10/28/14 – Trita Parsi – The Scott Horton Show

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It's Trita Parsi.
He's the head of the National Iranian American Council.
You could call him the peace lobby focused on peace between America and Iran.
And he's got a great stable of writers and activists over there and everything.
Welcome back to the show, Trita.
How are you?
Thanks so much, Scott.
Very happy to have you here.
Oh, it's niacouncil.org, everybody.niacouncil.org.
Go there and read stuff.
So you got this new one.
It's in the Reuters here.
Trita, how congressional hawks plan to kill Obama's Iran deal.
Everybody, you can find it in the viewpoints section today on antiwar.com as well.
How congressional hawks plan to kill Obama's Iran deal.
So first, remind us again very quickly what Iran deal, and then we'll get to the hawks part.
We're talking about the nuclear deal, the nuclear negotiations that are currently going on between the P5 plus one, the United States, Russia, China, the EU, and then on the other side, the Iranians.
And they're actually making major progress right now.
And there's some noise from some congressional quarters saying that, oh, you know, the president is going around Congress.
Congress should have a right to say something about this or vote on this.
And bottom line is Congress is going to vote on this at the end of the day, because part of the deal is going to be relief of sanctions that only Congress can decide on.
But what they're actually doing is that they're trying to have an early vote as quickly as possible.
And the reason why they're trying to do that is because they know that immediately after the deal, that's when the chances are the best of getting Congress to vote no and not go along with the deal.
If the deal is permitted to last for a while, the Iranians start doing positive things, and everyone is living up to their end of the bargain, and things are actually working out, then guess what?
Obama can come back to Congress and actually succeed in getting the sanctions lifted.
And because they don't want the sanctions to get lifted, they don't want to have a peace, they want to drive this towards a military confrontation, they're calling for an early vote, and using a lame excuse of constitutionality, saying that Congress has a right to say something about this.
And it's true, they do.
It doesn't mean they have a right to say something right away, though.
And maybe they do, but the Senate has the right to either ratify it or not.
That's if it's a treaty.
The Senate has a right to ratify a treaty.
It's only about repealing the sanctions.
Exactly.
In other words, they're not really doing anything outside of their authority.
They're just being real jerks when we're right on the eve of something that could be...
Well, I mean, this ingenious argument is to say that the President is trying to go around Congress.
He's not.
The issue is, though, that the deal specifically says that sanctions are not going to get lifted until the Iranians have demonstrated that they can be trusted and that they're doing a couple of positive steps.
If you're pushing for that vote to take place right away, you're actually doing what the Iranians want.
The Iranians want the sanctions to be taken away right away.
The only reason they're pushing for an immediate response to this is because they know that they can't risk letting the deal work, because if the deal works, it's going to be so much tougher to pass anti-Iran legislation in Congress.
Right, I see.
Now, I haven't been keeping up with this kind of stuff, because mostly I don't care-treat it, but isn't it the case that everybody's saying...
No, I don't mean the Iran stuff.
I mean, I was going to say about the congressional elections, about whether the...
Aren't they saying the Republicans are going to take the Senate this time?
Does that make it worse?
I mean, look, there's new reports coming out on a daily basis, and more and more of them say that there's a very high likelihood that the Senate will fall into Republican control, which will make this more complicated, obviously.
Yeah.
Well, it's just too bad that Obama won't...
He doesn't seem to want to really make the case for this thing.
I mean, he did shout the hawks down in Obama terms, you know, comparatively and heroically.
He shouted them down in the State of the Union and said, I will veto any new sanctions, I'm not going to let you screw this thing up, we're at a delicate place in the thing, and it's my priority to negotiate it and butt out.
And they did, and that was pretty good.
But, you know, it seems like he could just make the case, or at least have his people make a stronger case for getting this thing through.
He doesn't sound...
It seems like, geez, he's taken it this far in the negotiations, it seems like, is really precedent-setting and humongous, and it must mean he's really committed to it.
However, his public diplomacy here in America on behalf of the program politically, he just hasn't made the effort, it seems like.
I think you are absolutely right, and it's been a criticism that I've put forward as well.
I can tell you the response from the White House is that until they have essentially a deal in hand, or something very close to a deal in hand, they're not going to go on a selling campaign.
They want to be as close to an actual deal as possible before they go down that route.
And you know what, Scott?
Last Thursday, they started selling the deal, which I assume means that they're very, very close to having a deal.
Because for the first time, Wendy Sherman gave a major speech at CSIS, and she was now much more forward-leaning, pointing out that those who had argued against diplomacy were wrong, the world is in a better place now because of the negotiations, and the Iranians are living up to the end of the bargain, et cetera, et cetera.
So I think that what you called for and what I've also called for are actually starting to take place right now.
And now I saw where your colleague Reza Mirash, who was arguing on Twitter there, saying that, you know what we could do, it's the same thing we did with the interim deal, which is say, you know what, we agree on A through F, and so that's good, and then everything else we'll just call technical details, as long as we have a firm handshake that we really mean to work these details out.
And in the case of the interim deal, that's exactly what happened, and they did work those details out, and everything has been hunky-dory, as you just said.
So do you think that they can do that, that they can get, I don't know, 75% of a deal, call it a deal, and then work out the rest, something like that, if they have to?
I'm not so sure they can do that, but it is definitely true that they can agree on the principles of the deal, essentially on the deal itself, and then they leave the schedule and timetable of the implementation to technical negotiations that will continue after the deal has been signed.
That's exactly what happened last time.
They had a deal, they had a principle, everything was settled, but who's going to take what step first, at what time, and what's the deadline?
That was hashed out for another two and a half months after that deal was signed.
That same thing can happen.
The reason why they want to avoid this happening is very simple.
During those two or whatever months it will take to hash out the schedule, the deal is very vulnerable, and that's when congressional hawks can do a lot of damage.
Right.
Well, you know, it's funny that it's really kind of paradoxical that, I think I saw Stephen Walt point this out on his blog a few months back, that the people who want the deal the most are the ones who know good and well that Iran isn't making nukes and aren't even concerned about Iran making nukes.
They just see this, people like you and me, we see this as, you know, the gigantic outstanding issue, whatever the truth behind it is, it's the gigantic outstanding issue that serves as the excuse to perpetuate this terrible Cold War between America and Iran, and, you know, we absolutely have to get it out of the way.
On the other hand, if they can't work it out right now, really the only problem is, like you're saying, politically it will make it more difficult to get it done later on, that kind of thing.
But there still really is no, they would have to have some kind of argument for war other than just the talks didn't work.
When everyone agrees, including all the intelligence agencies still and all the major newspaper writers, even David Sanger, that there is no secret program and there's no indication they're diverting uranium or working on a nuclear bomb.
At the most they have a couple of technical questions as they haven't been all the way answered yet, this kind of thing.
But there really is no heat toward war with Iran on this issue right now, and we could work it out in a few years still and it would be all right, right?
I think so.
I mean, you're right in the sense that this really has been a devastating conflict and we need to get this out of the way and there's, to some extent, less than meets the eye.
If this is taken out of the way, there's a lot of opportunities that emerge, a lot of interesting things that can happen.
I don't think the United States would have to be as involved militarily in the Middle East.
For instance, the Iranians could take care of large parts of ISIS and not necessitate American involvement.
But none of that is now feasible because they haven't managed to solve this issue yet.
So that's the hurdle that has to be passed first.
Well, yeah, I mean, and I'm all for it.
I can't believe, actually, that it's been this difficult.
And I think the congressional leaders, their staffs, they understand this issue well enough that if they were trying to back the President on this very hard, they could make some pretty powerful statements in favor of this deal and I think help neutralize the push against it.
Because you know how it is, for better or for worse, mostly only for worse, but sometimes for better, too, politics stops at the water's edge.
And the Republicans especially, you know, they respect the power of the President to decide these kinds of issues or at least to have his chance to negotiate these kinds of things.
So, you know, I don't know.
I'm still optimistic about it, Trita.
Me, too.
I think something good is going to happen.
All right.
Well, thanks very much for your time.
It was great talking to you.
Thank you.
Appreciate it.
Talk to you soon.
Thanks.
Bye.
All right, Shell, that's Trita Parsi.
He's at the National Iranian American Council.
The Reuters piece here is how congressional hawks plan to kill Obama's Iran deal.
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