All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show.
I am the Director of the Libertarian Institute, Editorial Director of Antiwar.com, author of the book Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and I've recorded more than 5,000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at scotthorton.org.
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All right, you guys, introducing Trita Parsi, Executive Vice President of the new Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
Welcome back to the show.
How you doing, Trita?
Thank you so much.
How are you?
I'm doing great.
Listen, people ask me, they say things like, hey, what should I read so I can understand the deal between America and Iran?
And there's only one answer, and that's your book, Treacherous Alliance, about the secret relationship between America, Israel, and Iran all this time.
There's nothing beats it.
Top of the list for everybody.
Heard that here more than once, but there you go, Treacherous Alliance.
And I'm sorry, what's the latest one?
Fighting an Enemy, Obama, Iran, and the Triumph of Diplomacy.
Yeah, well, too bad about that.
All right, so listen, you wrote this brilliant- Yeah, it's always better to have depressing and conflict-oriented titles than something that is optimistic and hints at a solution.
Yeah, which is a great segue into this new article in Foreign Policy.
The Middle East is more stable when the U.S. stays away, especially in this case.
As bad as things were, we could have just stopped right when Trump came in, and things would have been much better.
Instead, they've been worse and worse because of, essentially, every policy he's taken.
Just the same, as you delineate in this article here, just the same as his two predecessors, too, this whole century long so far.
Yeah, and I think to a certain extent, the title made it sound a little bit simpler and simplistic compared to what the article itself says.
The article points out that there is this rather strange belief in Washington that is a holy cow, you cannot question it, which is essentially, without the United States, the Middle East would fall apart.
We think that our military dominance is what is keeping the Middle East together.
Well, if you actually take a look at the data, and I'm looking beyond whether the Iraq War was destabilizing or not, of course it was destabilizing, but even when you take a look at when the U.S. is not necessarily directly going in and invading countries, something very interesting happened in the last six months prior to this assassination of Soleimani.
When Trump first actually followed his own instincts, presumably, and decided not to go to war with Iran this past summer after the Iranians shot down an American drone that most likely was an Iranian airspace, it sent a very strong signal to Saudi Arabia and to the UAE and others that Trump is not likely going to go to war with Iran on your behalf.
Yes, he'll ratchet up tensions, he'll do all of these things that I think are very unhelpful, but he'll stop short of going to war.
When the Saudi oil fields were bombed, again, most likely by Iran or some degree of Iranian involvement, then two, he did not step up as the bloc would want him to do and go to war with Iran on behalf of Saudi Arabia.
Now, a lot of people in this town thought that that was a betrayal of the Saudis, and again, another loss of American credibility, but guess what happened?
Once the Saudis and the UAE figured out the U.S. is not going to go to war with Iran on their behalf, they started to pursue diplomacy with Iran, a diplomatic option that always had been available to them, but which they had rejected because they believed that it was more optimal for their interests for the U.S. to go to war with Iran than for them to engage diplomatically with Iran from a position of weakness, presumably, meant that instead they just doubled and tripled down on the idea of pushing the U.S. to war.
But once that option had been exhausted, that's when they shifted to diplomacy.
And incidentally, according to the Iraqis, Soleimani was in Iraq because he was passing on a message from Tehran to the Saudis in response to a Saudi message in which the Iraqi government actually was mediating between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
So the point is, when we're not giving these so-called allies a carte blanche and telling them you can do whatever you want, guess what happens?
They become more restrained, they become more reasonable, and they pursue diplomacy.
And if we truly want stability in the region, we should encourage that rather than disincentivize that.
And America's military dominance of the Middle East has disincentivized that.
We see that very clearly based on the events of the last six months.
And including this whole pressure campaign by Trump back to losing an enemy, Obama really on just the one issue, the nuclear issue, that was the most important one.
And by taking the pretension of their weapons program off the table, that amounted to a ratcheting down of tensions by severe degrees.
It wasn't necessarily leading to much new business or improved relations in any other way, really.
But Trump turned that all off by withdrawing from the deal for no good reason.
The IAEA said that the Iranians were inside their side of the deal, of course.
And then this entire maximum pressure campaign, as you said, this is what is incentivizing conflict in the first place.
But you have also the direct interference on, say, for example, Saudi's side in Yemen, which after five years has completely failed to dislodge Iran's friends, the Houthis.
And that in fact, apparently they're now closer than they've ever been.
With Iran only very recently officially recognizing the Houthis as the government of the country when they hadn't this whole time up until very recently.
Yeah.
And incidentally, the Saudi diplomacy with Iran was rather limited compared to the Saudi diplomacy with the Houthis and the Saudi diplomatic outreach to the Qataris to put an end to that conflict.
So it's not a one data set thing.
And again, you're talking about once Trump refused to react to the shoot down of the drone and the mining of the ships, that was when they started reaching out to the Houthis, the Qataris and the Iranians.
That option had always existed.
It's just that they did not feel that it was worthwhile pursuing that because it was just better to go and push and manipulate U.S. foreign policy to do the wars in the region on their behalf.
Only when that was no longer an option did they start becoming a reasonable actor and pursue diplomacy.
What does that tell us about what the impact of our military domination in the region is for the countries that we call allies?
All right.
Now, something we've been talking about for a long time and it's still a major issue is that America fought Iraq War II, that is George W. Bush's war 2003 through 11 or so there, and Iraq War III, Obama's anti-ISIS war from 2014 through 17.
Both of those on behalf of politicians, political parties, and yes, militias that are very friendly with, tied to, backed by Iran.
They hate that fact.
They can't stand that fact, but there's nothing that they can do to undo that fact, but they're determined to try to find something to do about it.
That's what seems like is the real impasse here, is they got rid of Saddam for Iran.
Not that Iran controls Baghdad, but their very good friends do.
Saddam amounts to, it's the kind of thing that they can't reverse and drives them completely mad.
So rock in a hard place type sort of a situation.
So where do we go from there?
Well, we have an opportunity right now to be able to leave Iraq because the Iraqi government itself has asked the United States to leave.
Iraqis are not taking Iran's side against the United States.
The Iraqis are taking Iraq's side.
And Iraq's side is, we do not want to become the arena for the U.S. and Iran to go to war with each other at.
If the U.S. and Iran want to go to war, don't do it on our territory.
The presence of American troops in Iraq makes it much more likely that the war will take place in Iraq.
Moreover, from a U.S. perspective, beyond all of the standard reasons as to why we should get out of Iraq and end that endless war, we also have a more dangerous situation now because of the fact that the groups that the U.S. bombed, the PMU, which are part of the Iraqi government but clearly close to Iran as well, yes, the Iranians may have done their retaliation against Soleimani, but they're Iraqis who want to retaliate against the killing of PMU soldiers that were done by the United States before the assassination of Soleimani.
Now, as long as there's a lot of troops in Iraq, those groups have targets.
And if that happens, how will the Trump administration interpret that?
Will they blame it on Iran, even if the Iranians may not have anything to do with it?
Well, if they do, then we're back at war with Iran.
So beyond the fact that it doesn't serve U.S. national interest to be present in Iraq militarily right now, it's even worse now because the presence of American troops in Iraq adds to the likelihood, the risk of a war with Iran on top of the existing endless wars that we have.
Yeah.
And which, as you say, our troops are in Iraq right now embedded with these guys fighting against what's left of the Islamic State insurgency there after the destruction of the caliphate.
There's still al-Qaeda in Iraq, soldiers running around shooting some places.
And that's a whole different ball game than having to turn around and fight their allies in the supermajority that they've been fighting for for the last 17 years.
Yeah.
And at the end of the day, the United States can still assist the fight against ISIS, even if it doesn't have troops on the ground in Iraq.
There are other ways of being able to do so.
And ultimately, we also have to recognize, particularly when it comes to al-Qaeda and that type of terrorism, that it doesn't ultimately have a military solution.
At some point, we have to shift away from that anyway.
Well, that's my last question for here in the last couple of minutes.
I know you have to go.
So what about the future of Western Iraq, predominantly Sunni Iraq, who lost bad in the civil war where America backed the Shiite side and who have been kind of left stateless?
And that was sort of why they were wide open to the taking over by ISIS after America and our allies helped build up its forces in Syria back earlier in this decade or last decade now.
But so do you think that if America leaves, that there would be enough incentive for the Shiite government in Baghdad, which seems to be a pretty chauvinist and and sort of merciless victor here, that they might finally find the real incentive to, you know, treat their defeated national brothers with a little bit more respect to prevent, you know, to make real peace and prevent the return of bin Ladenite type influence there?
I don't think the U.S. is the cause as to why they have been chauvinist, nor will necessarily the absence of the U.S. be the cause as to why they become more reasonable.
I think what is likely to happen, though, is that the absence of American troops will make it more difficult for those in Iraq that have been too friendly with Iran from a broader Iraqi perspective to be able to sustain that position.
I think a lot of folks in this town are like, well, you know, if if the U.S. leaves, it's like giving Iraq to Iran on a silver platter.
Short term, perhaps that is what will happen in the long term.
I think we'll see the opposite.
It will be much easier for Iraqi nationalism to organize itself around the goal of reducing Iranian influence, whereas today, with the U.S. also being present, Iraqi nationalism has to walk a very fine balancing act between the U.S. and Iran.
Yes.
Patrick Coburn pointed out all the anti-Iranian protests in Iraq stopped as soon as America intervened.
The same movement that had led to the resignation of the Supreme Islamic Council Party prime minister there.
Omani.
Exactly, exactly.
So our presence, again, complicates matters.
And I think it's very clear Iraq has its own national identity, has its own nationalism, and it will move to reduce undue Iranian influence in Iraq.
But there's also a balance there that needs to be struck that we should be happy about.
We should not have a situation if we truly are interested in stability in Iraq and in the Middle East.
We should have we should not be pushing for a solution in which Iraq is and the Iranians are once again enemies.
How on earth is that actually helping stability in the region?
Iran and Iraq, whether it was Syria and Persia, Babylonia and Persia, have longstanding geopolitical rivalries that have defined this region for more than 3,000 years.
We are now in a situation in which the relations between the two of them are probably closer than it has been in a very long time.
Now, it should not mean that we should be blessing or supporting or being OK with undue Iranian influence in Iraq.
But I think if we leave it to the Iraqis, they will probably resolve it in such a manner in which they reassert their nationalism and their national identity.
But also, they don't go overboard towards having an enmity with Iran, which ultimately would be devastating for the stability of the region.
If they pursue or they follow the cues of Washington with its almost obsession with enmity with Iran, then Iraq very easily could be pushed into the direction of becoming an enemy of Iran with all the conflict that that would entail.
That's part of the reason why the Iraqis are pushing back against the U.S. as well.
They're telling the U.S.
Iran is a neighbor.
At some point, you will leave.
We will still be here with Iran.
It does not lie in our long term interest to turn this into a hostile relationship.
Thank you very much for your time.
I know you have to go.
Everybody, that's a great treat of Parsi.
He's at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
Quincyinst.org and check out his great books, Losing an Enemy and, of course, the classic Treacherous Alliance.
Thank you again.
Thank you so much.
Appreciate it.
The Scott Horton Show, Antiwar Radio can be heard on KPFK 90.7 FM in L.A.
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