porter, independent historian and journalist for IPS News, the American Prospect, the Huffington Post.
You can find all of his IPS stuff at antiwar.com slash Porter.
And he's got the eagle eye on the administration's case for war with Iran and their moves toward that end.
Welcome back to the show, Gareth.
Thanks, Scott.
As always, glad to be on.
It's very good to have you here, sir.
So the headlines are driving me crazy this week.
Robert Gates, the Secretary of Defense, has announced that the Iranians are hell-bent on obtaining a nuclear weapon, which I guess means, never mind the National Intelligence Estimate from last November, which said that the opposite was the case.
Admiral Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Petraeus, all singing the song, Iranians are killing Americans in Iraq.
They're at war against us.
They're seeking nuclear weapons.
Something's got to be done.
It's like I'm in a time machine, and it's a year ago.
Well, that's not a bad analogy, actually, Scott.
I think, in a way, we are back to where we were a year ago, and I've said this a number of times, I think, that in late 2006, mid-December 2006, Bush met with the Joint Chiefs in the tank at the Pentagon and told them he was thinking about attacking Iran's nuclear facilities.
They told him in no uncertain terms that that was not a good idea, but the idea was clearly being pushed forward by Dick Cheney's office within the administration, and that was close to being Bush policy, although I think he was somewhat sobered by the Joint Chiefs' position.
Well, it was like one year ago, pretty much, almost exactly a year ago, right?
Wasn't it last May that Stephen Clemens broke the story at the Washington Note that Dick Cheney had sent David Wilmser around to the American Enterprise Institute to push the idea that Cheney no longer trusted Bush to make the right decision and start a war, so he was thinking of making a backroom deal with the Israelis to go ahead and start the war for us, and then provoke the Iranians into attacking American positions in the Gulf, and then the New York Times confirmed it, right?
Exactly.
That's right.
That Cheney was concerned about Bush not moving fast enough or hesitating about this, and that he was thinking of a strategy of doing an end-run around the president to make it more difficult, if not impossible, for him to avoid attacking Iran, and of course, as you say, part of the strategy was some kind of provocation, trying to provoke Iran into some kind of military move that would justify an attack on its nuclear facilities, and of course, it would not just be its nuclear facilities, but all of its military targets.
Well, do you know what argument was it of the chiefs that won out, that stopped Cheney from doing this a year ago?
They certainly had the effect of making him hesitate, there's no doubt about that.
But there's clearly more to the story, and this is where I'm trying to pick up what happened after that Steve Fleming story, and indeed after a second story that created quite a stir for good reason, which was a McClatchy story in August of last year that reported that Cheney had been pushing in previous weeks, that is June-July, for a strike on the bases of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, Quds Force, in Iran, which were being tied by the administration to Shiite militiamen in Iraq, arguing that they were training them, perhaps even doing other things, but primarily I think the training was the key nexus that they were using to make the case.
Now, according to McClatchy's story, there was a caveat, which was that it was agreed that they needed to have some kind of smoking gun evidence, or at least evidence that would be spectacular, something different, like capturing some militiamen trying to cross the border, or some weapons crossing the border, something like that.
However, in early July, there was a press briefing by Petraeus's spokesperson, Major General Bergner, which claimed that they had now evidence showing that the Iranians were training the Shiite militiamen, these so-called special groups, and of course, as we know, that was simply a way of avoiding the reality, which was that the Mahdi Army was, in fact, getting training in both Iraq and Iran, and that was cited the same day that Senator Joe Lieberman gave a speech in which he cited the briefing in Baghdad as a basis for saying that the United States ought to go ahead and target, to bomb, Iranian bases.
Well, and I remember you wrote an article, I guess, at the end of last summer, where you described the Cheney-Lieberman conspiracy to make all these arguments in time.
Well, indeed, and I'm of course talking about a situation where clearly this was being done with Cheney's, not just his permission, but his active involvement.
In other words, there was a war conspiracy going on in which Cheney was pushing forward his own proposal for bombing the IRGC Quds Force bases in Iran, and hoping that he could use that briefing in Baghdad as a basis for getting that through the administration.
Well, that did not happen, and here's where I pick up the story further.
I have now discovered that the debate going on within the administration at that point in the summer of last year was that Bryce and Gates and the Joint Chiefs were using as their main argument against this Cheney strategy of bombing the IRGC bases in Iran that Iran had what they called escalation dominance.
Okay, now what's escalation dominance?
Escalation dominance is a Cold War military term.
It's really an Air Force term.
It means essentially the United States has the ability to control the process of escalation at every stage, at any stage, because it has superior strategic power and superior power at each level of escalation so that it can prevent the other side from making a decision to make a move against the United States or its interests.
That's the way it was used during the Cold War.
Now, for the first time, the argument was being made by the opponents of Cheney that the Iranians had escalation dominance.
Although this was not made explicit in the source that I'm relying on, which was Michael Gerson, the former Bush speechwriter, writing an op-ed in the Washington Post last summer, it was very clear that the main escalation dominance that the Iranians had at that point was the Mahdi Army and its ability to attack if the United States attacked Iran.
Now, bear in mind...
Well, now, hang on one second.
So our argument this whole time, all the anti-war people's argument this whole time, that the number one worst consequence for the American side of a war against Iran would be the danger to our soldiers in Iraq because the Mahdi Army and or the Badr Corps would rise up against them.
That argument actually did win out in the circles of power in DC.
It was, in fact, very potent at that point in the story.
That is to say, it was apparently an effective mechanism for restraining Cheney at that point.
But, and here is where the story gets really very dark and sinister.
In September of last year, I was invited to get a briefing by an official who we'll call senior government official.
That's what he insisted upon being identified as in my article and in the article that I would write about the briefing.
And in this briefing, which he presented nonstop, didn't allow me to ask any questions and then basically walked out over about 20, 25 minutes.
He presented the idea that the United States could not allow the Iranians to have escalation dominance because that escalation dominance was, they were going to try to use that to push the United States out of Iran and also to get the United States to accept its nuclear weapons, its alleged nuclear weapons policy.
So basically, Cheney was very cleverly playing Rice and Gates and the Joint Chiefs, you know, sort of preying on their weakness, which is that they had bought into the idea of the United States should not allow Iran to have nuclear weapons.
And of course, the United States could not allow Iran to push us out of Iraq.
They simply said, well, we need to confine this, we can confine our response to Iraq rather than going into Iran.
But what Cheney was saying was that we cannot allow them to have this escalation dominance, which is to say the power of the Mahdi army to hurt the United States if we attacked Iran, I should say.
But we must go after the Mahdi army because it is going to attack us anyway.
And this was the occasion for this briefing, I should say, was a step up in rocket and mortar attacks on the Green Zone by obviously by Shiite militiamen, because they were coming from Sadr City and that area.
And this senior government official was suggesting that this could not be allowed to stand.
The United States had to do something about it.
And it was all being tied into the idea that the United States, if the United States didn't do something about it, they would continue to push us, they would put pressure on us to get out of Iraq and to basically accept the Iranian nuclear program.
So apparently, this was something that Rice and Gates could not accept.
And it was clear that they signed on to this idea.
This was a new assessment, which had been agreed to in an interagency process.
Okay, let me make sure I understand you here, Gareth.
Everybody, it's Gareth Porter from Interpress Service.
What you're saying is that Rice and Gates said, Cheney, we can't have this war because the Mahdi Army will have our guys in a really bad position in Iraq.
So that's why we can't do it.
And particularly because the Iranians lately have been funding and providing training for the Mahdi Army guys.
They're even more deadly than they used to be.
So we can't do this.
And Cheney said, you know what?
You're right.
The Iranians do have a policy of backing the Mahdi Army against us because they're trying to drive us out of Iraq.
And that's why we need to have a war against them.
But the Mahdi Army first, okay?
And that was the trap that Gates and Rice had set themselves into.
We cannot allow the Mahdi Army to continue to rocket and mortar attack the Green Zone.
And by the way, they had become much more effective in those attacks than it was admitted to me that these rockets and mortars had become quite accurate compared with the previous years when they had tried to attack the Green Zone but had been using Katyusha rockets, which were from Iraqi, old Iraqi government stocks, which were, I was told, mostly dud.
And now they were mostly accurate.
And they were actually doing some damage.
And this was really quite worrisome to the U.S. Embassy and to, therefore, to the Bush administration, various players in the Bush administration.
And this was something that Cheney and his office used to great effectiveness in the intra-administration bureaucratic struggle over the issue of what to do about Iran.
Well, now, this week, there's a new carrier group.
There's a second carrier group has entered the Persian Gulf.
Not three yet, apparently.
Well, right.
Of course, this takes us back to where we were during the early months of 2007.
Well, and we have Gates saying they're hell-bent on acquiring nuclear weapons.
We have to stop them.
So what does that mean?
Well, I think that it does mean that Cheney has won.
He hasn't won everything completely.
But he has won, you know, out of 10 rounds, he's won six or seven.
And he's ahead on points.
He's way ahead on points at this point.
OK, but at least we have enough realism in the vice president's office that recognizes that they at least have to try, I guess, to fight the Mahdi army and or weaken the Mahdi army before they attack Iran.
Seems to me just I'm just guessing, you know, from Austin, Texas, that's not going to work.
If anything, they'll probably just double the size of the Mahdi army.
And then maybe that'll make a war with Iran impossible.
But I think you're right.
I mean, this this is where his plan breaks down.
And by the way, of course, the plan depended heavily on the fact that Cheney had found a new ally in General David Petraeus.
And the evidence that I've been able to put together suggest that there was a showdown between Petraeus and Fallon in September 2003.
Again, Admiral Fallon was the head of CENTCOM at the time, Petraeus' boss.
Fallon was in Baghdad at the same time that President Bush made a surprise visit, surprise to the public, in early September 2007.
And Fallon and Petraeus had a an argument, a very unusual argument, in which Bush was the bystander.
He was the observer.
And the argument was over whether the United States should continue a rapid pullout of troops after the surge was completed.
And those search troops had been brought home in July of 2008.
In other words, they were thinking almost nine months ahead of time as to what the next step would be after the surge.
That was a key issue being argued out before the president.
And, of course, Fallon was saying that the United States should continue to withdraw troops.
He had prepared a proposal which would call for the reduction of U.S. troops withdrawal of 100,000 troops by the end of 2009.
So it would leave something on the order of 35,000 to 40,000 troops, really not very much left over, and certainly not enough to carry on offensive operations.
And I think it's fair to view this, and of course Petraeus then argued, no, we want to keep as many troops for as long as possible.
Basically, no further withdrawals through 2008.
This argument was being carried out in the knowledge on the part of both men that Petraeus and Cheney had a plan to try to take down the Mahdi Army, not to, obviously, to completely eliminate all the Mahdi Army, that would be impossible, but to reduce it to the point where it could be argued effectively within the administration that the Mahdi Army could incredibly threaten to carry out an offensive that would really hurt U.S. troops in retaliation for an attack on Iran.
Now, bear in mind, of course, that Sader had been in Tehran in early January 2006 and had publicly stated that if the United States attacked Iran, the Mahdi Army would carry out an offensive, would retaliate against the U.S. forces in Iraq.
So this is not simply a theoretical proposition.
There's very strong reason to believe that, indeed, that would be the occasion for him to try to push the United States out of Iraq, which, of course, was what he wanted to do anyway.
Why is the Badr Corps completely missing from this discussion?
It seems like they would be just as likely or more likely to rise up against the American forces in the event of war with Iran.
Well, I mean, the Badr Corps, first of all, is about one-tenth the size of the Mahdi Army.
I'm just guessing, but that seems to me to be a reasonable guess.
And secondly, of course, the Badr Corps, at this point, faces in two directions.
I mean, you know, it's definitely loyal to Iran, but at the same time, it is dependent on the United States.
It is part of a government dependent on the United States, and so its loyalty is somewhat more ambiguous, shall we say.
In other words, it's unclear how it would respond.
It might well do so, but it also is not nearly the threat that the Mahdi Army is.
It doesn't have even a fraction of the military power, and it's not backed by the millions of Shiite who back the Badr's Mahdi Army.
Right.
Although they do have American soldiers embedded with their units.
I mean, they are kind of in the right position if they don't have overwhelming numbers.
Well, that's true.
I mean, it's certainly conceivable that they would take their cue from the Iranians.
Well, and it's true that Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Islamic Council, has said we would do our duty in the event of an American war with Iran.
That's in William S. Lynn's article, How to Lose an Army, in the American Conservative Magazine.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I just think that the United States clearly is much more worried about the Mahdi Army in terms of its ability to fight not only in Baghdad, but throughout the Shiite South.
Well, so what about my theory that they're going to, which it looks like it's already started, Maliki got the war started early, as you explained last time you were on the show.
He wanted to avoid the American help in trying to take on the Mahdi Army since it delegitimized him so badly, and he got the battle of Basra started a few weeks ago.
It looks like it's still going on now in Sadr City.
But after this fails, which it's doomed to fail, does that mean that Cheney might not be able to get his war?
Well, I think this is a very big question, and in order to answer that, maybe I could just pick up the story as I've begun to piece it together now, just in recent days, with this early September 2007 debate between Petraeus and Fallon.
Of course, Petraeus may have lost the debate in terms of debating points, but Bush definitely, hearing the Vice President whispering in his ear, obviously was going to support Petraeus' position.
And it did, in fact, become the official position when Petraeus came back to testify before Congress in September of last year.
Of course, that was the position he took, that the United States should not be thinking of carrying out further withdrawals after the surge troops were withdrawn in July of 2008.
Then we should stop and wait and not be prepared to carry out further withdrawals for a while, at least until the end of 2008.
And I'm very clear that the reason for that was that they were already planning to carry out a major campaign against the Mahdi Army, which would take many months, but which would require all of the troops the United States could muster to have in reserve for that purpose.
Fallon, on the other hand, wanted to take away that option, and one of the ways to do that was to insist that the United States should be continuing to withdraw its troops from Iraq.
Now, I've written before, and I think that certainly it was one factor that Fallon was concerned about having troops in reserve for contingencies in Afghanistan and in Pakistan, but I now believe that the primary reason, by far, in Fallon's mind for pushing for a rapid withdrawal of troops from Iraq was that he wanted to take away the option of a major U.S. campaign against the Mahdi Army in 2008.
Well, so do you know about what's really going on in Sadr City right now?
I saw one report that over 1,000 people have died in the last few weeks there.
Is this the early beginning of that very offensive?
Well, I think that it's unclear exactly how it's related to the intention of, clearly, Petraeus's intention and Cheney's intention to have an offensive which is really aimed broadly at essentially weakening the Mahdi Army to the point where it's no longer a threat.
You know, it certainly could be argued that this is part of that.
I simply don't know enough about exactly what's going on there to be able to say at this point, and I think, you know, it's certainly, if not by any means, the start of the kind of campaign that Petraeus was proposing last month, and indeed, which clearly was the planning on it must have begun at the very latest earlier in March, and my speculation is that it was Fallon's forced resignation in the first or second week.
The die was cast in the first or second week of March after it was known that the Esquire magazine article was going to have damaging quotes in it that could be used against Fallon, and I think it's quite possible, let me put it this way, it's quite possible that it was around March 6th, 7th, 8th, when the administration knew that they were going to be able to demand Fallon's resignation, that the planning began on this major offensive, major campaign which would last months and would begin in mid-July of 2008.
The Independent in the UK, by the way, reported later, two weeks later, that a Mahdi Army fighter told the Independent that they knew about the intended campaign by Al-Maliki two weeks earlier, by the 14th of March.
So you can put two and two together there and figure out that Al-Maliki, having picked up the intelligence that the planning was already underway for this U.S. campaign, a major U.S. campaign in Basra to start during the summer, began to plan his own campaign within a matter of days.
As you explained last time, to preempt the American attack because it would cost too much of his credibility if he sent his forces in with the Americans to do it, he thought.
Well I think that was one possible, I mean that was certainly one reason why he would have an interest in doing that.
The other possibility, which I'm not ready to go to print yet with, but I think there's some circumstantial evidence of this, is that he believed that it was in his interest, and Iran also believed that it was in their interest, to preempt the U.S. campaign because Iran could help settle a campaign carried out by Sader within a few days, limiting the damage to his own government, his own forces, and limiting the danger of a U.S. attack on Iran by the same token, by preempting that U.S. attack, which could be used as the basis for an attack on Iran.
This is more speculative at this point, but it certainly seems to me that it's a good possibility that there was an understanding between Iran and Maliki.
He would carry out a more limited campaign, but it would be settled within a matter of days, and in fact we now know from the McClatchy story that came out this past week that the government delegation of legislators, the pro-government legislators who went to Tehran, left on the 28th or even the 27th, at least on the latest of the 28th, and I have reason to think that they probably left on the 27th, two days after the offensive began.
Now, you're leaving two days after the offensive began, that suggests to me that there's a real possibility that this was already foreseen before it even started.
Right, and of course, al-Maliki is a member of the Davo party, which is very close to Iran and has been all along.
That's right.
Well now, to Dick Cheney's argument that what the Iranians want is to back the Mahdi army to the degree that they have such escalation dominance that they can force America out of Iraq, do you think that that's right, that that's what the Iranians want?
I think that the Iranians are primarily, I mean, they have a hierarchy of interest, and the primary interest is to have a deterrent to U.S. attack on Iran.
The second interest is to preserve a Shiite government in power, which, as I've argued in the past, I think that suggests that they certainly don't want a civil war between the Sadrists and al-Maliki's government.
They want to avoid that by almost, at almost any cost.
So that's the second interest.
The third level of interest is to put pressure on the United States to withdraw gradually over time.
Obviously, it's in their interest to have some U.S. troops there, to the extent that that's a deterrent to attack on Iran.
So they obviously are not hell-bent to push the United States out, you know, by the end of 2008, you know, before the end of the Bush term.
But beyond that, of course, yes, I mean, they are interested in, you know, giving the United States an incentive to be concerned with setting a date for withdrawal at some point in the future, rather than forcing them out through a military, you know, with a military campaign.
I don't think they foresee that as the way to do it.
Well, to the degree that they prefer the Supreme Islamic Council types to the Mahdi army types, when it comes to which Shiite factions are dominant in the end, is it the case that American occupation over the long term is strengthening Skiri's position or simply weakening it all along at this point?
Well, I think you know the answer to that.
It's almost a rhetorical question.
Well, you know, Bush keeps saying they'll stand up, we'll stand down.
And when he says they, he's talking about the same people that the Iranians want also to stand up.
So if America is only training and attempting to stand up the same people that Iran wants, then maybe it is in their interest to keep us around for a little while longer till we can, I don't know, make Maliki's government strong.
All right, it is a stupid question.
Well, I actually I thought that you were, I thought you were arguing a more subtle point, Scott, which is that the longer the United States stays, and the more it clashes with the Sadr city population and the Mahdi army, as well as with the Mahdi army in southern cities, southern Shiite cities, the stronger it's making Sadr's position.
What?
I have no doubt that that's the case.
Me subtle?
I don't know what you're talking about.
There are two things going on, you're right, that the United States has strengthened within the security services, the position of the Dala party and the al-Hakim forces, the Badr organization, and therefore, in a sense, al-Maliki.
But at the same time, there's a contradictory process going on, which the United States, you know, politically is pushing people in the direction of a commitment, stronger commitment to support of Sadr's forces, and certainly, and this is, I think, even more important, what he is doing is solidifying the morale and the organization of the Sadr, of the Mahdi army.
I've just viewed a video, a video of the demonstrations that took place in Sadr city, and perhaps, and it wasn't clear, I'm not sure, perhaps in other parts of Baghdad, but I couldn't be clear about that.
Primarily in Sadr city, it appeared to me that it was well over 100,000.
I mean, it was vast, vast throngs of people shown in this videotape.
This, of course, was not reported in the US press.
There was no indication that what had happened during the operation in Basra in March was that the Sadrist forces mustered not just tens of thousands, but from that appearance, well over 100,000 people, and these were militant, militant demonstrations.
It was really a show of force, and I, you know, this, in my view, marked a new stage of development of the Sadrist movement right in Baghdad.
Yeah, there were some pictures, still photos.
I think the International Herald Tribune ran a couple, but yeah, well, that's what Bush said, right?
This is a defining moment in the history of Iraq, and it goes, I guess, to the major theme of this entire war from beginning to end, is that no matter what they think they have as their ends, the means never get them there.
They're always, no matter what they do, they create the exact opposite reaction from what they're trying to do.
You're absolutely right.
I mean, that is the governing principle of the dynamics through which the Iraq conflict has passed, and I must say, I would argue that the gap between what the U.S. military and the Bush administration believe they're doing, and that they're capable of doing, and the reality is growing wider, not narrowing as time goes by.
I mean, I am completely convinced that the Petraeus command is so in over their head in their going to battle against the Shiite forces in Iraq.
In my view, this is much worse than it ever was with the Sunnis.
I mean, I think they're up against a much stronger opponent here than they ever were with regard to the Sunnis.
The Sunnis, a total of perhaps a couple of million, two or three million people who were actively in some way supporting the Sunnis, but I think the Sadrists are even more potent for a variety of reasons, and more able to give the United States a very serious black eye.
Yeah, well, that's what Patrick Coburn was saying, too, is that the Americans have started a whole other front in this war now, and they have no idea what they're getting into.
They're taking on basically the majority of the majority Shia.
Yeah, exactly.
So this does not bode well for this effort, and I have to say I simply do not understand the degree of unreality that must prevail within the military command for this to be taking place.
You know, one former intelligence analyst who I spoke with recently said that Petraeus is talking about the special groups, the whole special groups line, as simply a matter of sucking up to Cheney's office, and that was sort of an interesting comment.
I think that makes sense, but that's the underlying dynamic here, that Petraeus, as you know, he was accused of being a mask-kissing chickenshit by the, I hope I haven't violated any FAA, I'm sorry, FAA.
They don't have any jurisdiction here, my friend.
That's great, okay, don't have to worry about that.
Anyway, this is a good illustration of what Fallon was talking about.
I think that Petraeus has been willing to basically cater to the wishes of Cheney and his office so completely that, you know, I wonder if he has completely lost any sense of what reality is there by having gone over to the dark side and sort of played that game.
It's hard to know what his perception of reality is anymore.
Well, and I'm confused, too, that now they're calling it the special groups and criminal gangs again.
It seemed like they had dropped that talking point that, okay, let's face it, the Mahdi Army is the Mahdi Army and we're not able to split them off by calling them different names or whatever, but now they're doing it again.
Transparently false ploy.
I mean, there are a number of places that one could document that the United States has essentially admitted on the record that we're fighting the Mahdi Army, not just some splinter groups that have run off to Tehran or to the Iranians.
The problem is that it's such a transparent falsehood that, you know, the truth emerges, pops up over and over again, and I mean, they can't help it.
I mean, it's so obvious that that's who they've been fighting in both Badr City and in the south.
And so, you know, the continuation of that line is really much more of a desperate attempt to paper over the truth.
You know, it just shows how desperate they are.
Yep.
All right, everybody, that's Gareth Porter from Interpress Service, the American Prospect, and the Huffington Post.
You can read all his IPS stuff at antiwar.com slash Porter.
Thanks very much for your time today, Gareth.
Always a pleasure to talk to you, Scott.
