The Emergency Committee for Israel, Brookings, Heritage, AIPAC, WINEP, GINSA, PNAC, CNAS, the AEI, FPI, CFR, and CSP.
It sure does seem sometimes like the War Party's got the foreign policy debate in DC all locked up.
But not quite.
Check out the Council for the National Interest at councilforthenationalinterest.org.
They put America first, opposing our government's world empire, and especially their Middle Eastern madness.
That's the Council for the National Interest at councilforthenationalinterest.org.
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All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
Our next guest is the great Mohamed Sahimi, professor of chemical engineering at USC, and he writes for PBS Frontline's Tehran Bureau and antiwar.com as well.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing, Mohamed?
Good morning, Scott.
Happy New Year.
Let me just make a minor correction.
I have left Tehran Bureau.
I left it a few months ago, and I am setting up my own website, Iran News and Middle East Report, that will soon hopefully be a good website.
Oh, great.
Well, I'm happy to hear that.
Thank you very much.
Well, I'm still going to direct people to read everything that you wrote for the Tehran Bureau, because there's some great stuff on there.
That's true.
Most of my writings have been either for antiwar.com or Tehran Bureau so far.
Yeah.
Well, I hope on your new site you'll be able to still copy your archive and have everything in one place there for us.
I will do that, yeah.
And do you have the web address yet for us?
It's imenews.com.
I-N-E, news.
No, I-M-E, like Middle East, I-M-E, news.com.
Okay, great.
Well, I'll make sure to say that again later in the show.
I-M-E, news.com.
Okay, great.
So this one is at antiwar.com.
It's called The War Party and the Israel Lobby Wish for War with Iran in 2013.
Oh, say it ain't so.
I can't believe it.
Well, I guess so.
First of all, the possibility of real talks and a real nuclear deal.
Do you believe that the White House is actually interested in knocking this thing out and putting it all on the back burner from now on?
Well, I believe that President Obama does want to reach some sort of diplomatic resolution of the standoff with Iran over its nuclear program, but on its own term, and that's the problem, because the terms that the president wants to set for Iran to meet may be unachievable.
For example, we know that when Iran and 5 plus 1 group met in Istanbul and then Baghdad and then Moscow, they didn't reach any agreement simply because the United States and its allies were demanding that Iran stop enrichment of uranium at 19.75 percent and then close the Fordow facility forever right away.
And then in return, they were only giving Iran very minor things in terms of, for example, spare parts for old civilian aircraft that Iran had bought from the U.S. and Europe in the 1970s and 1980s, which, by the way, they are supposed to do anyway, because civil aviation regulation says that these countries are obligated to supply the spare parts, but they haven't.
And at the same time, they have imposed backbreaking sanctions against Iran that have disrupted the lives of millions of ordinary Iranian people without changing the fundamental position of the Iranian government, which is that they are willing to negotiate Iran's nuclear program.
They are willing to stop enrichment at 19.75 percent or at least limited, provided that the West, led by the United States, recognize Iran's right to enrich uranium in the framework of nuclear nonproliferation treaty.
But even here, where the NPT actually does recognize Iran's right, the U.S. and Europe have refused to say so, and they say that, well, this is a subject for later negotiations.
For now, you should close Fordow facility and stop all enrichment at 19.75 percent.
And, by the way, you also have to ship out your stock of 19.75 percent enriched uranium to outside the country.
But the interesting thing here is that what Iranians have been doing with their enriched uranium at the higher level is that they have converted most of it to fuel plates for Tehran Research Reactor, which is what they have been saying all along.
They have been saying that we want to enrich at this level, because Tehran Research Reactor needs fuel plates enriched at 19.75 percent.
And they have, in fact, converted most of it to fuel plates.
And we know that once they are converted to fuel plates, it is very, very difficult to use them again, if not impossible, to enrich to higher levels for possible bomb making, for example.
And this is what the International Atomic Energy Agency has also reported.
So Iranians have taken steps towards calming the international community, if there is any unease about Iran's nuclear program, and have been doing what they have been saying all along.
And at the same time, they have been negotiating with the International Atomic Energy Agency in order to allow them to come in and look at Parchin military site that the agency has been pressing to visit, but Iran has refused to do it.
Right.
All right.
Now, I mean, the thing of it is this.
It seems like even in the New York Times, right, because of really Democrat Party, White House pushback against Netanyahu last year, they kind of came out and officially sort of stated the position that if we attack Iran, that is what will make them choose to begin to make nuclear bombs, so we can't do it.
It would spread into a regional war as well.
And so that was why we can't bomb them.
It's pretty hard to walk back from that pretty strong position, it seems like.
And it's really a recognition that, I mean, in a way that they were right, that the war party was right, that the Iranians had found the loophole in the NPT and they had used it and they already have that breakout capability.
They already have centrifuges.
They already have some uranium.
Obviously, as you and I talked about all along, the 20 percent enrichment was just a red herring, which apparently succeeded in getting the Americans to freak out, but that's all it was ever meant to do.
They're turning it into fuel plates for their medical reactor, like you say.
But they already have, you know, because breakout doesn't really mean anything, or it sort of does, but they have more or less breakout in that they have enough nuclear capability now that to attack them would be much more likely to provoke them into getting nukes than it would succeed at preventing them from ever getting nukes.
Oh, there is no question that if Israel or the United States and its allies attack Iran, that will push the Iranian leader to a race to make nuclear bomb in as short a time as possible.
There's absolutely no question about it.
So far, Iranian leaders have refused to cross the line.
Even American officials have said that Iran is not making nuclear bomb and Iran has not made the decision to make a nuclear bomb.
But if Iran is attacked, as you said, this will be an irreversible process that Iran will take the step towards making nuclear bomb.
And let me also mention the fact that Iran took the step to enrich uranium at higher level only after Iran and the West failed to reach an agreement whereby Iran would receive fuel for its medical reactor in return for sending some of its low-enriched uranium to the West.
Iran's condition mainly was that the exchange should be done in Tehran and in installments, and the U.S. did not agree to it.
The U.S. wanted Iran to send out most of its low-enriched uranium at that time to Russia and France.
So the agreement basically broke down.
Then several months later, Iran negotiated the pact with Turkey and Brazil, according to which Iran was willing to send its low-enriched uranium stockpile to Turkey to be stored there under monitoring of International Atomic Energy Agency, and the exchange took place there.
But the U.S. again refused that.
At that time, Iran said that if you refuse to supply fuel for Tehran Research Reactor, which, by the way, the agency and the uranium suppliers are supposed to do it because Tehran Research Reactor is only a five-megawatt medical research reactor and does not pose any threat to anything.
But Iran has said that if you refuse to supply this, then we go ahead and enrich uranium to a higher level that we need.
And at that time, there was skepticism whether Iran would actually be able to do that.
But Iran did that, and as you said, it freaked the United States.
But Iran also did what it was supposed to, and it has said that it will do, namely converting it to fuel plates for Tehran Research Reactor.
But let me emphasize again, there is no question that if Iran is attacked, then Iran will take the steps, whatever it takes, to make nuclear bombs.
Well, and you know, I was watching CNN this morning, and they had, was it O'Hanlon?
I think O'Hanlon from Brookings, one of the sort of center-left pro-Iraq war types from back then, from what, the Brookings Institution or whatever.
And he was pointing to supposedly, I don't even know if it's true or not, but CNN is claiming that the Iranians started testing some surface-to-air missiles and that kind of thing, sending the message, and this is supposedly, you know, an act of aggression and warning, and they're stirring up tensions and all of these kinds of slogans.
But, you know, if there's any substance to what they were saying, it's that they're trying to show that there can be no pinprick airstrikes against Iran's nuclear program, that any beginning of air campaign against Iran will be a real war, with real surface-to-air missiles being shot back.
It does sort of seem, doesn't it, at least, I don't know in the Pentagon, but if you were to read some of the neocon magazines and that kind of thing, they sort of imagine that the Iranians know better than to fight back, and that if a real war broke out, they would have to just lay there and take it.
But I don't know why anybody would really believe that, you know, other than people who just really, really want to believe it, because they want to see the war start.
Exactly.
I mean, the argument that Iranians will not do anything if they are attacked is just to give the impression to the people that this will be an easy war, because if we attack them, they will not fight back.
But they will.
I mean, if we put ourselves in the Iranian regime's shoe, and I am opposed to that regime with every ounce of, every molecule that I have in my body, if we put them in their position, what are they supposed to do?
Every day we hear some new allegations, exaggerations, lies, news, and so on, about what Iran has done or hasn't done, or what it's going to do, and so on.
Every day there is threat that, you know, 2013 or 2012 will be the defining year, and Iran either has to, you know, go along with what the international community wants it to do, or it will be attacked.
Every day we hear that, you know, all options are on the table, and military option is not off the table, it is on the table.
We have the letters by U.S. senators sending to the president saying that, you know, you have to take action, make coalitions of, you know, military coalition with several countries, and be ready to use force against Iran, because the only language that Iran understands is force.
We hear people like Dennis Ross and Eliud Abrams saying that 2013 will be the year that the attack will take place if Iran doesn't go along with what the West wants.
So what is this regime supposed to do?
I mean, this regime, after all, like any other regime, wants to survive and wants to run the country.
So the message that they are sending with all these military maneuvers is that, if you attack us, we will fight back.
And believe me, they will fight back.
I mean, I am from Iran, and I know the nature of Iranians.
They will fight back, and the war will quickly spread throughout the entire Middle East.
The more objective analysts, the more realist analysts all say that if we attack Iran, Iran will fight back, and the war will quickly turn into a long war of attrition between Iran and Islamic world and the West and the United States.
That's the reality.
So those who say that if we attack Iran, Iran will not fight back, are just, first of all, deluding themselves, and secondly, they are trying to convince people that this is a cakewalk, just the way we were promised with the Iraq war, and if we attack Iran, there will be no consequences, they will not fight back, and therefore we can easily defeat them and get rid of their nuclear program.
But that will not be the case.
Well, the thing is, too, it seems like most of that is just a fantasy meant to back up the policy of disrupting any negotiations, right, doing everything they can to undermine them.
Like Ray McGovern pointed out, during the initial negotiations in October 2009, the first real push at a settlement in the Obama administration, the Israelis just had Jandala do some suicide bombings, and I think they killed some generals or some pretty high-level military guys, and that was enough to disrupt the negotiations on the Iranian end, certainly enough to give the Dennis Rosses in the administration the ability to say, you know, we can't proceed further.
And then after that, even with the Brazilians and the Turks working on it, the end of 2009 arbitrary deadline had expired, and so they had to do more sanctions and then deny the Turkish and Brazilian deal.
And, you know, it seems like they don't even want these negotiations at all, but if they even try it, then you've still got the war party in and out of power in Israel and in the United States who are apparently willing to do anything to disrupt the negotiations.
But then what, right?
The next step is, it's like they have this bogus war that ain't going to happen as their excuse to disrupt their negotiations, but then they're still not going to get the war.
What do they think is going to happen next, you know?
I don't get it.
I really don't.
Like, what does it mean to be Bill Kristol?
What does he think in that guy and his clones?
I mean, I think the only thing that these guys want is war, but I don't think they can see five feet ahead of themselves.
In other words, they want war, but they either don't talk about it or think about it, that what would happen if a war actually starts, and what would be the consequences?
Not just for the Middle East.
Let's forget about Middle East.
What would be the consequences for this country?
What would be the consequences for the economy of this country?
What would be the consequences for the economy of U.S. allies?
Even if we look at it from a selfish point of view, that we just think about ourselves, and we don't give a damn to what happens to the people of the Middle East.
Even if you want to look at it from that angle, a war with Iran will be catastrophic for the people of this country, for Western Europe, for Japan, for Australia, because the war will spread, the energy resources will be threatened, the oil price will shoot through the roof, and the oil supply will be disrupted, and so on and so forth, and we will have total economic collapse in the Western world.
So even if you want to look at it from that point of view, we have to think about what we say, but these people don't.
At the same time, let me point this out also, because you mentioned it to some extent.
What the Iranian leaders are saying is that you cannot impose tough economic sanctions and continue to make them tougher and tougher, assassinate our Iranian nuclear scientists, our generals, support some terrorist group like Jundala that carry out terrorist operations inside Iran, give all sorts of voices, radios, here and there, to opposition to the regime outside Iran, and at the same time say, look, we want a negotiated solution to the standoff over your nuclear program.
The two of them don't go together.
I don't understand what the thinking is that if we make the economic sanctions tougher, then Iran will have to agree to what we want.
If anybody knows the mentality of Iranian leaders, then they know that this is not going to work.
They can just look at the last ten years.
Look, it's as clear as day.
They are never going to stop enriching uranium, even if only to 3.6%, just to prove that they can, as really their only measure of independence from the American empire.
Exactly.
I must also say that Iran has been under one type or another of sanctions by the United States and its allies ever since the Iranian revolution.
But it hasn't really changed the fundamental policy that the Iranian leaders have had.
And as you said, since 2003, Iran hasn't stopped extending its nuclear program, enriching uranium, putting more centrifuging and so on, because they want to show their independence from the United States.
That's completely true.
All right.
And now one more thing here that's a very important thing that we've got to really make sure to touch on, especially for people who aren't very familiar with this subject, is there's a never-ending list of accusations against Iran, cheating on their nuclear program.
Even if you're not familiar with the Non-Proliferation Treaty, if you're not familiar with safeguards agreements to the IAEA and all of these intricacies, you might have just heard anyway that the UN's complaining that the Iranians ain't cooperating.
They've got something to hide.
Here's example number 5,072.
There's a new graph, or there's satellite pictures of some cleaning going on at a military base.
And why would anybody ever clean a military base?
There's a tunnel near Tehran, and there's reason to believe, says an anonymous source, that there's something nefarious going on in a tunnel near Tehran.
And Mohammed, as you well know, it just never stops.
There's just an endless list of accusations.
But the ones I want you to answer, please, are the ones from the IAEA.
They have some kind of authority in the world, and they do complain unendingly about Iran and their lack of cooperation.
Well, first of all, when it comes to Tehran's agreement with the agency, regarding its safeguards agreement with the agency, Iran has been completely in compliance.
What the IAEA wants to do, what the IAEA wants Iran to do, is beyond its obligation in the framework of its safeguard agreement.
From October of 2003 to February of 2006, Iran carried out on a volunteer basis the provision of additional protocol.
That allowed the IAEA to go to Iran and inspect any site it wanted, which led to the conclusion that Mohammed al-Baradei, the former director general, submitted a report to the agency saying that, you know, all the issues that we have in Iran have been resolved to the satisfaction of the agency, or at least they are no longer under active consideration.
But when the European Union, which were negotiating with Iran, on behalf of the United States, did not deliver its part of the bargain, namely giving Iran economic incentives, support for a civilian nuclear structure and civilian nuclear energy and industry, and when the European Union failed to provide Iran with security guarantee, Iran withdrew from carrying out on a volunteer basis the provisions of additional protocol.
Iranian parliament also refused to ratify the signing of additional protocol, and therefore in the framework of international laws, Iran has no obligation to carry out the provision of additional protocol.
What the IAEA wants Iran to do is to allow the agency to have the authority under the additional protocol, which Iran refuses to do, and rightly so, because Iran hasn't signed it.
Now, there are people like David Albright that says that, well, we don't need additional protocol, because the United Nations Security Council has ordered Iran to do that.
But even then, the UN Charter specifically mentions that the UN cannot ask a member state to do something which is in violation of its sovereignty rights.
Iran is a sovereign country, and Iran does not have any obligation to allow any country to go inside the country, and this is a military site which is part of the state secret.
So Iran doesn't have any obligation towards it.
Then there are other people like Christopher Ford, who was in the Bush administration and now is the Huffington Institute, that say that additional protocol and the safeguard agreements are one and the same.
So if a country signs a safeguard agreement, it also has signed additional protocol, which is totally ridiculous, and people like Daniel Joyner have responded to him.
So this is basically the basis of the dispute.
Now, the question is this.
If the IAEA thinks that it has the authority to go inside Iran and, for example, inspect the Parchin military site, which is not a nuclear site, but the IAEA suspects that there were some experiments with high explosives relevant to a nuclear reaction, then why does it agree to negotiate with Iran to go there and visit the site?
We have to remember that the same allegations about the Parchin site were made in 2004-2005, and at that time, because Iran was carrying out the provision of additional protocol, allowed the agency to go to Parchin site and visit it.
And they made two visits, and in the second visit, according to Ali Heinonen, who was at that time deputy director general for safeguards, they even asked for a surprise visit to an unannounced site inside the Parchin complex, which Iran allowed to do it, and after that they reported they didn't find anything.
At that time, Iranian press reported that Ali Heinonen had said to an Iranian official that the Parchin case has joined history.
In other words, there is nothing to be found.
Pardon me for interrupting you, I hope you can keep your train of thought, but it's worth pointing out that Heinonen is always a real hawk on this issue while he was at the IAEA, and he's given this statement to David Sanger, the so-called reporter from the New York Times, who himself is very hawkish on this issue.
So for the two of them to come around and say, well, you know, actually we looked into that and there's really nothing to it, that's significant debunking right there.
Exactly, exactly.
I mean, as I said, and you said, Heinonen had made these statements, and Sanger made these statements.
Now, in November of 2011, all of a sudden the same allegations came up, all of a sudden they were brought up again, the same type of thing, the same reference to laptop, without mentioning the laptop, the same thing that Heinonen had made a presentation about in February of 2009, after Mohamed ElBaradei had said that all those six major issues had been resolved to the satisfaction of IAEA, just a couple of days after that Heinonen made this presentation to the board of directors of the agency and made those allegations, and then those allegations again came up in the November 2011 report.
Heinonen recently said that, well, we knew all those, we had all those evidence from many years ago.
The question is, from where are your sources?
He said from where are your sources.
The question is, if you knew all those evidence that you claim to have known since many, many years ago, then why did you make your presentation in February of 2009 based on the laptop?
In other words, he was trying to say that we are not relying on that imaginary laptop because we knew, we had all that evidence from various sources from way before, but okay, if you had it, then why don't you talk about it without making a reference?
But the presentation that he had made to the agency was totally based on the laptop, and in fact he had mentioned that this is based on the laptop.
So there are all sorts of contradictory statements that these people make all the time, forget about what they had said a few days or a few weeks or a few months ago, and as you said, this is just basically one allegation after another, one allegation after another.
If one allegation doesn't stick, then they move on to the next allegation and the next allegation and so on.
When Iran nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili met with Catherine Ashton, the European Union foreign policy chief, in September, he said that Iran is willing to suspend enrichment of uranium at 19.75 percent, and in return Iran wants relief from sanctions.
And the New York Times a few days ago in an editorial said that the Obama administration should be willing and prepared to make concessions on the question of sanctions.
In other words, if Iran does agree to the suspension of 19.75 percent enrichment, the U.S. and its allies should also relax some of these sanctions.
And we know these sanctions have been hurting the lives of millions of ordinary Iranians.
And, you know, you and I have talked about shortage of medicines and food for children and infants and so on in Iran.
You and I have talked about the effect on Iran's currency, on Iran's economy, and all of these have hurt the lives of Iranian, ordinary Iranians, and haven't changed the fundamental position of the Iranian leaders, because they think that if they, you know, if they retreat, if they give in, then there will be another demand.
Iranian leader Ayatollah Khamenei has said that the point for the West is not our nuclear program, because if we give in for our nuclear program, if we agree to whatever they want to say for our nuclear program, then they will bring up another problem, and they will go after us for another problem.
And as much as I hate to agree with him, I think he's right about this.
When he says that, you know, the point is not this, the point is that they want to take our political independence away, I hate to agree with it, but I agree with it, because it is totally, totally true.
Yeah.
Well, which brings us back to this spring, and whether you think that there's a chance for really a deal at all here.
I mean, never even mind Israeli-slash-Jandala sabotage inside the country, or something like that, but does the President, and assuming Hillary Clinton's in perfect health to lead this thing, and that she really wants to, and things like that, I mean, are they going to come in there and really try to make a deal, do you think?
Or is this just another October 2009, where they give it half a try and shrug?
If they are willing to give Iran some relief from the sanctions, I think there is a chance that some sort of agreement can be reached.
If they are not willing to do that, if they want to stick to what they had suggested in Moscow several months ago, I don't think there is any chance of any agreement.
Now, whether they don't want to offer any relief from the sanctions intentionally, just to have the excuse to move on to the next stage of their policy, I can't say.
I mean, my hope is that when John Kerry takes over as Secretary of State, he will be more influential, because my sense is that Kerry is more moderate than Hillary Clinton, and in fact, as I said in my latest article on anti-war, when he ran for President in 2004, a lot of Iranian-Americans supported him because he had taken a sort of moderate stance toward Iran, and had said that we understand what the position of Iran is in the Middle East, and we understand that Iran wants to be a regional power, but we want to understand what type of regional power Iran wants to be, and so on and so forth, and he has said that diplomacy is the only solution.
So my hope is that if John Kerry takes over as Secretary of State, he will have a moderating influence on this.
Now, whether the President has the backbone to stand to pressure by neocons and Israeli lobby and Israel itself, that remains to be seen.
A lot of people credit the President for standing up to Benjamin Netanyahu when he was threatening to attack Iran, but in my view, people who actually stood up to Israel and didn't want an attack at this point against Iran was the Pentagon.
They are the ones who don't want any attack at this point, and not the President.
I haven't seen any strong backbone from the President with regards to Iran policy, but things can change.
Let's be hopeful.
He doesn't dare risk showing any spine at all.
Only when it comes to doing awful, horrible things to people, right?
Never when it's the right thing.
Well, my hope is that he's not going to be up for any re-election or election campaign, and therefore maybe he will do the right thing and try to resolve this through diplomatic solution.
There is no question that Iranians must also make some concession, but this is a give-and-take process, and therefore if the United States and its allies are willing to give as well as to take, then there is hope for a negotiated solution.
But if they want to persist on what they have been demanding, namely Iran give up all of its cards in the negotiations in return for practically nothing, then that's not going to work.
All right, we're going to leave it there, but thanks very much for your time.
It's good to talk to you again.
Happy New Year, Mohamed.
Thank you, and to you too.
Everybody, that's Mohamed Sahimi.
He's a professor of chemical engineering at USC.
He's got an archive at PBS Frontline Tehran Bureau, but he's no longer writing for them.
He's got a new one, along with a lot of great others, at antiwar.com right now, and his new website is imenews.com.
Soon it will be great.
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