11/08/13 – Muhammad Sahimi – The Scott Horton Show

Hey, you own a business?
Maybe we should consider advertising on the show.
See if we can make a little bit of money.
My email address is scott at scotthorton.org.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show here.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show on Liberty Express Radio and No Agenda Radio and something, something, something.
My full interview archives can be found at scotthorton.org.
More than 3,000 of them now, going back 2003.
And next up is our friend Mohamed Sahimi teaches chemical engineering at USC in L.A.
And he runs what's called Iran News and Middle East Reports, which you can find at imenews.com, imenews.com.
Welcome back to the show, Mohamed, how are you doing?
It's good to be back in your program, Scott.
Well, good, very happy to have you here.
And I was very pleased to read this article of yours today, which will be published on antiwar.com tomorrow.
Saudi Arabia and Israel, or I guess tonight, I should say, Saudi Arabia and Israel try to derail nuclear negotiations with Iran by terrorism.
So obviously there's a lot to go over here, but if it's okay, I'd like to start just with your reaction to the news today.
It's not official or final yet as of this interview, but I guess the latest and best I know is from Trita Parsi's Twitter feed, and he's in Geneva right now, I believe.
He says, my take, there is a deal.
The holdup is to give Russia and China a chance to formally approve it and join the photo op.
And I was just speaking with Gareth Porter, and he seems to think that the same thing is true, that they are going to go ahead and sign an interim nuclear deal with Iran today.
What do you think?
I share their optimism.
I have been up all night, and I've been just glued to the computer and every other means of communication that I have to see what's going on in Geneva.
Isn't that exciting?
Good, I'm so glad to hear you say that, because that's how I feel about it too, and I was a little embarrassed.
I, yes, I am excited because that means that the prospect of war with Iran will recede at least for now, and that will also mean that Israel will be isolated.
We know that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is opposed to any deal that will leave Iran with a uranium enrichment program on its soil, and therefore he has been basically on a desperate diplomatic effort to prevent it.
The reason, of course, that he's opposed to it is because if the deal is reached and signed and put into effect, that means that it completely takes away Israel's freedom to attack Iran or provoke an attack on Iran, because that means that Israel will oppose the agreement that has been reached between Iran and the rest of the world, the international community, five permanent members of United Nations Security Council and so on, and Israel simply cannot afford it, and therefore they want to prevent it before it goes into effect.
But at the same time, as you know very well, Scott, we have to realize that there are hardliners in Washington that want to scuttle this agreement in any way they can.
We know that they have been talking about imposing even more severe sanctions on Iran, although the president and his vice president, Joe Biden and John Kerry and others have been warning Congress about this and asking them not to do anything.
But overall, I am optimistic that the agreement will be reached any minute, signed any minute, and a joint statement will be issued, which will be good news for anti-war people like yourself and me and other people like us, and very bad news for war mongers, the war party, the lobbies of various countries in this country, and so on.
Right.
Yeah, you know, my thing, I get so excited about it, I start thinking, well, this is the panacea, this is, I was paraphrasing the man on the moon, talking about one giant leap for American-Iranian negotiations and relations, because even though it's just an interim agreement, it's just a little old thing, it's the beginning of the end, for real, of the previous era of Cold War and, you know, unlimited threats and refusal to negotiate in good faith and what have you.
So it seems like the possibilities here, you know, are looking very good, but it is true that it is just a small deal, it's not everything, but I agree with you, especially the part about how, well, really, it changes the whole atmosphere where the hawks who, you know, pretend to have all these concerns, which have been fake concerns all along anyway, they now have much less to stand on in the face of this deal being signed.
And so, even if it's not really the beginning of a real warming up, what if warming up a real end of the Cold War takes another 10 years or something?
Doesn't matter, it's still a huge pushback against a hot war.
I totally agree.
I could live with a cold peace rather than a hot war, so even if it doesn't mean that Iran-US relationship will be normalized to the extent that they had such relationship many years ago, at least as long as the prospect of war is removed and the economic sanctions, at least to some extent, are relaxed so that the lives of tens of millions of Iranian people can become a little bit more normal and the economic pressure that they have been unfairly experiencing is reduced, that would make me totally happy.
Yeah.
I'll submit that I'm having, well, it's not even an admission.
I'm happy to say, and I guess I sort of am sorry that I'm saying it all over your interview, but I am so pleased at the misery of the lacunics and every time I see Benjamin Netanyahu squawking, it just makes me happy that he's sad.
Totally agree with you.
I couldn't agree with you more, Scott.
You know, just like if he got in a fender bender or something and said, oh, you know, look at that.
Oh, my dang tail light's broken, and you know, that pleases me.
Yes, yes.
Same here.
So yeah, speaking of Netanyahu, let's talk about his terrorists inside Iran.
Who's that and what are they up to?
And it's too late for them, isn't it?
Well, see, I'm not really sure it's too late or not, but the point of my article that will be posted on Antwerp tonight is that we all know that it's not just the United States that has hardliners.
Tehran also has hardliners, and these hardliners are also opposed to any rapprochement with the United States for various reasons.
Some of them are opposed to it for ideological reasons.
Some of them are opposed to it because of the economic and political power that they obtained because of the stupidity of American policy towards Iran that only made the hardliners more powerful after U.S. invaded Iraq and Afghanistan and so on.
So, and they have been trying to prevent President Rouhani from reaching an agreement with Five Plus One.
They have been talking about him all over their press.
They have been attacking him.
They put up a lot of anti-American banners in Tehran over the last few weeks, which were removed later on.
They staged a demonstration in front of the American embassy in Tehran on the 34th anniversary of hostage crisis last Monday.
And so, the fact of the matter is these hardliners, just like neo-cons, just like war party, just like Israel lobby and so on, they are also opposed to any agreement between Iran and the West.
And therefore, one way of preventing any agreement is to provoke these people so that they can take action and perhaps respond militarily to any provocation, which then would provide a perfect excuse for Israel and the United States and others, anyone who wants to attack Iran, it would provide the excuse to do so.
So, the way to provoke them, one way of provoking them is to carry out terrorist operation within Iran.
And that has been going on for many, many years.
We all know that the Islamic Republic of Iran has been associated or has been called a sponsor of terrorism and so on.
And there may be some truth to it that in the past, the Islamic Republic of Iran has supported groups like Hezbollah that have carried out terrorist operations or what at least some people consider terrorist operation, let's say in 1980s.
But what is not talked about in the mainstream media in this country and even in Europe is the fact that Iran itself is a big victim of terrorism.
And these terrorist operations and terrorist attacks have been going on for the past several decades, ever since the Iranian Revolution.
The one that I talk about in the article is the terrorism that has been committed by Sunni groups.
We know that in Iran, 10% of the population are Sunni and about 90, 89% of the population are Shiite.
And these Sunnis are mainly concentrated in Iran province of Kurdistan, which is next to Iraq.
Iraq has its own Kurdistan in Northern Iraq.
And also in Sistan, Baluchistan, which is a Southeastern province of Iran on the border with Pakistan.
And attack in these two particular areas have been going on for many, many years.
These are basically very small separatist groups that have been supported by the United States, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and so on.
The goal is to destabilize the Iranian government, to tie it up, to provoke hardliners, to create problems, so that in their view, the Iranian government will not have resources and time to do things outside its borders.
One group that committed a lot of crimes and terrorist operations was Jundala.
Jundala is a Salafi group operating from Pakistan attacking Iran, Sistan, Baluchistan province up until like two years ago.
They carried out many operations.
They killed a large number of Iranians from civilian or non-civilian.
They took a lot of Iranians hostage to the other side of the border in Pakistan and beheaded them, and also posted videos about beheading them and so on.
But what happened was that the Iranian government arrested their leader, Abdul Malik Libereki, in 2010, and executed him and his brother for all the crimes that they had committed.
And in fact, when they executed the two, the families of victims were present during their execution.
At the same time, Jundala, although claiming to be representing the Baluch Sunni minority in Iran, it had no major or significant social popular support in Iran, and the terrorist operation it carried out made people even detested and disliked it even more.
So what happened was after the Rigi brothers were executed, the Jundala that was operating in Iran disappeared.
But then after some time, the same group but under a different name appeared.
And there are now two groups that are basically the same group as Jundala, but operating under a different name, have been attacking Iran from Pakistan's side.
One is Jaish-ul-Adl, which means Army of Justice, and one is Harakate Ansari Iran, which means Movement of Comrades of Iran or something like that.
Jundala, during its operation, was supported by the George W. Bush administration, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and so on.
Mark Perry, for example, in Foreign Policy in January of 2012, published a very good article reporting that agents of Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency, presented themselves as CIA operatives with American passports in order to recruit Jundala members to carry out attacks inside Iran.
I wrote a very detailed article in 2009, October of 2009, where I put together all the various reports from various sources that showed that there was extensive relation between George W. Bush administration to CIA and Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence and Mossad with Jundala in the years 2001 all the way to 2008.
Seymour Hersh also reported that the United States has been helping not only Jundala, but this Kurdish group, which is a leftist secular group as opposed to Sunni group Jundala, which is called Pejak, which is the Kurdish acronym for Party of Free Life in Kurdistan.
It is a very militant group that has been attacking Iranian military and Iranian policemen inside Iran for many years and has killed many, many people inside Iran.
So after Jundala disappeared, these two groups resurfaced under different names.
They are basically Jundala, but under different names.
And they have been carrying all these terrorist attacks.
And in the latest one that was just a couple weeks ago, less than a couple, October 25, they attacked Iran from Pakistani side of the border and they killed 14 border guards, wounded five or six and took three hostages and took them inside Pakistan.
And they basically took responsibility for it through the statement they issued.
Now, if you go to their website, you will see that they are even worse than Jundala because at least Jundala was trying to pretend that it represented the Sunni Baluchi in Iran, the minority, that I must say, so that your listener will not misunderstand, there has been discrimination against Sunni population in Iran.
But this goes back many, many decades.
It's not just restricted to the Shia government in Iran, the Islamic Republic.
It goes back to the time the Shah was in power.
But the vast majority of Sunni people have always considered themselves as part of Iran and have always supported a democratic Iran.
And in fact, in every election over the past several decades, whenever a reformist president has won the election and the presidency, the largest number of votes, relatively speaking, has always come from this group of population, the Sunnis and ethnic minorities.
Hassan Rouhani, when he won in June 14, his largest fair of share in terms of percentage came from Sistan, Baluchistan, and Kurdistan.
I'm sorry, I gotta interrupt you, and we gotta take this break real quick, but we'll be right back.
Okay.
We're talking about Jundala and MEK and PJAK, American-Israeli-supported terrorists, Saudi-supported terrorists inside Iran, with Mohammed Sahimi.
Back after this.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
And we're talking with good old Mohammed Sahimi.
He's a professor of chemical engineering at USC, and he runs imenews.com, Iran News and Middle East Reports.
And we're talking about American and or Israeli and some Saudi support for these minority Sunni, Salafist, Bin Laden-ite type groups, terrorist groups being used inside Iran, even to this day in the middle, I say and or America and Iran there because I don't think it's Obama that's having Jundala attack Iranian border guards right now in the middle of the nuclear talks.
Mohammed, what about you?
No, I don't, I agree.
I don't think that the Obama administration actually supports this.
In fact, when the president came into office, the Obama administration declared Jundala a terrorist group.
And that was one of the reasons that Jundala disappeared because it was obvious that Jundala was working with Saudi Arabia and Israel and so on and for it to be declared a terrorist group and then still operating under the same name and working with the same government was just not tenable.
That's why after their leaders were killed and it was declared a terrorist organization.
And given the fact that after all the things that it had done, it had lost any support that it could have had, it basically disappeared.
But now, as I said, it has resurfaced in the form of two other groups that act more sophisticated than Jundala.
They are very media savvy.
They have set up Facebook pages and they have websites and they try to present themselves as true defenders of Sunni population in Iran.
But as I said, in every election in Iran that the reformist progressive forces in Iran have won, the highest percentage of vote that they have received has been from exactly from the same provinces in which the Sunni population has a significant presence.
When Hassan Rouhani won the elections last June 14th, he received 75% of the votes both in Kurdistan and Sistan and Balochistan, the two Sunni provinces in Iran, which was much higher than his national average, which was about 51%.
So that goes to show that the Sunni population, despite the discrimination that has been going on against them, has always considered themselves as part of Iran and part of the democratic movement in Iran, and they never support any sort of violence or any use of violence in order to address these discrimination.
But Jaish-e-Shorab and Harakotan, I'm sorry, Iran, after they attack Iran, if you go and look at and read their statement, first of all, they very much sound very similar and very much sound like the Salafi groups in Syria.
In fact, Jaish-e-Shorab, that took responsibility for the attack on October 25th, said that the attack was in revenge for what the Islamic Republic of Iran had done in Syria in support of Bashar al-Assad government.
It never talked about discrimination against Sunni people in Iran or anything of that sort, like local problems.
Rather, it said that it is doing it to avenge Iran's action in Syria, which, first of all, goes to show that it is not a group that wants to represent the aspiration and the demands of the Sunni population in Iran.
Rather, it has other aspirations and ambitions.
And secondly, it is basically a sort of a foreign-supported government.
We know that Saudi Arabia and Qatar, in that region, have been supporting these Salafi terrorist groups in Syria.
And now that those groups are known to the world, even the New York Times and Washington Post have reported that most of the fighting in Syria is now done by these extremist Salafi groups and al-Qaeda in Iraq that has moved to Syria and so on.
Bashar al-Assad's forces are taking some territory back.
In fact, there was just, over the past two days, there was a report of big gains by government forces.
Now they want to basically spread the sectarian Shia-Sunni wars inside Iran to hit back Iran because of the blowback that they have suffered in Syria, as a result of Russia and Iran supporting the Assad government.
At the same time, Saudi Arabia is very worried about a nuclear agreement between Iran and 5-plus-1, or mostly Iran and the United States, because it is afraid that it will leave Iran's nuclear program in place.
And also, once the tension between Iran and the United States reduces, then given Iran's size, strategic positions, resources, and so on, Iran will be a much more attractive state and country for the West to deal with and have a commercial relationship with and have a strategic relationship with than Saudi Arabia.
And therefore, they are afraid that they will be reduced to second-tier players.
We have to remember that a few years ago, Wikileaks publicized some secret documents in which American diplomats had reported that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia had urged American government to attack Iran's nuclear facilities, saying that they should cut off the snake's head, which means that Iran is a snake and its head is its nuclear program.
All right, now, we're very short on time here, so let me say one thing before I ask my question.
The thing I have to say is I strongly urge people to check out this article.
Again, it'll be up on antiwar.com tonight.
Saudi Arabia and Israel try to derail nuclear negotiations with Iran by terrorism.
Especially, I wanna recommend how it's full of links to all this great sourcing, so you can learn all about exactly what's being discussed in the article.
It's really valuable in that sense, too.
So, do you think that the Saudis have specifically ordered these recent attacks, or all of America and our allies working together have just created a monster here?
They have created a monster that may be going out of control.
Whether Saudi government explicitly ordered this or not, I cannot claim that, but there is no question that the support that Jundala received in the past, which is now in the form of two other groups, inspired them and put them in a position to carry out these attacks.
So, that cannot be denied, and we also know that how unhappy Saudi Arabia and Israel are with respect to the development that's taking place.
Right.
See how good he is?
Just call speculation speculation.
You can prove what you can prove, and well, of course, you're an engineer, right?
Yes.
And obviously think like one.
Well, I sure appreciate your time on the show, as always, and your great writing, as always, Mohamed.
Appreciate it.
Thank you very much, Scott.
Thank you.
All right, everybody, that is the great Mohamed Sahimi.
He's a professor of chemical engineering at USC, but also he writes for antiwar.com.
Saudi Arabia and Israel try to derail nuclear negotiations with Iran by terrorism.
That will be up at antiwar.com tonight, and please check out imenews.com.
Hey, Al Scott Horton here to talk to you about this great new book by Michael Swanson, The War State, The Cold War Origins of the Military-Industrial Complex and the Power Elite.
In the book, Swanson explains what the revolution was, the rise of empire, and the permanent military economy, and all from a free market libertarian perspective.
Jacob Hornberger, founder and president of the Future Freedom Foundation, says the book is absolutely awesome, and that Swanson's perspectives on the Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis are among the best I've read.
The poll numbers state that people agree on one thing.
It's that America is on the wrong track.
In The War State, Swanson gets to the bottom of what's ailing our society, empire, the permanent national security bureaucracy that runs it, and the mountain of debt that has enabled our descent down this dark road.
The War State could well be the book that finally brings this reality to the level of mainstream consensus.
America can be saved from its government and its arms dealers.
First, get the facts.
Get The War State by Michael Swanson, available at your local bookseller and at amazon.com, or just click on the book in the right margin at scotthorton.org.
Hey, Al Scott Horton here for Braswell Business Communication Services at fusepowder.com.
Braswell Communications can provide credentialed media presence for your company at industry conferences and trade shows, as well as support services and consultation for publishing, editorial and technical writing, business to business and marketing communications, research, and information campaigns.
Braswell also does website development and complete web content maintenance to include voiceover audio and copywriting.
Strengthen your business, fusepowder.com.
Why does the US support the tortured dictatorship in Egypt?
Because that's what Israel wants.
Why can't America make peace with Iran?
Because that's not what Israel wants.
And why do we veto every attempt to shut down illegal settlements on the West Bank?
Because it's what Israel wants.
Seeing a pattern here?
Sick of it yet?
It's time to put America first.
Support the Council for the National Interest at councilforthenationalinterest.org and push back against the Israel lobby and their sock puppets in Washington, D.C.
That's councilforthenationalinterest.org.
Hey, Al Scott Horton here for wallstreetwindow.com.
Mike Swanson is a successful former hedge fund manager whose site is unique on the web.
Subscribers are allowed a window into Mike's very real main account and receive announcements and explanations for all his market moves.
Federal Reserve has been inflating the money supply to finance the bank bailouts and terror war overseas.
So Mike's betting on commodities, mining stocks, European markets, and other hedges against a depreciating dollar.
Play along on paper or with real money and then be your own judge of Mike's investment strategies.
See what happens at wallstreetwindow.com.
Hey, Al Scott here.
Man, I had a chance to have an essay published in the book, Why Peace, edited by Mark Gutman, but I didn't understand what an opportunity it was.
Boy, do I regret I didn't take it.
This compendium of thoughts by the greatest anti-war writers and activists of our generation will be remembered and studied long into the future.
You've got to get Why Peace.
You've got to read Why Peace.
It features articles by Harry Brown, Robert Naiman, Fred Bronfman, Dahlia Wasfy, Richard Cummings, Karen Gutowski, Butler Schaefer, Cathy Kelly, Robert Higgs, Anthony Gregory, and so many more.
Why Peace?
Because war is the health of everything wrong with our society.
Get Why Peace down at the bookshop or amazon.com.
Just click the book in the right margin at scotthorton.org.