11/10/13 – Reza Marashi – The Scott Horton Show

For Pacifica Radio, November 10th, 2013.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is Anti-War Radio.
Alright, y'all.
Welcome to the show.
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Now, as you may be aware, last night, the P5-plus-1, which is basically the UN Security Council, failed to arrive at a preliminary agreement with the Iranians on the subject of their nuclear program, an agreement which was widely expected, but fell apart at the last minute there.
And shortly after that announcement of the failure of those talks, I spoke with Reza Marashi of the National Iranian American Council, that's niacouncil.org, who is covering the talks from Geneva.
Welcome back to the show, Reza.
How are you doing?
Tired, but I'm doing well.
How are you doing?
I'm doing great.
I really appreciate you joining us now.
The Iran talks in Geneva have ended on a less than satisfactory note.
Disappointing to me, but not so disappointing according to the participants.
What do you make of it?
Well, I think we have to look at the fact that a massive amount of progress was made from the time that these talks started a couple of days ago until the time that they finished.
It's true that the optimal outcome would have been a deal, and a deal was not reached.
But we're closer to one than we've ever been before.
We almost had one.
It slipped through our fingers this time around.
And I actually believe the Iranian foreign minister and his counterparts in the United States and Europe, when he says that he thinks that it can get done, and it perhaps can get done on November 20th when they reconvene here in Geneva for another round of talks.
Diplomacy takes time, especially when you have two countries like the United States and Iran that haven't been talking for 34 years, learning how to get to know one another again, how to build trust, build confidence.
Diplomacy is a marathon, not a sprint.
So sure, we would have liked to have seen the best possible outcome, but we shouldn't let that disappointment overshadow all of the good things that happened here over the past couple of days, of which there were many.
Well, you know, I guess I'm kind of mad just because I let myself get my hopes up when I heard everybody's positive attitude going into the thing, and it was clear that this was not going to be a repeat of 2009, at least as far as the Americans' intentions.
They really, I mean, for Kerry to divert his trip and show up in Geneva, I thought meant, wow, they're really going to do it.
Yeah, well, you know, it didn't quite get to they're really going to do it, but it does show that they really tried to get it done.
They negotiated for 20 hours today, 8 a.m. to midnight, and then the press briefing finished up at about 2 a.m. here.
So, you know, they weren't just sitting around, you know, drinking $10 espressos and having $30 club sandwiches because that's how much stuff really costs here in Switzerland, in case your listeners didn't know that.
They were actually getting down to brass tacks, and these negotiations, the style, the tone, the tenor, the substance of these negotiations are unprecedented, not just in terms of Iran and the P5-plus-1 more generally, but Iran and the United States more specifically.
And that's why there's reason for optimism going forward, because, you know, the taboo of talking has been broken.
And the magic of diplomacy is once talks start, you never really know where they're going to lead.
And so far they've led us in a good direction, and we do have a legitimate reason to think that it can continue to go in a positive direction going forward.
That's one thing I left out of your bio that you used to work in the State Department, and you really like this diplomacy stuff.
It's all very, well, as you call it on your Twitter feed and just now too, it's magic.
It is magic.
You know, the weapons that a diplomat has at her disposal are very different than what somebody who's in the military has.
Diplomats don't have guns, knives, bombs.
They have patience, listening, understanding, forbearance, tact, and letting people know that aren't American, that their concerns will be heard inside Washington.
And, you know, there's only two ways to solve problems in the world, contrary to what anybody else tells you, and that's war and diplomacy.
And everything that happens, you know, before war, whether it's called sanctions or anything else, is just an effort to try to increase your leverage for when you finally sit down at the negotiating table to talk.
What they don't tell you, though, is that every war ends with a negotiation.
So everything that happens, even the war itself is for leverage, right?
I mean, the perfect example is, you know, Barack Obama tried to negotiate an extension on how long we could stay in Iraq beyond December 31, 2011.
The Iraqis said, thanks, but no thanks, don't let the door hit you on the way out.
The war ended with a negotiation.
So why do we have to expend all this blood and treasure in the future going forward, whether it's Iran or any other country, when we have countless talented diplomats that are more than capable of solving international conflicts peacefully?
That's why I get excited about diplomacy, because it works.
Boy, and we've had enough war.
So, yeah, whatever we can do to prevent that.
And, you know, like you're saying, 20 hours just today, that's more than they've talked in 35 years.
That's right.
I mean, the amount of time that the United States and Iran spent talking directly here in Geneva is more than they've talked combined over the past three decades.
That alone should tell you that progress has been made.
That alone should tell you that this process is real.
That alone should tell you that it's possible to get the deal that I think everybody wants, because a good deal never pleases everyone, because not everybody gets what they want.
But the whole point of a deal is you don't get everything you want, but you avoid the worst possible outcome, which is war.
Well, you know, any deal is the deal that I want, because I think that the entire controversy is contrived and that their nuclear program already is safeguarded, and the worst you could ever really accuse them of is trying to get to that breakout capability, which is their right within the treaty, really.
Call it a loophole if you want, but that's what it says in the NPT.
It's just like dozens of other countries in the world.
You can have the capability to make nukes, and they've never betrayed the intention to go beyond that.
And as Seymour Hersh reported, the CIA believes that once America got rid of Saddam for them, that was their last reason they even considered making a nuke in the first place.
It might be to keep his army out if he tried to come back.
But they know that they couldn't take on Israel and or America in a thousand years, so they're not even bothering with that.
They never were.
So any deal, to me, would include whatever, an additional protocol or whatever terms, would just mean that the Americans have finally accepted the truth of the fact that it's already verified that they're not diverting their nuclear material to any other military purpose.
A big part of what this conflict is predicated on, a big part of its foundation, is mistrust.
So oftentimes it doesn't matter what Iran or the United States or the Europeans or the Chinese and the Russians are saying or doing, you know, because people have mutual suspicions.
How we go about alleviating those mutual suspicions is a critical component of the diplomatic process, and that's something that's been lacking over the past couple of years.
I mean, for a lot longer than the past couple of years.
But if we're going to talk about Obama's term in the White House, then over the past couple of years.
Another reason why there's a reason for optimism and reason to believe that a deal could get done is because they're working to address those issues, slowly but surely.
And it's a process.
It's not going to happen overnight.
Is that just a very diplomatic way of saying, Reza, that you disagree with me that it's a red herring at all?
And that you take the State Department spokespeople and the Secretary of State at their word that they really are very concerned that they have to try so hard to keep Iran from getting nuclear bombs?
No, it doesn't mean that at all.
I mean, I think at the end of the day, frankly, it doesn't matter what I think.
What matters is what these people think and how to get them to not think it anymore.
Because if we're trying to avoid a conflict, then that kind of trust and those types of concrete steps and building confidence, that has to happen.
There's no other way around it.
So if either side wants to prove to the other that the suspicions that they have are misfounded and that they're treating them unreasonably because IAEA reports say this or something else says that, how many documents do we have clearly articulating what Iran's nuclear program is and isn't doing?
There's no shortage of them.
So clearly it's not about facts at this point.
What it's really about is making sure that both sides have a reason to believe that a better future is ahead if they compromise.
And so that's really what I'm talking about at the end of the day.
If we get caught up on legalisms or who's right or who's wrong or what the Iranians aren't trying to do, what the Americans aren't trying to do, I fear that we could lose the bigger picture, which is solving this thing.
Right.
Well, and it seems like, well, again, I've let myself get my hopes up all week long, but it seems like to me the whole Cold War between America and Iran, and of course Israel is an issue in here, but it seems like the whole Cold War could really be put on hold if we could just get even this preliminary deal.
It's like the one giant leap for mankind kind of thing.
Like almost Nixon goes to China, really break some very, very thick ice and begin a real warming of relations here.
But it seems like even if I'm wrong about that and everything stays, you know, China levels at best, frenemies or something like that, it's still be a major setback to the war party.
If we have this additional protocol, et cetera, et cetera, that they'll, I really sincerely hope the talking point that, oh, yeah, they're still trying to make nuclear bombs will have to die after this, after any sort of deal here.
That that theory, they're going to have to find some other reason to regime change Iran other than they're making nukes after this.
Right.
Yeah.
I mean, the people that want to change the regime in Iran are going to use whatever excuse they need to use, because before Iran was spinning any centrifuges, they were had a whole different set of reasons about why the regime needed to go.
I think what we should be optimistic about, though, even though talks didn't produce the outcome that we all really wanted today, is that both the Iranian foreign minister, the Iranian president, the American president, the American secretary of state have all said that, you know, we should be working to make sure and demonstrate that, A, Iran's not trying to build a nuclear weapon, B, its program is only for peaceful purposes, and C, if we solve this nuclear issue, that opens the potential to solve other issues that fuel the U.S.-Iran conflict, because the nuclear issue is only one of them.
But it's the big one right now because both sides have made it a big one.
So if you can chip away at that and resolve it once and for all to make sure that Iran remains peaceful, and you build the requisite trust that's necessary in the inspections, verifications, all that good stuff, then you can get down to other stuff, and you can start to walk and chew gum at the same time, and who knows, maybe even the Israeli dynamic can be a part of that.
I'd like to think it could be, but we have to slay the wolf and there's the sled first.
Well, you know, it seems like since they share America's only real enemies in the world, Al-Qaeda, there's some ground that we could start working with them on.
You know, they were very helpful back in the early days of the terror war, weren't they?
Yeah, and it's well documented, so you don't have to take my word for it.
But because this nuclear issue has become, you know, it's taken on a life of its own, and it's an unnecessary crisis in my view, that's actually what the Iranian foreign minister calls it.
He says we should be resolving this unnecessary crisis.
And until it's resolved, because it's taken on a life of its own, it's going to be really tough to talk about issues like Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, energy security, you name it.
There's a whole host of issues that we should be talking to them about, but we're not because of this one issue.
So I'm a big proponent of let's crack this nut so we can start cracking the others.
Right.
All right, I'm Scott Horton.
This is Anti-War Radio.
We're talking with Reza Marashi.
He's the research director of the National Iranian American Council.
That's niacouncil.org, and he's in Geneva where he's been covering the talks, which got somewhere, narrowed some differences, said the secretary of state, but didn't quite get the deal that we were hoping for.
But they're meeting again in 10 days, but not the foreign ministers.
It'll be the political directors meeting in 10 days.
What does that mean?
Well, originally it was the political director that started this round of talks in Geneva, and unexpectedly John Kerry and his foreign minister colleagues from the other P5 countries decided to come because they felt that they were close, and it warranted coming to try and seal the deal.
It didn't happen this time around.
There's no reason why if they get close to sealing the deal in the next round of talks that they might not come again.
We have no way to know for sure, but these talks typically take place at the political director level, and then you bring in the big guns, the foreign ministers or the presidents, prime ministers, etc., etc., when you get to the point where that's necessary.
We got close this time, and that's why they came.
I see.
But they're second string, not third or way down technical level.
They're still...
No, no, this is the level that these talks normally happen at.
It's the level that they've been happening at pretty much the entire time that Iran has been meeting with the P5 plus one.
I guess, see, I saw Michael Gordon from the New York Times asked a question that made it sound like they were bringing in the lowest level people of all for the next round, but I guess that was just sort of my interpretation of his question.
Yeah, no, it's not low level at all.
I mean, you know, and these people who are the lead negotiators for the P5 plus one and for Iran are not empowered to negotiate by their political leadership at home.
So they have a pretty long leash.
I see.
Okay, and then now I know probably I'll be asking you to mostly speculate here or something.
You don't have to say any more than you want to, obviously, but I was wondering if we could talk about the form of the deal and what it is they're quibbling about as much as you know or as much as you've heard, or you can describe the degree of confidence you have in any assertion you want to make or whatever.
But questions about, for example, what's going to happen to the as yet not even completed Iraq facility.
I guess it's Iraq, but I say Iraq, so nobody thinks we're talking about Iraq.
But anyway, the heavy water reactor that they're building there that could produce weapons grade plutonium.
And then there's the 20 percent in the Fordo facility.
Could you address because I think this audience is pretty up to date on on the particulars here.
And I want to know, too.
Sure.
I mean, what they've essentially tried to do here in Geneva is create a set of common goals.
And once you have the set of common goals listed, then you can start to create a road map with two to three steps that can lead you to a clearly defined end game of what the relationship between Iran and the United States, more specifically in Iran and the world community, will look like.
All this has been solved.
What they were trying to do here in Geneva is to achieve step one, agree on what step one would be.
And because they have the common goals and they drafted language.
And then they tried to synthesize the language that each of the various parties had written.
So they could come up with a joint statement, if you will, that talked about what achieving step one would look like.
And then the details of step one loosely because, you know, they didn't specify in the press conferences.
I mean, the diplomats didn't leak all of the details, which is a good thing, because the more you leak, the less likely diplomacy is to succeed.
But the details were essentially centered around, you know, stretching out the amount of time that would be considered Iran's breakout capability.
It's generally considered to be that Iran would need at least one year to build a crash course nuclear weapons program.
They don't currently have one, according to all the intelligence communities.
They were trying to stretch that out to two years.
Some of the ways that they would have done that would have Iran stop enriching uranium to 20 percent, have Iran ship out or reprocess a stockpile of 20 percent enriched uranium, have Iran cap its stockpile of low enriched uranium at the 3.5 or 5 percent level, and also, you know, not necessarily dismantle, but limit the operability of some of its nuclear facilities, including the heavy water reactor that you spoke about.
Some of the sticking points came up when the people inside the P5-plus-1 themselves did not agree on whether or not the heavy water reactor should be completely shuttered and also about the stockpiles of 20 percent and what should or shouldn't be done with it.
These were disagreements within the P5-plus-1 itself, and as a result of that, that was the largest obstacle to reaching a deal this time around.
The French in particular were the ones who weren't too keen on the deal that was on the cusp of being agreed to, and that's why negotiations lasted 20 hours today.
And it was mostly Iraq or the 20 percent, or both?
Both, according to them, and we really don't have a reason to not take their word for it, because, you know, if they wouldn't have raised those concerns, then the deal would have been done.
But I think it just goes to show that there isn't as much unity inside the P5-plus-1 as they like to say there is publicly, because the whole point of having the P5-plus-1 is so that they can get on the same page before they come to the negotiations.
And it's quite clear that they got to the negotiations, and one country decided to throw a curveball.
By the way, Kerry diplomatically denied that in his press conference, but that was pretty clear at the time, huh?
He was acknowledging it is not going to increase the unity in the P5-plus-1, right?
You try to deny it to maintain the semblance of unity that you have.
And now what is this guy, Fabius is his name, what's his interest?
The French ambassador came, and I mean for crying out loud, the Americans are finally ready, and everybody else on the Security Council too, I know they count and they're important, but the Americans are the ones who've had the problem all this time, and they're finally ready.
The Secretary of State is there, he's finally ready to do this thing, and then the French waltz in and screw it up, what is that about?
Domestic politics in France?
It's hard to say.
Not a lot of people here in Geneva really understood where the French were coming from.
They've developed a much harder line on Iran in recent years than they did ten years ago when they were at the forefront of negotiating an agreement between the EU and Iran that the Bush administration subsequently torpedoed.
You know, I can't really engage in conspiracy theories, because I literally would just be guessing, you know, pulling out of my you-know-what.
I think the French are going to have to answer some pretty serious questions over the next couple of days, and we're going to hear some more informed experts of French domestic politics, because all politics is local.
Like French foreign policy, sure, yeah, they have close relations with Saudi Arabia, close relations with Israel, close relations with the GCC countries, but does that factor into the process?
Absolutely.
But that's not the only reason why.
But there's something bigger here going on, and we just have to figure out what it is, and rest assured, within the next 24 hours, I'm sure we'll get an earful about it.
Yeah.
Well, now, so ten days till the next set of talks.
That's ten days for the Congress to come up with something, for the Israelis to come up with something, for the Jundala to do some more attacks on border guards in Baluchistan, more time for people to screw this thing up for us.
Do you think that they have a chance, or if you just give these diplomats a little bit more time, that they'll get it together here?
I believe that the diplomats are fully capable of getting it together, but I also think that Congress and then other spoilers are fully capable of mucking up the process, and they're certainly going to try, because their track record speaks for itself.
You know, the Obama administration actually deserves credit to really push back publicly and privately against Congress and other groups in Washington that are pushing a more hard line, trying to introduce new sanctions, which would not be helpful to the diplomatic process at this point, and they're going to continue to have to do that, and then they need a lot of help in the process, because, you know, Congress has an 11% approval rating, and they've been a thorn in Obama's side on pretty much every issue foreign and domestic since he's become president, and the Iran issue is no exception.
So he's going to need some cooperation from the Congress to push back against extremists and hardliners, and it just kind of remains to be seen whether or not he'll be able to pull it off.
Well, I'm no fan of this or any other president, but when the polls say 75% want to see these talks succeed, which that was the CNN poll from, what, a week and a half, two weeks ago, boy, you know, I think the Republicans in Congress ought to shut their mouths and let them go ahead and do this, you know.
We all know what Netanyahu said.
We heard him, but still, you know, this is our country here.
Yeah, I mean, you know, every country has their own interests at the end of the day, and that includes the United States and Israel.
That includes the United States and all of our allies at the end of the day, and the United States isn't going to sell out one of our allies in order to cut a deal with Iran, so I think the concerns that maybe the Israelis and the Saudis have aren't exactly warranted, but there's a method to their madness at the same time, because if they kick, fight, and scream publicly and privately, then it raises the cost that the United States and other Western allies have to pursue in these talks than they would have to otherwise, right?
So there's a method to the madness, and I still think we can square this circle.
I still think that the Obama administration has a bunch of talented diplomats.
They have the power to try to get this deal done, so I can't guarantee that it'll happen, but I'm still hopeful.
Now, I'm sorry.
This really has nothing to do with interviewing you, Reza, but I just have to point out that with all the suspense tonight and watching all these Twitter feeds and things and hoping something big and great was going to happen, I just noted and thought it was hilarious all the conservatives complaining that Obama's trying to sell out the U.N. Security Council, and so three cheers for the French for trying to save the authority of the U.N., because, of course, conservative Republicans are all a bunch of one-world commies as soon as it's Israel's position at stake.
Yeah, you know, the same people that pushed the Iraq war and said the U.N. was an obstacle at that time are now cheering it.
And the same with the French.
They were an obstacle during the war in Iraq, and now they're America's best friend.
So, you know, birds of a feather fly together, I suppose.
It's just funny the way people can flip their entire arguments upside down and probably not even notice, right?
I still hate the U.N.
It's just sometimes I hate them for doing stuff and other times I hate them for not doing stuff, but whatever.
Who needs consistency?
Exactly.
Exactly.
I mean, if there's one good thing about extremists, it's that you pull their string and they say the same five things.
So they're very predictable.
So you kind of know what's coming.
Right.
Although, you know, I have to admit that I was very appreciative of the French back in 2002 and 2003 trying to stick up for their best friend and give us some good advice when we needed it.
Friends don't let friends drive drunk and all that.
And I'm pretty angry at them tonight for screwing this thing up.
So maybe I'm an ideologue, too.
I'm just the opposite of a conservative is all.
I hear you.
You know, war is never a good thing.
So if you're going to be an ideologue, you might as well be one that's opposed to war.
Exactly.
Yeah.
That's pretty much the only thing that matters to me, too.
All other priorities are way, way, way down on the list.
And, you know, here's the thing, too.
I get bogged down in these details, and I like them.
And it's interesting to me.
It's been an interest to me for a long time for a lot of reasons, of course.
But it occurs to me that sort of from a big picture point of view that this whole thing is ridiculous and that it's amazing that somehow for, never even mind the past 20 years, but even just the past dozen years, that we have had this as an issue.
That, you know, nuclear weapons, Iran, these things have nothing to do with each other other than it's this gigantic talking point of the Israelis and their neoconservative acolytes in D.C. and all their think tanks and whatever.
Otherwise, we might be talking about, I don't know, a Palestinian state, something like that, but some other issue.
But they just keep this thing on the front burner all the time when for years on end, even though it took them a while and they had to change their mind, it's now been since 2007 that the official CIA position and even the Israelis agree with them in the newspapers too, that they're not even making nukes.
Yeah, I mean, controlling the narrative is a very powerful thing and that's why it's the responsibility of people who want to see a better future to push back.
And I think we're starting to see the fruits of that labor, the fruits of pushing back and trying to be more intellectually honest and use the power of diplomacy to solve our problems.
Because if you pull somebody's string and they say the same five things and they have a ton of money, you can be very organized and they have a lot of discipline.
But we need to match that.
And it shouldn't be that hard because if you're on the right side of the fight and the right side of the fight is trying to avoid fighting, then you have the forces of good on your side.
And I'd like to think that because the American people are overwhelmingly supportive of the diplomatic process, not just in Iran but elsewhere, that it's a message that really resonates.
And I think that gives us, those of us who are seeking a peaceful solution, far more power and leverage than we realize sometimes.
All right.
Well, thank you very much for your time on the show.
I sure appreciate it, Reza.
My pleasure.
Thanks for having me.
All right, everybody, that is Reza Marashi.
He is Research Director at the National Iranian American Council.
That's niacouncil.org.
Reporting from Geneva just after the talks last night.
All right, and that's it for the show.
Thanks, everybody, for listening.
This has been Anti-War Radio.
I'm your host, Scott Horton, here every Sunday morning from 8.30 to 9 on KPFK 90.7 FM in L.A.
You'll find my full interview archive, more than 3,000 of them now going back to 2003, at scotthorton.org.
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