01/11/13 – Gareth Porter – The Scott Horton Show

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For Pacifica Radio, January 11, 2013, I'm Scott Horton.
This is Anti-War Radio.
All right, y'all, welcome to the show.
It is Anti-War Radio.
I'm your host, Scott Horton.
Here every Friday from 630 to 7 on KPFK 90.7 FM in L.A.
Tonight's guest is the great Gareth Porter from Interpress Service.
That's IPSnews.net.
And he also has done some award-winning work for Truthout.org.
You can find his full IPS archive and pretty much everything he ever wrote at original.antiwar.com/Porter.
Welcome back to the show.
Gareth, how are you doing?
I'm fine, thanks, Scott.
Good to be back again.
Happy New Year.
Yeah, happy New Year to you, too.
It's good to talk to you again.
And, well, I think we can already tell that America and Israel's relationship with Iran is going to be big news this year.
And so far, really all last year, the Obama administration held talks with the Iranians, mostly centered around where are they next going to meet and have talks.
But maybe that's the diplomatic dance, and they're finally going to get down to business and make a nuclear deal.
You wrote the book on it.
Well, you're writing the book on it.
What do you think is going to happen?
Well, I think there's a somewhat better chance this year for a deal than there were last year.
The main reason being that the Obama administration certainly has more political room, political space, if you will, to maneuver than they did during an election campaign.
That should be worth something in terms of the possibility, and I would say only the possibility, of greater flexibility in the U.S. position, which, let's face it, I mean, that is the missing ingredient, has been the missing ingredient so far in the diplomatic negotiations between the P5-plus-1 and the Iranians.
I mean, the Iranians certainly are ready to make a deal of anything that would allow them to maintain their nuclear program.
I mean, you know, that's, I think, the long and short of it, that the Iranians are prepared to make a lot of concessions, provided that two things.
One, that they're able to keep their nuclear program, and two, that in return for giving up what clearly the United States is most eager to have them sacrifice, which is the enrichment of uranium to 20 percent, they want to get something in return, which is some significant relief from the onerous sanctions on Iran, which were added to very significantly in 2012 in terms of the oil sector, which is obviously very important to the Iranian economy.
So that is, I think, the primary question mark at this point.
Will the Obama administration really have sufficient flexibility to get into the zone where there are real negotiations, rather than simply the maneuvering for public consumption, which was happening in 2012?
I mean, the United States was trying to get credit for making diplomatic efforts with regard to Iran, while at the same time essentially keeping absolute inflexibility on the question of sanctions against Iran.
And that's the all-important factor that has to be part of the deal that the United States has avoided thus far.
Now, you know, some people argue that, I think some very sophisticated analysts argue, that it's much more difficult for the Obama administration to make concessions on the sanctions than it appears because the sanctions are really controlled by Congress.
And who controls Congress?
Well, the Israelis control Congress through AIPAC.
And therefore, I mean, that is a constraint on the Obama administration, as it would be with virtually any administration that's going to be in power in the United States in this period of history.
Well, and now here's the thing, too, though.
I mean, if we assume that Obama even wants to make a deal, he really can't make a real deal with the Iranians because he would have to concede 3.6% enrichment.
The Iranians are never going to give up 3.6% enrichment, and you don't have to be a sophisticated foreign policy analyst to know that.
They're going to hang on to that no matter what.
That's their sort of pseudo-breakout capability anyway.
Well, I certainly agree with you that you don't have to be a sophisticated analyst because unsophisticated observers, I think, would be unable to appreciate the political realities that surround this within Iran, which are that this nuclear program is extremely popular.
Indeed, it can be very dangerous for any government to basically give in on this, to be perceived by the majority of the Iranian population as having given in to pressure from the United States on the issue because of the prevalence of very strong nationalism, Persian nationalism, and the tie-in between that nationalism and the nuclear program, which is a matter of prestige and pride for the Iranian people.
So definitely, it is a fact that there is little room for any government to give in on that.
Well, but so wouldn't Obama prefer to just leave things the way they are and just leave it status quo for the next president rather than make a deal?
This brings us to the factor that I think is most likely to clear the deal at this point, which is that it's not so much AIPAC and Israel at this point, but the other factor that has for decades been in the background of U.S. policy toward Iran, which is the interest of the national security state itself separate from Israel, which clearly has played an important role, continues to play an important role in U.S. policy.
And those interests have to do with validating the idea of coercive diplomacy, which has been central.
It's been part of the warp and woof of U.S. national security policy for decades now.
And to give that up, to admit that coercive diplomacy was a failure and had to be given up on Iran is a big problem for the national security state.
And then beyond that, of course...
You mean just because so many think tank weenies advised otherwise?
Well, the think tank weenies are simply an extension of the national security state, of the national security bureaucracies.
But it's just too many people would have to eat too much crow, and so they'd rather continue in folly.
The think tanks are all people who have been in the national security state and positions at the Pentagon, the CIA, the NSC, State Department, or who are still hoping to get in there.
So, you know, it's all one big system.
And yeah, it's part of their legitimacy.
It's a legitimating ideology, if you will, for the national security state, and they're very loath to give that up.
And besides that, I think we have to also appreciate the important role that Iran has played as a useful enemy for both the Pentagon and military services and the CIA.
I mean, they have justified their budgets to a great extent on the basis of Iran as not just a typical rogue state, but the uber-rogue state, the one that has gotten our attention, kept our attention, and justified the budgets not just for military operations, potential military operations, but also for the whole proliferation exercise, the proliferation diplomacy or counter-proliferation diplomacy of the United States.
This is one of the things I've been working on in writing the book on the Iranian nuclear program.
What one discovers is that as soon as the Cold War was over, the CIA and the Pentagon, but particularly the CIA, was desperate to find new rationales for continuing to have very high levels of budget, Cold War levels of budget, and the biggest and most obvious candidate to replace the Soviet Union was proliferation by regional powers, by Iran, Iraq, and North Korea.
So that has played a huge role in sort of continuing to justify the power and the money that the national security state has been able to accumulate over the last couple of decades.
Well, you know, the one good thing about the status quo is we're not bombing them, and the bombing hasn't started despite all the pressure from certain sectors inside the United States.
I have to say, Scott, that we need to really put much more focus, as critical analysts, on the issue of U.S. sanctions.
Because there's no question in my mind that the Obama administration, quite a while ago, put its faith in the sanctions as the primary instrument, the main instrument of coercive diplomacy with regard to Iran, rather than military pressure.
They know that the Iranians don't really take seriously the idea that the Israelis are going to attack them or that the United States is going to attack them.
The real threat, the real form of pressure that the Obama administration has are economic sanctions.
And so that's why I think it is much more difficult for the Obama administration to give that up and to say, okay, we're ready to make a deal.
We won't hold out for another year the hope that the Iranians are going to cave in.
Because let's face it, I mean, that's what their real hope is, that these sanctions are going to be so effective that Iran will have no choice but to give in and agree to American terms.
Well, and your initial comments made it sound like that may be true, actually, at this point.
Well, I mean, I think that there's no doubt that the Iranians are under strong pressure in terms of their economy.
I mean, their economy is not doing well.
And over the next few years, the prospects are not, you know, they're not better for Iran.
In fact, you know, one of the people who I've spoken with who is a very perspicacious observer of the Iranian economy, an Iranian who lives abroad, has made the observation that Iran's economy is bound to suffer more as time goes by because the oil sector has failed to make the necessary investments in modern technology or to get the necessary capital to modernize the oil sector.
And therefore, production is continuing to go down.
Right, they have to export their crude oil and then re-import the refined gasoline.
That's right.
So basically, I mean, they are facing, you know, the prospect or the specter, if you will, of worse situation economically because of the gradual deterioration of the oil sector.
And so that, I mean, there's no doubt that that is a form of pressure on Iran that is very difficult for them to cope with.
And so they are really, you know, they're caught in a bind.
They have the political constraints that we've already talked about, which really make it impossible to give in.
And of course, they don't want to anyway.
But at the same time, they do have, you know, the sanctions are a huge problem for them.
And that means that they are going to be very creative about trying to offer the United States some variant of the deal that involves both, you know, giving up 20 percent enrichment, which was always, you know, a negotiating chip, in any case, a set of negotiating chips, and agreeing to various other kinds of assurances, including, you know, accepting the additional protocol, you know, very far-reaching intrusive inspections, going beyond what they have agreed to in the past.
And in other ways, you know, doing everything possible to reassure the United States and the West that they have not had any ambitions for nuclear weapons.
I think they're ready to go.
I have the very strong suspicion that they can provide much more information than they have to clear their record in that regard.
But the Iranians being Iranians, good rug salesmen, they are holding on to that information as other negotiating chips.
And so I think that's going to be part of the deal they're ready to offer.
But, you know, in the end, they are still faced with this problem that the United States government is hung up, I think still hung up on the idea that, well, we've really got them by the neck now, we have our boot on their neck, and we shouldn't raise that boot because we have a good chance of forcing their hand on it and getting the terms that we want.
Oh, yeah, the entire Middle East is completely under our sway.
Everything's working great.
Now, I want to talk with you a little bit more about how they're not making nukes anyway, because I think that's an important point.
But first, I was hoping you could talk a little bit about how the sanctions are affecting the people of Iran, because, of course, they start out talking about targeted sanctions against the worst criminals that run the Revolutionary Guard Corps, and we're just going to make them poor.
But then they kind of moved on from there to crippling sanctions, which I'm pretty sure they're talking about crippled kids or making kids who aren't yet crippled crippled, something like that.
Well, absolutely.
I mean, that is indeed the narrative that we've seen unfold.
Initially, they were very, very careful to say, well, we want sanctions that are targeted against the leadership.
But you're right.
I mean, the concept of crippling sanctions means precisely that you cripple the economy, you target the population as a strategy for putting pressure on the regime.
And we don't have, at this point at least, any statistical measures, you know, gross statistical measures of the impact of the sanctions.
What we have is essentially stories about things that have been happening.
And we know that, you know, things like wheelchairs, you know, medicine for various serious illnesses, such as multiple sclerosis, as an example, are very, very scarce.
It's not impossible to get things.
They can be smuggled in.
There are ways to do it.
But the prices have gone up by, you know, an order of 10, a magnitude of increase.
OK, now, OK, the Democrats have not put sanctions on medicine.
So why is it that medicine is so hard to get?
Well, I mean, it's hitting the ability of Iran to import goods.
And so we're talking about drugs that they don't make domestically, that they have to import.
It makes it very, very difficult for.
I just want to be clear, because I don't want people saying, oh, yeah, right, like the Democrats are banning MS medicine.
But in effect, they are.
In effect, they are.
In effect, they are making it.
They're putting the prices beyond the ability of many, many Iranians to be able to purchase.
I think that's that's the problem.
OK, now let's talk a little bit more about how they're not making nukes anyway.
And one of the things you said there was that in any deal, you believe the Iranians are ready to go ahead and sign the additional protocol in order to go to further lengths.
That's one of the bargaining chips they're holding on to.
You said to go to further lengths to satisfy the Americans that, in fact, they're not really making nukes.
Yeah, I mean, just very quickly, I mean, just to clarify that comment, then I'll go on to to talk a bit more about the evidence that the Iranians are not really interested in manufacturing nuclear weapons.
The the Iranians definitely have been trying to use their enriched uranium as bargaining chips ever since they began the enrichment process back in 2004, 2005.
They have been clearly angling to to trade the enrichment of the enriched uranium that they have in for a deal with the United States, which would, on one hand, relieve them of the sanctions, one that would would make it possible for Iran to take advantage of international capital investment and and other ways to to rejoin the global economic system.
And also, I mean, to to basically get Iran off the list of enemies of the United States.
I mean, this is a huge problem for Iran to be officially designated as as an enemy state.
And so therefore that that is the aim that that they have been trying to achieve or those are the aims they've been trying to achieve in their negotiations.
I mean, if they were to give up their negotiating chips simply in return for, you know, the United States patting them on the back and saying, good boy.
But then nevertheless, not changing the fundamental structure of the relationship, then, you know, they would be stupid.
You know, they have to I mean, what they've learned over the years is that the only reason the United States is interested in talking to Iran is that they have these negotiating chips in the form of enriched uranium.
And the possibility of of using those and the capability of using those that enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon.
And so they have to get something in return for, you know, even the concession of giving up 20 percent enriched uranium and, you know, making it absolutely clear, leaving no doubt about their bona fides in terms of not being interested in nuclear weapons.
So so let me just just take a step back or a couple of steps back and talk about why I am absolutely convinced that the Iranians have not really had an interest in nuclear weapons.
I mean, and there are a number of reasons for this.
And so I'm not going to be able to touch on even all the major points which I will touch on in my book.
But if you go back to the Iran-Iraq war, you know, it's not widely known, but it's very important to understand that the Iranians were hit by Iraqi chemical weapons very, very seriously.
They had tens of thousands of Iranians seriously injured and thousands dead from from chemical weapons fired at Iran by the Iraqis.
And and there was there was no doubt that there were calls from the military for the retaliation by Iran with chemical weapons.
They had the capability to do so, but they never did.
And there are multiple sources which are quite credible on this point that the mullahs, the much maligned mullahs of the regime or associated with the regime said, no, these are weapons of mass destruction and they are illegitimate under Islamic law and therefore it couldn't be done.
And this is a this is a major insight into one of the features of this regime, that that Islam does make a difference.
And this is one of the ways in which it did make a difference.
So when you have the supreme leader, Khamenei, saying publicly and turning this into a so-called fatwa, a sort of a statement of Islamic law by the supreme leader that nuclear weapons are forbidden by Islam, this is this is important.
This is significant.
This is not simply a way of misleading the United States or Western countries or the world, the world opinion.
It's a real factor in Iranian politics and policy.
So that's one point.
The second point is that you I mean, the Iranians are not stupid.
They have some very, very sophisticated strategists and they have been running Iranian policy for the last 20 years or more.
Ever since, you know, the first the guy who started the Iranian revolution, Khamenei, Ayatollah Khamenei died in 1989.
You've had the same group of rather sophisticated, I would say quite sophisticated strategists who've surrounded the supreme leader, who've been in top positions in the foreign ministry, in the National Security Council and advisors to the to the supreme leader ever since.
And these are people who understand that having nuclear weapons would really do Iran no good at all.
It would simply invite a heightening of tensions and the possibility for serious conflict with the United States.
And at the same time, the Iranians have made it clear that they have an alternative, and that is to follow the Japanese model, what they call the Japanese model.
And that is the model of essentially having the capability and letting the world know that they have the capability if they are pushed hard enough, if they are invaded.
For example, obviously, this would be an occasion for, you know, reconsidering the policy.
But if they're if they're pushed hard enough, they have the capability of going to nuclear weapons.
But short of that, it's in their interest to simply rely on this existential deterrent, if you will, of the knowledge itself, which gives you at least many, if not most of the advantages and a few, if any, of the disadvantages of actually having nuclear weapons.
So it's a very smart strategy.
And I think, you know, unfortunately, the rest of the world fails to appreciate the sophistication with which the Iranians have approached this problem.
Well, what's funny is they could offer to join up with us and our common ally government in Iraq against al Qaeda in Syria, except that America is backing al Qaeda in Syria just in order to weaken Iran.
So I guess that won't work.
Yeah.
In this case, the alliance against al Qaeda falls apart.
I agree.
Yeah.
Too bad.
Yeah.
Ever since 2003, as you originally reported in The American Prospector.
Well, and also, you know, I'm not so sure I take the Ayatollah's word for it about Islamic law and this, that and the other thing.
But Seymour Hersh reported that they stopped even considering making nuclear bombs in 2003 as soon as they were done tricking us into getting rid of Saddam for him.
Because, after all, it was the Ayatollah who sent Ahmed Chalabi to tell the neocons that they were going to make a new Shiite democracy in Iraq that was going to be an ally to Israel and build a water and oil pipeline to Haifa and everything.
Well, you know, this interpretation is certainly not an unreasonable interpretation.
It does correspond with the timeline that we've seen historically there, which is that it was in 2003 that you have a clear turning point in the public policy of the Iranian government, the Islamic Republic, in which the fatwa is issued and they make renewed efforts, not renewed efforts, they make special efforts to convince the United States and the West that they are not interested in nuclear weapons.
I think that it's more likely, I would say that it's highly likely that what happened then was that, yes, with the collapse of the regime change in Iraq with the Saddam regime being overthrown and the Shia regime really coming to power or having the obvious prospects for coming to power, they were able to go public with the idea that we are not interested in nuclear weapons for the first time without having any disadvantage in regard to their relationship, their conflict with Iraq.
So I think that it did play a role.
I think that the collapse of the Saddam regime did play a role in their policy.
I would simply say that I don't think that there's evidence that, in fact, they were working on nuclear weapons, that they had a policy of a covert program to build nuclear weapons before 2003.
I think there was a debate about this during and after the war against Iraq, and I think the debate went on through the 1990s.
There were people in Iran who said, yes, we should have a nuclear deterrent, but as far as I'm concerned, there's no conclusive evidence, and indeed the evidence leans in the other direction, points in the other direction, that Iran had made a decision to move towards nuclear weapons.
There are plenty of ways that nuclear scientists could become educated about nuclear weapons technology.
After all, the CIA gave them Finnish blueprints for a nuclear bomb.
That's right.
We ensured that they would have something to study, absolutely.
Of course, they were smart enough to throw the brochure away by the time the IAEA got there.
They're not dumb enough to be entrapped in that one.
Exactly.
I think they probably saw that one coming, in fact.
But I think you have to distinguish between individuals doing work in their study and an actual covert nuclear weapons program.
There's simply no evidence of that, and as you know well, some of your listeners may not be aware, I have studied the documents which we have given the moniker of the laptop of death.
The laptop documents which fell into the hands of the U.S. government in 2004 more carefully, I think, than anybody else in the public sector, in the public realm, and decided after that careful study that they are indeed fabricated.
That's not to say that every document is fabricated, but I think the key documents, particularly the drawings of the nose cone of a Shahab-3 missile, showing drawings that appeared to be aimed at integrating or showing how a nuclear weapon could be integrated into the nose cone of the Shahab-3, I think those were clearly fabricated, and the reason is that they showed the wrong missile nose cone.
It was a missile that the Iranians had basically given up on.
And I'm sorry, I have to cut you off here.
We have to leave it at that, Gareth.
We're just all out of time, but I encourage everyone, just Google Gareth Porter, Iran laptop, and you can read the complete debunking of the alleged studies documents and a great two or three articles there.
You can find all Gareth Porter writes at Interpress Service, that's IPSnews.net, at Antiwar.com/Porter, and at Truthout.org.
Thanks so much for your time tonight.
Thanks, Scott.
Everybody, that's the end of the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
See you next week.
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