08/05/14 – Gareth Porter – The Scott Horton Show

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Welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, the Scott Horton Show.
And next up is our friend Gareth Porter.
He's got one in the national interest.
Take that national interest audience.
National interest.org.
Welcome back, Gareth.
How are you doing?
I'm fine, Scott.
Thanks very much.
How are you?
Good.
Good.
Happy to have you here.
Now, listen, everybody.
Gareth Porter writes primarily for Inter Press Service.
That's IPS news dot net IPS news dot net.
And we reprint just about all of it at antiwar dot com.
You can also find him at truth out dot org.
He won the Gellhorn Prize for his work on McChrystal and Petraeus death squads in Afghanistan, which got to read about.
And also, he wrote the book Manufactured Crisis about how there never was an Iranian nuclear weapons program.
The whole thing is a giant fake excuse for tension.
And yet now I think you're reporting here at the national interest dot org.
That may finally be changing, Gareth, huh?
Well, it is changing because for the first time in the history of U.S. policy or relations with Iran or non-relations with Iran, the United States is now beginning, just beginning to actually negotiate.
And so the story that I, not a story, but an article, an analysis that is in the national interest really sort of covers this very interesting development in U.S. policy, historically very unusual in which the U.S. did, in fact, end up for a few days actually negotiating with Iran after a few months of really maneuvering diplomatically, using a lot of public diplomacy, meaning propaganda, public statements and leaks to the press to try to put pressure on Iran.
And the significance of this really is, as I see it, the following, that for decades, different U.S. administrations have essentially tried to use this idea of coercive diplomacy, which really means coercion.
I mean, it doesn't mean diplomacy, it means coercion.
But this term, coercive diplomacy, developed decades ago, really after the Cuban Missile Crisis, as a way of sort of prettifying the idea of the United States simply threatening other countries in order to get them to do what we want them to do.
And so for decades, the U.S. policy has been built around coercion.
And finally, in the spring of this year, there were real negotiations supposedly towards a comprehensive agreement beginning.
And in the period from May through June, the two rounds of negotiations, the U.S. was still using this sort of public threat to Iran that, you know, if you don't meet our demands for cutting your number of centrifuges very severely, then we'll walk away from the table and you won't get any agreement.
And in response to that, the Iranians were playing their own diplomatic game, their own game of maneuvering by putting on the table demands that they knew were well beyond what they would get and what they really needed in an agreement.
So ultimately, the results of this sort of public diplomacy by the Obama administration was that both sides were maneuvering both at the table and to some extent, at least in early July, through public statements.
And I'm referring there to the fact that even the supreme leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, ended up making a statement which was in a way his response to the public threats from the United States and their statements that Iran was not doing U.S. bidding.
He then acted as though Iran was demanding, you know, 190,000 SWU, or separative work units, meaning the equivalent of 190,000 primitive IR-1 centrifuges, as part of negotiations, and in fact, Iran's negotiator, Foreign Minister Zarif, had already talked, you know, to the Western negotiators, P5-plus-1 negotiators, about a much more moderate, more modest demand.
So what happens finally, and this is sort of the culmination of these talks, but it was as well a culmination of a long history of the United States refusing to really seriously negotiate with Iran, in July, you get the Zarif meetings with Kerry over two full days, July 13th, 14th, as I recall, maybe it was 12th, 13th, no, it was 13th, 14th.
And in those two days of talks, it's clear that they really did seriously put something closer to their minimum demands on the table, and were moving toward a diplomatic solution to the issue of Iran's nuclear program.
Right.
So in other words, it's just kind of the old commie dialectic, or really, you could just say, kind of traders in the desert, right?
Everybody starts with a tough position, and then you just move toward the center and work it out.
Everybody on both sides knew what the other side really required, and what would be reasonable.
And so, like you're saying, as long as they were finally actually negotiating, the Americans, instead of just blustering and faking it like usual, then hey, they were able to work something out here, it looks like.
Well, look, Scott, I mean, I think that the reality is that the Obama administration was working this idea of coercive diplomacy, even in the May and June rounds of negotiations, because A, they believed that they had a critical advantage over Iran, because they essentially viewed the economic sanctions against Iran's oil sector, the oil export sector, as so effective as a political instrument, as a diplomatic political instrument against Iran, that they believed that Iranians would not walk away from the table if the United States made that threat, they would actually make concessions if they made it look like the United States would walk away.
So I think that they were playing that game at a much higher, much more intense level, and they were the ones who really initiated it.
And I think the Iranians then didn't respond, but you're right, I mean, this is the normal procedure for both sides to advance demands that they know are much more ambitious than they're going to get, or at least somewhat more ambitious than they're going to get.
I think in this case, the US started with a much more ambitious demand, which was, they were talking about a few thousand centrifuges out of the 19,000 that Iran had deployed in their enrichment facilities, two enrichment facilities.
And, you know, I think that they believed that they would get something close to that.
And the Iranians, on the other hand, knew that they would settle all along, as I think I've said on your program before, they would settle for essentially the 9 to 10,000 centrifuges that have actually been operating, and the other 9 or 10,000 that they have actually installed in the enrichment facilities, they never intended to operate, and they never hooked them up.
And that was a clue, which I think they clearly intended the Obama administration to pick up on, and I think the Obama administration did pick up on it, which is one of the reasons why, you know, the United States was insisting on going well beyond that to something like 1,000, 2,000, 3,000, at most 4,000.
And they even allowed the French to put into the document that was being negotiated, the draft text of an agreement, 500 or so as a number that was being demanded, putting it in brackets, of course.
But it was another way of putting pressure on the Iranians.
And, you know, in the end, I think the Americans knew that they, you know, if the Iranians refused to back down, that they would come back and reduce the demand.
All right, well, hold it right there, Gareth, we've got to take this break.
We'll be right back, everybody, with Gareth Porter.
He's got a new one in the national interest, nationalinterest.org, the fog of diplomacy, creating a false picture of the Iran nuclear talks.
All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Gareth Porter.
He writes for Interpress Service and truthout.org.
Here he is at the national interest, creating a false picture of the Iran nuclear talks.
Well, debunking a false picture of the Iran nuclear talks.
He's the author of Manufactured Crisis, the Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare, the real context behind all of this.
And I sure would like to see all this wrap up now.
So a couple of things I want to nail down about what you were saying, Gareth, you're saying, I think that the American side, they're really playing hardball more than they should have up until very recently, really, before being willing to to really compromise and all because they thought that they had all this kind of momentum on their side because of all the sanctions.
And I guess I thought that the sanctions were set to expire here pretty soon anyway, and that all of America's allies in Asia were already getting as many exemptions as they could and really wanted out from under the sanctions regime.
And that wouldn't the Americans, do I have that wrong?
Or is that not part of it, that actually the Americans only had that particular gun to the Iranians' head for a limited amount of time before they expire, unlike say, the old Iraq sanctions?
The sanctions weren't due to run out by any means.
Only the only thing that was going to happen after, you mean after the period of negotiations that had just expired last month on the 20th, right?
Well, yeah.
And you know what?
I admit that I'm ignorant as to all the different layers of sanctions at the international level and at the U.S. level and etc.
Yeah, I mean, there was a very limited slice of sanctions benefits that the Iranians were getting during that six-month, whatever it was, period, yeah, from last November.
You mean after the interim deal was signed last November?
After the interim deal, eight months, that was actually due to expire.
The relief was set to expire.
The sanctions regime itself were, of course, not going to expire as of July 20th.
In fact, that would, you know, even if they had reached an actual comprehensive agreement, my understanding certainly, I'm not quite sure about this, is that the U.S. was going to insist that the sanctions would be dismantled over time, gradually.
So, you know, in other words, as Iran was carrying out various stages of the agreement, the sanctions would be reduced, and that's the way it was going to work.
So it would last for years beyond even a comprehensive agreement.
And that goes for all the U.N. sanctions that Korea and Japan and Australia are participating into, not just the American sanctions.
I mean, the sanctions that Japan and Korea are part of are really, they're sanctions that were essentially negotiated between the U.S. and those governments.
I mean, the governments basically responded to pressure from the United States based on its ability to say, if your banks don't do what we want them to do, or refuse to do, I should say, that is to say, have anything to do with Iran's foreign earnings from oil exports, we will punish your banks, they won't be able to do business with our banks, and we will exact a very heavy toll financially on your country.
So that's really the basis for getting all of these countries that were purchasers of Iranian oil on board.
That's the only reason they did it, essentially.
I got it.
And then, but, so, I'm sorry, man, it's not like this is even in your article, but I guess I had thought that they had already said that they were only willing to go along with this for so long.
And, you know, we're already trying to pull back.
Well, no, I don't think that there was never statements by China, by Korea, Japan, and European countries, and India, for example, that they would terminate the sanctions if agreement wasn't reached within a certain period of time.
But I think the sense was, you know, the body language, if you will, was that these sanctions could not last forever if, in fact, the Iranians were willing to play ball and, you know, have a position which was reasonable on their nuclear program.
I mean, that's not by any means explicitly stated anywhere.
That's my interpretation of what I've read about it.
Right, I get it.
Okay, so now, assuming that they get this deal, that they're able to iron out the last of the supposed outstanding issues and all of that, how significant is that really going to be for the relationship between America and Iran, you know, changing over, say, the near term, medium term?
Scott, that is the $64 gazillion question in my mind, and I know in many other people's minds.
And I certainly don't know the answer, but I have to say that my sense of the trend line in regard to U.S. and Iran has been shifting in recent months.
And I do believe now that reaching an agreement would signal a development of a longer term trend toward reducing the enmity between the United States and Iran, and toward, at the beginning, more sort of sub rosa, unannounced, informal cooperation with Iran, but working gradually toward something more than that.
In other words, I think that the fundamental nature of Middle East politics is such that no administration can continue to ignore the fact that the United States and Iran share far more political strategic interests than the United States shares with any other country in the Middle East.
I mean, you know, of course, you know, Israel is our formal ally, but if you stop to look at the reality, I mean, that relationship has cost the United States far more than it has been worth.
And the only reason that it's continued really is domestic politics.
Well, but now at this point, if we really become too good of friends with Iran, I worry that's going to make our position that much worse.
I mean, for example, if we have, well, right now they're talking about flying drones as air cover from Kurdistan for combined Iraqi and Kurdish forces against the Islamic State.
But those Iraqi forces are backed by the Quds Force and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, which has members there in Iran advising and it sort of seems like as bad as that mess is and as much as it's all the American government's fault, we ought to stay the hell out of taking anybody's side in that thing right now if they want to exhaust themselves too bad.
But what if America is outright providing air cover for Iran in against the Sunnis in Iraq?
That's going to lead to a whole new shockwaves and consequences around the region, right?
You know what my position is going to be on that question, and it is the same as yours.
Can I guarantee that something along those lines would not happen in the future with regard to an increasingly, I don't want to say close, but not unfriendly relationship between the United States and Iran?
I can't, but I do believe that there are significant constraints politically within the national security state on a return to, you know, any serious warfare in Iraq.
I don't think that it would be an open and shut case.
I mean, when you get Petraeus, for example, saying publicly that it would be a bad idea for the United States to be carrying out airstrikes in Iraq, I think that is a signal that you've got much more fundamental opposition within the military leadership to that idea.
And so I think that, you know, the constraints that we've seen operating with regard to Iran and in regard to Syria, certainly coming from the Pentagon and from the military, from the joint chiefs, I think that applies more or less to Iraq as well.
I mean, you know, I don't know that for sure, but that's my sense.
Man, I sure hope that's right.
I guess it still remains to be seen.
It remains to be seen, indeed.
It sort of seems to me like they can't help it, but want to go and bomb these guys.
But I sure hope that they can.
I sure hope that they're being listened for.
Again, you're going to differentiate here between the interests of the Air Force, which is always looking for its next war, and presumably would look kindly upon that idea, and the Army, Navy, and Marines, which would be much more skeptical about it.
Right.
Good point.
Yeah, they've paid their price in blood.
What'd they get for it?
Nothing, so.
Yep.
All right.
Hey, thanks, Gareth.
I sure appreciate it.
Thank you, Scott.
All right.
That's the great Gareth Porter.
The book is Manufactured Crisis.
Buy it.
And the article is at The National Interest, nationalinterest.org, creating a false picture of the Iran nuclear talks.
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