03/14/14 – Muhammad Sahimi – The Scott Horton Show

On March 7th at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., the Council for the National Interest is co-hosting the first-ever National Summit to Reassess the U.S.-Israel Special Relationship.
Confirmed speakers include Walt Scheuer, Giraldi, McGovern, Kutowski, Porter, McConnell, Weiss, Raimondo, USS Liberty survivor Ernie Gallo, as well as co-sponsors Alison Ware of If Americans Knew, and the great Grant Smith of the Institute for Research Middle East Policy.
That's the National Summit to Reassess the U.S.-Israel Special Relationship, Friday, March the 7th, all day at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
Our first guest today is the great Mohamed Sahimi.
He's a professor of chemical engineering down there at USC in Los Angeles.
And he writes oftentimes for Antiwar.com, and it's imenews.com, right, Mohamed?
Correct, Brian.
Thank you for having me in your program, Scott.
Well, welcome back.
I'm very happy to have you here.
I'm very happy to see this piece coming out.
It'll be running on Antiwar.com on Monday, because we want to make sure that it gets, you know, Monday levels of eyeballs rather than weekend levels.
We want everybody to see this.
It's called A Compromise with Iran Is Possible If It Is Not Asked to Surrender.
And so now here we are, we're in the middle of the process, I guess.
We've got the interim deal, and we've got basically the lower level processes negotiated all the way through as far as, you know, on the IAEA level, the scientist level, as far as implementing the agreement, you know, as it's negotiated so far.
And everything seems to be going okay.
But then the question is, on the 17th, when the, which, geez, I didn't realize it was starting again so soon, on the 17th, when the negotiations start again, you know, what's the view of how difficult, what's your view, what's others' views of how difficult it will be to go ahead and see this thing all the way through and get a final deal?
You note that there are many, certainly with a loud voice in the media, who are quite pessimistic about how this thing is going to work out going forward from here, Mohamed.
Of course, we know that Israel doesn't want any solution that does not dismantle Iran's nuclear infrastructure.
And as I said in my article, it has been trying its best to scuttle and prevent the negotiations from going anywhere.
And we all know that about 10 days ago, it claimed, just when Benjamin Netanyahu was visiting the United States to participate in AIPAC annual meeting, that it has intercepted a large shipment of weapons that were supposedly or allegedly sent by Iran to the Palestinian group Hamas in Gaza, or perhaps Islamic Jihad in Gaza.
But if you look at the map and take seriously what the Israelis said, we see that first of all, the shipment, if it were sent by Iran to Palestine, cannot go through the sea to reach Gaza, simply because it has to pass through the Suez Canal.
And that is not possible, because Egyptians are watching it and Israelis are watching it.
It cannot go through land route, first go to Sudan, and then go to Egypt, cross the Suez Canal, go into the Sinai Desert, and then eventually reach Gaza.
But we know that the Egyptian military dictatorship is an ardent foe of Iran.
It has been against any sort of relation with Iran.
And these weapons that Israel exhibited last Sunday, that were allegedly from Iran, they are large, and Israel was talking about a very large shipment.
So unless we believe that Iranians were so smart that they could bribe hundreds of military personnel, security personnel, and so on, in Egypt, so that they can pass that large shipment through Egypt without being noticed, and they also pass it through the Sinai Desert without Israeli getting a notice, then we see that this is just all fabricated and intended to basically prove to the world that Iran is not serious with this negotiation and its policy under the new president, Hassan Rouhani, hasn't changed, which in fact, they have changed.
And as I said in the article, also we have the report from Reuters, claiming that the Iranian...
Now hold it right there, hold it right there.
Let's talk about this Gaza weapons shipment for a second here, because the so-called evidence that it even came from Iran in the first place, I believe was a sack of rice with the word made in Iran, or from Iran, written on it in English, something like that.
I believe, and I'm sorry, because I did not follow up on every little bit of news about this, but I read a little bit about it in Haaretz and a couple other places, Mohammed, and I'm under the impression that no one was any more convinced than you're convinced that these mortars were even headed to Gaza at all, never mind whether that has anything to do with the nuclear deal, or whether that should be a surprise or anything else.
I think that your doubts here are pretty much the consensus on that issue.
You know, everybody was pretty much doubtful about that, correct?
Well, I agree, because we have had these cases in the past, and in fact, as you said, there may have been some sort of shipment from Iran going somewhere, sending cement or food and stuff or something, and then Israelis fabricated the whole thing just to show, as I said, just to demonstrate or show that Iran is not serious, and, you know, everything as usual in Tehran, which is actually not true.
Iran has actually changed its direction.
In fact, the changes that you're talking about in Iran have always been there.
The Iranian government has always wanted to reach a compromise with the West over its nuclear program, but it has been the West that has rebuffed Iran at every turn whenever Iran has proposed a compromise over its nuclear program.
Right.
Okay, now let's get to this Reuters report, because I thought this was a pretty underhanded little dirty trick, what they tried to pull off here.
Yes, I mean, this is, again, not new, because we know, for example, that there are other reporters that always basically plant unfunded, exclusive reports in the media, trying to cast doubt on what Iran has been doing or has not been doing.
And the latest version of it was what Reuters reported, which claimed that the IAEA had actually new evidence supporting this allegation of its November 2011 that Iran's nuclear program in the past may have had a possible military dimension.
And the IAEA was on the verge of publicizing the new evidence, but it decided not to do so because Iran and 5 plus 1 reached an interim agreement in Geneva last December.
The report, first of all, was quoted anonymous sources, which is typical of such reports.
They never tell us who told them, and probably in this case, for example, somebody in Israel may have said something if there was actually a source, or God knows who.
Secondly, it didn't actually say what kind of evidence.
It just said something that would support the allegations in the past.
Well, the allegations in the past by themselves were completely constructed by many, many people, because those allegations all followed from that discredited laptop story in the past.
Supposedly a laptop was stolen inside Iran and taken to the West that contained very revealing materials about Iran's nuclear program in the past.
But that laptop story was completely discredited.
But Yukio Amano, when he became Director General of IAEA in December of 2009, revived it.
Now, even if you take this seriously, the question is, since when Yukio Amano, in my view, has become so concerned about, you know, keeping the negotiations going?
The guy has completely politicized IAEA since taking over.
There are Wikileaks documents showing that he's completely out of the West when it comes to Iran's nuclear program.
He has always alleged unfounded, baseless allegations in his report, such as, for example, talking about nuclear material in Iran that Iran hasn't declared, whereas he has never presented any evidence that such material actually exists.
And now, all of a sudden, we have a Director General, such as Yukio Amano, who is actually concerned about Iran and the West not getting negotiations going, and therefore retails the information.
This just defies the whole history of Yukio Amano and what he has done.
And in fact, it got so bad that IAEA had actually to deny that he was going to publish any report or to deny that there was such evidence.
But the reporters of Reuters didn't even consider the possibility that even if the evidence, some sort of evidence, raw material or whatever we call it, exists, and IAEA didn't publish them, it was because probably that even for a guy like Yukio Amano, who has totally politicized IAEA, the evidence wasn't really evident.
It wasn't really credible.
He couldn't sell it in any shape or form to the public or international organization.
It was just too bad, too crude, too rude to do it, and therefore he didn't sell it.
But they didn't even consider that possibility.
It's probably safe to assume that he had opposition from within the IAEA, too.
That like, come on, boss, we're not going to go through with this thing.
This isn't right, you know?
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, we know that within the IAEA, there are experts that have been very cautious about how to interpret any data, particularly on a sensitive issue like Iran, and therefore they didn't even consider that possibility.
They just said, yes, there was evidence, IAEA was going to publish it, but it retailed the information and the report because, you know, progress was made in the negotiations between Iran and five spots.
But that was another attempt that we saw in the mass media trying to present an unrealistic view of what's going on in the negotiations and what Iran wants.
Then there is another group of people that always listen to what is said in Iran and what is said in Iran, and they point to the pronouncement by Iran's Supreme Leader, Arafat Ali Khamenei, who always says that he's skeptical about the negotiations with the West.
Right.
All right, hold it right there, Mohammed.
We got to take this stupid break here, and then when we get back, more with Mohammed Sahimi about his great new piece for Antiwar.com that'll be running on Monday.
A compromise with Iran is possible if it is not asked to surrender.
Mohammed Sahimi from USC back on the other side of this break.with great art scene coverage and fiction writing as well.
That's Modern Times Magazine at ModernTimesMagazine.com.
All right, you guys, welcome back to the show here.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is the Scott Horton Show here on Liberty Express.
And I'm talking with Mohammed Sahimi.
He teaches chemical engineering at USC, but also he's a great journalist and columnist as well.
IMEnews.com is where he writes as well as Antiwar.com, where this one will be running on Monday.
A compromise with Iran is possible if it is not asked to surrender.
And now, Mohammed, one of the things that you mentioned in here is, I guess, the war party, the only ones who are really complaining, because they'll complain about anything they can to try to, you know, just drum up as much doubt as they can, I guess.
One of the drums that they're beating here is that the Ayatollah Khamenei doesn't have his heart in it.
He's not really willing to compromise.
But you write here that they actually, you know, like he's Ahmadinejad or something.
They're basically misquoting him in order to make that claim.
Is that correct?
Yes, the Supreme Leader, because he controls the foreign policy.
And therefore, we couldn't have gotten this far if Khamenei wasn't interested.
In fact, Khamenei has always been interested in a compromise solution over Iran's nuclear program.
But the misquoting that takes place is regarding what he says regarding negotiations with the United States.
What he has been saying is that he even supports negotiations with the United States, but he's skeptical that Iran and the United States can reestablish diplomatic relations based on nuclear respect and based on nonintervention of the United States in Iran's internal affairs.
In this regard, without meaning to defend his regime in Iran, and God knows that I don't like his regime in Iran, I agree with him, because the United States is not interested in a mutually respectful relationship with Iran.
If we look around in the Middle East, for example, and North Africa, we see that every war that the U.S. has started or has taken side in that war, if it didn't start, it was just based on the intention of controlling the resources of those countries.
Invasion of Iraq, for example, attack on Libya, for example, intervention on the side of the opposition in Syria and Lebanon, these are all for controlling and intervening in internal affairs of those countries and controlling the resources of those countries, at least in the opinion of people like me.
And therefore, why should we believe that the U.S. is interested in anything other than that in Iran?
So the miscoding is regarding nuclear negotiations on one hand and a bilateral relationship between Iran and the United States on the other.
Khamenei has always been skeptical regarding the latter and has always supported the former.
So this is another case.
And in fact, Ali Gharijani, who is the speaker of the Iranian parliament, and he's very close to Khamenei, was recently quoted saying that what Khamenei is skeptical is diplomatic relations with the United States, but he fully supports the negotiations, the nuclear negotiations with the Five Cross Fund, because he really wants to reach a compromise solution.
At the same time, as I quoted in my article, Mohamed Bouazandeh, who is a former defense minister and who is also an appointee of Khamenei to several important state organizations, and is very close to Khamenei also, just like Ali Gharijani, also said recently that the state has decided to close Iran's nuclear fund, which means that Iran has decided to reach a diplomatic solution with the West so that the nuclear issue would go away, so that the government can concentrate on rebuilding the country.
So these are all clear indications that Iran actually wants a compromise solution, provided that the West stops denying too much and recognizes the realities on the ground.
Now, on the other hand, we can also, for example, interpret Khamenei's negative statement as talking to his domestic audience.
He's the ultimate power in Iran, so therefore he's maneuvering to put himself in a position that if negotiations fail, and if they fail, I believe it would be because the United States and its allies want too much, if the negotiations fail, he can say, well, I told you so.
I knew that this may happen.
And at the same time, Iran also has hardliners, just like the United States has hawks and hardliners, and I discussed this in several articles over the past couple of months, that Iran also has hardliners, and they also don't want any nuclear agreement with the United States and with the West.
And therefore, Khamenei, just like President Obama here, has to control his hardliners, his hawks, and appear resolute and strong in order to be able to advance the negotiations.
We know in this country Obama, John Kerry, and others have been doing the same thing.
They always repeat that all options are on the table.
Obama has emphasized that 90 percent of the economic sanctions against Iran have never been lifted, and they will not be lifted in the near future.
Wendy Sherman, undersecretary of state for political affairs, has insulted Iran many, many times.
A few months ago, before the Geneva negotiations, she said that deception is in Iranian leadership's DNA, which is a totally racist comment, in my opinion.
And right before the latest round of negotiations in February, she said unilaterally, and God will pay for what knowledge, that the United States knows that Iran doesn't need a nuclear reactor in Iraq, and the United States knows that Iran doesn't need a uranium enrichment site in Kosovo, which was built under Mogadishu.
Even if the United States does know what Iran wants and wants...
In other words, what you're saying, Mohammed, is everybody's got to say something right-wing so that they have a position to back down from.
To climb down from.
Okay, I'll tell you what.
We'll give up our reactor if you stop threatening to bomb us and lift up some sanctions or whatever.
Otherwise, I mean, I think it's pretty clear, since everybody knows that the whole thing is a big fake crisis and they never were making nuclear weapons or never meant to in the first place, that really, it seems to me, the only reason that the Iranians have even built up their civilian program as much as they have is so that they have something to negotiate away, right?
Like, especially if you look at the comm facility and all the 20% enrichment.
I mean, I know they needed it for their medical isotope reactor and all that, but they were, you know, they seemed intent on doing it so that they would have it as a bargaining chip, as Gareth Porter put it.
Something to give up, so...
I totally agree, because the ultimate goal of Iranians is national security and territorial integrity and non-intervention in Iran's domestic affairs.
Therefore, in order to be able to negotiate with a boring power like the United States, they have to have some winning card.
And therefore, some of the nuclear infrastructures that they built, such as uranium enrichment sites at Fordow, work for that purpose.
The Arak reactor is necessary also, because they need for medical isotopes, but Iranians intentionally built it, or are building it, larger than usual, a research reactor, because they also want to use it as a winning card in their negotiations to get these sanctions lifted and to stop threats against Iran.
So everybody has some cards that need to play, and only through negotiations and compromises Iran can give up some of these winning cards in return for major confessions by 5 plus 1, and in particular the United States.
I've got to tell you, Mohamed, I'm optimistic.
What about you?
I am totally optimistic.
I think that we will see a comprehensive agreement, diplomatic agreement, over the next several months.
Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif told Captain Ashton just last week that Iran believes that an agreement can be reached in four months.
So even if it is not four months, maybe a little longer than that, but I'm very optimistic that a diplomatic solution will be reached.
Right.
I mean, after all, again, it's a manufactured crisis, as Gareth puts it, a fake crisis over a program that never really was about weapons.
So for the Democrats to bring this up in the way that they have and attempt to solve it through a comprehensive deal, the degree to which they've already pushed this seems to be the degree of their commitment.
And that's a lot.
That's pretty far and quite a bit, right?
And at the same time, I believe that the Obama administration may have realized that without Iran's help, the Middle East would not be stabilized.
I mean, there is no way in hell that they can stop the civil war in Syria without Iran's participation.
Right.
And without Iran's help.
There is no way in hell that Iraq can be stabilized without Iran's help.
U.S. forces, if they are going to leave Afghanistan, they need Iran, because Iran knows the country.
Iran knows all the groups.
Iran has worked with all the groups.
And therefore, Iran will be basically the protector of Afghan people against the return of Taliban.
And I believe the Obama administration has recognized this.
And therefore, in order to get Iran's help in other important issues in the Middle East, they first need to reach a compromise with Iran over its nuclear program.
And Iran will have the United States if the sanctions are lifted.
Right.
All right, everybody.
That's Mohamed Sahimi.
Thanks very much for your time, Mohamed.
Good to talk to you again.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Scott.
All right, everybody.
That's Mohamed Sahimi.
He's at USC, and he's the author of this new one.
It'll be running on Monday at Antiwar.com.
A compromise with Iran is possible if it is not asked to surrender.
We'll be right back.
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