Sorry, I'm late.
I had to stop by the wax museum again and give the finger to FDR We know Al-Qaeda, Zawahiri is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al-Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America And by God, we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very very much I say it, I say it again, you've been had You've been took You've been hoodwinked These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as a fact He came, he saw, he died.
We ain't killing they army, but we killing them We be on CNN like say our name, been saying, say it three times The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world, then there's going to be an invasion Hey guys, on the line, I got Trita Parsi, he is the founder of the National Iranian American Council, that's niacouncil.org And then you're a professor now at Georgetown University, right?
Yeah, I teach at Georgetown.
Teaches at Georgetown now, which beware when you stare into the abyss, it stares back at you I'll warn you.
And then, but also he wrote these great books Well, I can certainly testify to the first on the list there, Treacherous Alliance And then there was A Single Roll of the Dice and Losing an Enemy Both of those, I'm afraid, have been superseded by events, but great history of the Obama administration's negotiations with Iran over their nuclear program But Treacherous Alliance is such an important book.
It's the secret dealings of the United States, Israel and Iran Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing?
Doing well, how are you?
Doing good.
Man, what an important book that you wrote.
And I'm so sorry that I didn't read this thing way back years ago when I first started talking with you and all that.
I learned so much stuff I mean, for example, your telling of the Iran-Contra thing and all different things.
It's so much But you know what I really learned was to change my perspective a little bit And to really forget about all the nonsense on TV and really only look at this from the point of view Really that you take in the book of analyzing only the very highest level strategic thinkers in Iran Israel and the United States and who is balancing who and how well they're doing at it and what they're ridiculous almost in every case motives are for doing what they do and And the rest is all just noise that gets drowned out And you know for sure you don't go easy on on the Iranians the Israelis the Americans or anyone else in it either and And so it's just great but anyway, so here's the real thing is and sort of the thesis of the book is Watch what these countries do and not what they say about each other and the the first example the the real telling example of that Is the 1980s when the mean old ayatollah khomeini much meaner and scarier than Khamenei who succeeded him in 1989.
I think it was Um that mean old ayatollah used to threaten israel what burned you to the ground and the israelis would say great You want to buy some missiles?
Because they still preferred iran under their doctrine of the periphery Even after the iranian revolution of 1979 radical islam And all of the rest of this notwithstanding.
That's why ronald reagan went to the israelis when it came time to sell them missiles During the iran-contra scandal.
They were the cutouts, right?
So, uh, I already said something But but take it from there and explain that doctrine of the periphery and and what israel really thinks about iran So the doctrine of the periphery was put into place by ben gurion, uh back in the late 1950s and essentially said That israel's security is best achieved by creating alliances with non-arab states in the periphery of the middle east In order to balance the arab states in israel's immediate vicinity.
So the outer circle and the inner circle And uh the important periphery powers were people, you know countries like ethiopia that the israelis used to balance egypt Turkey, of course to balance syria and the leband, but the most important one was iran Because it was not just a non-arab power.
It was a very powerful country.
He had oil He had resources.
He had a military and it was a strong u.s ally And it balanced the most threatening arab country at least after In the 1960s, which was iraq So they struck this alliance with the iranians and there was a bit of an ideological component to this view because they kind of Assumed that the iranians had the same deep-rooted Unresolvable problems with the arabs as the israelis did which was not necessarily the case certainly not the iranian perspective But the shah saw value in this alliance as well because he felt that particularly after the israelis turned deep into the western camp in the beginnings they were kind of Flirting with the soviets, but once they were clearly in the western camp then the the shah saw a lot of value in their alliance with them because They had tremendously valuable intelligence.
They were valuable in Balancing the egyptians or other strong arab nationalist countries that Could be a threat to iran and of course an alliance against soviet penetration of the middle east and that logic Essentially dictated the u.s.
Israeli iranian relationship Throughout the 60s and 70s.
It became very very tight, but it was still an unofficial relationship because the shah never publicly de jure De jure recognized israel and the position of the shah was he would not recognize the israeli state Until the israeli-palestinian conflict was resolved But in reality, there were strong allies and collaborating and what was bringing them together was the sense of common threats Now there's a perception out there that all of this changes with the islamic revolution in 1979 But it's actually quite fascinating to see how little changed because the israelis still viewed iran as a pivotal periphery power In fact, they needed iran tremendously because saddam hussein had become so powerful The iranians were adopting a very anti-israeli Uh rhetoric and an anti-israeli ideology, but behind the scenes they were still going to the israelis to buy weapons and they Were still dealing with the israelis quite extensively Um, so in many ways the periphery doctrine continued and that's part of the reason why we saw the iran-contra scandal The israelis were the driving force of that and they wanted the united states to come back to terms with iran uh in spite of khomeini in spite of the rhetoric in spite of all of these things because The rather bizarre situation was that back in the 1980s?
It was the israelis who were lobbying washington to talk to iran To sell arms to iran and to not pay attention to iranian rhetoric because the rhetoric was not important The real important thing was what was their actual policy?
And that's why we had iran-contra scandal Which was a scandal in the u.s.
Because the u.s.
Was selling arms to the iranians violating its own Arms embargo.
It was not a scandal in israel Because they were like, of course, we're going to try to sell arms to the iranians of course, we're going to try to get the americans to make up with iran and Rejoin us as a force against the arab powers in the region Hey y'all, here's how to help support the show First of all buy my book fool's errand time to end the war in afghanistan It's available in paperback kindle audiobook and now in epub in all the different locations online there You can get it fool's errand and also Really subscribe to the show if you're not already a subscriber There's rss button itunes stitcher and all that stuff at scotthorton.org And also at libertarianinstitute.org two different feeds.
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Horton.org kpfk.org and libertarian institute.org So now, uh now a big part of this as you say in the book is iraq in the middle and everybody's using them to balance Against this and that so maybe we'll get back to that a little bit more but I wanted to focus on the part about um, where you said like in spite of the rhetoric against them in the book, you really say that if anything the increase Of any threatening or not any but it's kind of a rule of thumb Certainly at the time the history of it was that an increase of threats from the iranians Essentially signaled an increase of cooperation with israel behind the scenes So the closer that they were actually working together the more You would expect to see the mullahs denounce israel and demand that you know An immediate end to the palestinian question, etc like that Yeah, and the reason for this I mean the logic the iranians had was that they wanted to become the leaders of the islamic world under this revolution And to do so they needed to overcome two things Tensions between sunnis and shias and tensions between arabs and persians And their answer to that was political islam And within that the most potent instrument they had Was to just take an extremely aggressive position on israel and Try to embarrass the other arab countries By showing them to be weak on the palestinian issue and by that Have iran take leadership on the palestinian issue and So for instance, uh, yasser arafat the head of the plo Was very excited about the iranian revolution, but he was very quickly disappointed because he felt that You know all the promises that he thought had been given about support for the palestinian cause in practical terms You know resources perhaps weapons.
None of it came through And he started criticizing khomeini and khomeini's response was to Issue a parade in tehran that you still see today Which is called quds day jerusalem day in which the iranians are parading through tehran and calling for jerusalem to be the capital of the palestinian state So when he was faced with criticism for actually not doing anything in practical terms His response was to do more symbolic things such as the the jerusalem parade or increasing the rhetoric against israel all right, and then so then the opposite of that was when the doctrine changed under uh, yusak rabin and shimon perez in the early 1990s where they abandoned the periphery doctrine and changed it to the Make some sort of peace with the palestinians instead doctrine the the kind of oslo doctrine the iranians at that time Said hey, you know what if the palestinians want to settle for 22 percent of the land then hey, that's up to them Who are we to intervene taking a very moderate stance on that?
And then the israelis said ah see anti-semites.
They're trying to kill us all and and took the Overreacted and pretended like the iranians now all of a sudden that they're taking A much lighter stance and stopping with the threats Now they're being accused of being israel's worst enemy.
So it was sort of like bad timing for Uh rabin to debut this strategy in a sense, right?
I mean you have to go back and kind of understand the specific circumstances that existed in iran and in israel But to a certain extent didn't have anything to do with each other, but that pushed them into this rivalry that we see today and that is that on the israeli side after the Persian gulf war when israel was a complete problem for the western camp Saddam hussein started attacking israel hoping that israel would get into the war Because if israel entered the war the arab states that had allied themselves with the u.s Against saddam hussein would all walk out they could stomach fighting another arab power alongside the u.s They could not stomach fighting another arab power alongside israel So the u.s had to put a lot of pressure on the israelis not to engage not to be involved And uh, it was a tough decision for the israelis because you know, there were 34 or 37 scud missiles that saddam Um hit israel with and under normal circumstances the israeli doctrine said that they had to respond disproportionately Now they didn't respond at all.
But after this There was a wake-up call in the west and in israel Which was like what is really the strategic value of israel any longer in this post-cold war era?
The u.s was moving closer to the arab side making friends with syria and everything else The soviet union was not that big of a factor any I mean didn't exist any longer So the need for israel to counter soviet influence in the middle east was gone um, and the labor party Particularly rabin and paris essentially came up with a rather clever um Reorientation of israel.
First of all, they started saying that um, the real threat to the region now was Islamic fundamentalism and iran was islamic fundamentalism fundamentalism and secondly They started saying that well the israeli the americans want us to make peace with the palestinians because you know There was the medit conference and pressure from the u.s from the bush senior administration on the israelis to make peace And they were like, you know what let's actually do it because the occupation is not working uh, we should strike a deal with the palestinians, but In return we should ask the americans to contain isolate and exclude iran and view iran as the new enemy And the u.s bought this because they were so eager to just see some sort of a peace deal between the israelis and the palestinian Iran was not seen as an important country.
The u.s was having its unipolar moment So who cared if the iranians were with them or not?
And uh at a moment when the iranians were actually trying to make Better relations with the united states and was trying to be reasonable Uh, the response was actually no we're going to triple down on your isolation In order to give the israelis the space to be able to make peace with the palestinians And this then triggered iranians to start supporting groups on the palestinian side rejectionist groups groups against the peace process Who the iranians actually early on had not been particularly supportive of at all such as hamas Who comes out of the egyptian muslim brotherhood not a particularly friendly movement towards shias But also excited with saddam hussein during the iraq iran war, but now new circumstances They both had a common interest in undermining the peace process in their view Because they saw that as something that would cement their isolation and exclusion Right, so then it became this self-fulfilling prophecy, right that okay, we're going to demonize iran now and iran said, okay Well, we're not going to let you get away with that We're going to go ahead and make it impossible for you to make peace with the palestinians if it has to be at our expense Yeah, the iranians felt like the american strategy was based on creating an order in the region that would Essentially permanently put them in isolation And their conclusion was that the weakest link in that um strategy was the peace process if the peace process failed none of these other objectives would be Achieved so they started targeting the peace process and supporting palestinian groups that were using violence against israel In a way they had not done in the 1980s at the height of their anti-israel rhetoric at the height of khomeini being in power Which is really fascinating because you actually see that instead of the real tensions between iran and israel being at the height of its Ideological fervor it was now the opposite at a moment when the ideological fervor of the revolution was really cooling down It was a in so many ways a failure When it was cooling down the tensions with israel started to shoot up and had nothing to do with ideology had Everything to do with the geopolitical circumstances Hmm.
All right.
Well, so talk about hezbollah in southern lebanon and their role here Well as well actually originally had no role in this Because when the iranians helped create hezbollah That had nothing really to do with israel as much as it had to do with the iranians trying to spread their Revolution and creating shia movements throughout the region as allies because they had no allies and So and in the beginning when the israelis invaded lebanon the shias Actually welcomed the israelis because they had been overrun by the plo who had fled to lebanon and created a lot of tensions but it didn't take long for the shias to turn against the israelis and the israeli occupation and it's at that moment where when the shias of lebanon for the first time really start to respond to Feelers from iran that had been there for quite some time in which the iranians wanted to enter lebanon But they had no green light from anyone in lebanon up until the shias turned against the israeli invasion Had the israelis never invaded?
Lebanon chances are iran would never have been able to create hezbollah and make it as powerful as it is today Yeah, where it's now part of the ruling coalition in lebanon and the government that america supports there So a little bit of irony for those who want to complain about it Um, and that's under bush and obama and trump, of course Um, but now so talk about you got this great quote, I think i'm using it for my book too.
I'll give you credit um where this, uh, you got to tell me who it was and and his importance, but an israeli strategist explained that radical islam Whatever it really is in the world in this context.
It's a political talking point dreamt up by the israelis Uh, and this is a term that and we're talking about in the early 90s era here at the end of the cold war Um as you said, but this is a term that in our current era the 21st century has been this terrible overly broad definition used to conflate all of anyone in the west's enemies together as part of the war on terrorism somehow and has You know as we've talked about before Uh seeing america even on the side of al-qaeda against as long as they're fighting against iranian and shiite interests in the middle east such as in syria uh, and so, um You know, uh radical islam.
Indeed.
They said You know, in other words, never mind.
Who's who?
Uh, we can use this cudgel against anyone and so but starting with iran and then this was the threat that the israelis cited to the americans of why the americans needed to Now switch to the israeli strategy of picking on iran Which you described at the time that the clinton administration was like really, huh?
You guys hate iran all of a sudden.
Is that right?
And they thought it was really kind of funny at the time when the strategy changed.
I mean when when Part of the reason why it was so funny is because the people who are now pushing the message that iran is a global threat Was yitzhak rabin and shimon peres who only five or six years earlier had been lobbying reagan To talk to iran and sell arms to iran so the new york times even called the israeli strategy perplexing Because it was such an 180 degree shift and this shift started in israel.
Not in iran This is the part of the history that the neocons wanted to completely gloss over They wanted to gloss over the entire 1980s and essentially present A narrative that this whole conflict is only because the iranians had a crazy islamic revolution had it not been for that Everything would have been fine um, and that's just absolute nonsense, uh, and and the very same neocons like michael ladin who was all over the place in the 2000 under the bush administration calling anyone who said that we could talk to iran as a you know A trader and whatnot.
He was a driving force in the nsc in the 1980s Pushing the united states to talk to iran because that's what the israelis wanted at the time And he only shifted in 1991 when israel shifted Yeah, well and that was at a time of course, too you think about in hindsight I mean even then it was crazy and horrible and wrong but in hindsight, it's just absolutely ridiculous The way the bush administration took that line that we are so much Uh morally superior to them that we cannot and will not talk to them That was before they'd spun a single centrifuge.
That was when as you tell the story so perfectly they had offered the Golden offer that listen, we're willing to negotiate everything and they meant everything on that extensive list they wanted a full normalization of relations with the united states and the u.s could have Gotten it, but they preferred it.
Well, and I guess was there any other reason other than because israel said no That the americans didn't go along with that.
In fact, i'm skipping ahead.
I should ask how did they get well do both first do um dual containment, how did they get bill clinton to go along with this and then uh do Yeah, so with dual containment, which was the brainchild of martin indyk Um, essentially it was an adoption of the israeli line, which is in order to That iran is the big enemy in the middle east in order to get peace between the israelis and the palestinians We have to isolate iran the more we isolate iran the more we get peace between israel and palestine What?
Martin didn't recognize at the time and I have a quote from him in the book Uh admitting this is that this actually created incentives for the iranians to undermine the peace process Because the american strategy almost made it explicit that the peace process was critical for the isolation of iran So the iranians then concluded.
Okay, no peace process.
No isolation of iran The paradox of course is that the more iran did things against the peace process the more justified The strategy of isolating iran appeared because they were supporting violent groups such as islamic jihad and hamas and others um, but Clinton went along with this because you know, remember this is america's unipolar moment There is no superpower, but the united states and they could do whatever they wanted And iran was just not seen as a particularly important country And who cared if you didn't have them on your side?
Who cared if this whole thing came at their expense, you know, they're not particularly sympathetic government to begin with so who cares?and this is part of the Calculation because yes, I mean iran was not as powerful back then as it may be today, but it still had that spoiler power Uh to be able to really undermine The american strategy, but I think it's also very important to keep in mind That even though the iranians really worked hard to try to undermine the american strategy.
It was not the Iranians that succeeded in putting an end to dual containment.
They didn't bring it down America did george w bush did because by deciding to go into iraq and occupy that country The policy of containing iraq by definition had ended And he did this because he wanted to create a new order in the region in which the u.s would be even more dominant Instead all he managed to do was to destroy the old american order without being able to create a new one because The u.s actually the iraq war was such a failure that it's weakened the u.s to the point in which it no longer had the capacity of imposing on the middle east a new Equilibrium a new balance.
Yeah, so I mean in this book in 2007 Uh, I think is when this came out, right?
Uh, yes It's based on my phd dissertation, which was published in which was done in 2006 I mean, so it was it was just becoming really clear right then I remember the remember the old blogger bill mahn Did you ever used to read him in the bush years?um Rings a bell.
Yeah.
Anyway, uh, it was sort of the predecessor to the moon of alabama blog Um, okay Not that it's the same guy, but anyway But anyway, he had one in july.
Pardon me in january of 2005 Right after the big purple fingered election under the new constitution And the post was called ayatollah.
You so and it was about how Why am I too just whistling?
Um, and it was about how so, you know these bush listening to these neocons listening to ahmed chalabi boy, did they just Screw this up and I really the die was cast.
I think anybody would agree um Probably with the invasion itself, but certainly on the day that the ayatollah sistani said hey We want one man one vote.
Are you gonna have to start this war all over again, pal?uh in january 2004 And then that was it a year later Iran's best friends in the supreme islamic council and the dava party came to power and they've been there ever since And so that's what that and i'm sorry because I always say the same thing to everybody all the time but that to me and I'd like to hear you disagree with this in any way that you could or add whatever nuance you could but it seems to me like all american policy in the middle east since then can be explained by Essentially the redirection which is when the bush is when the bush regime panicked and realized that they had done so much to empower Iranian influence rather than to gain dominance over iran that now they had to go to these drastic measures to tilt back towards saudi and the sunni axis in order to uh, try to limit iranian power and that's what ended up leading to obama's support for the Uh insurgency in syria to try to take iran down a peg as he told jeffrey goldberg in 2012 and that You know, I already knew all that but You know knowing that in the context of reading your book about how oh we got to balance this and balance that we're going to contain These guys and then we're going to dual contain those guys and then we're going to balance back this other way They scored such a huge victory for iranian influence that everything since then is essentially Washington dc throwing a temper tantrum trying to figure out how to undo that and they can't And the saudi kings for that matter, right and the israelis And one of the things that have happened in the meantime is that a lot of folks Have started to ask You know what?
What is our interest in the middle east?
Do we really need to be there?
Do we really need to do all of this balancing this way and that way the oil is not that important any longer Um asia is much more important.
We're wasting a lot of energy on the middle east for what it's strategically marginal And with that You then had a reaction from the saudis and the israelis because they do not want the united states to leave the region They want the united states to come back into the region restore the pre-2003 balance by taking out iran essentially and um For whatever mistakes obama committed and I think certainly yemen is probably one of the worst ones um, they did want to kind of start to Reduce america's involvement in the middle east, but with the trump administration, we're back into Essentially allowing the israelis and the saudis determine our analysis uh, because everything the trump administration has done in the last two years have essentially been what the israelis and the saudis wanted and And and the reason why you have this rather bizarre wahhabi liquid Axis right now is because the one thing they agree on is that they want the u.s Back into the region as a hegemon and for the u.s to take on iran That's really the only thing that they really have in common Right, that's how you make iraq war two Okay, after all you just take out the ayatollah and then who cares if iran has so much influence in iraq now They're our friends too.
And then I don't know where that leaves israeli strategy Um, well, I mean I mean because because we could do nothing but import chaos to export chaos to iran It's like they could actually put a friendly regime in there and things would work out any more than they worked out in iran I mean in iraq at least from the saudi perspective and I think to a certain extent the israelis perspectives They don't want a successful democratic regime in iran A successful democratic regime in iran would actually make you on a far more powerful country than it is today uh, it's its power right now is mainly because it's Ability to take advantage of american mistakes if america stops making mistakes Iran is not going to be able to advance as much But if you have actually a democracy that knows how to take advantage and utilize iran's talents, etc It's going to be far more powerful that would further shift the balance of power away from saudi arabia and towards iran So why on earth would the saudis want this?
I mean, first of all, the saudis don't practice democracy at home So why on earth would they want to have democracy in iran?
But particularly if it's going to make iran a more powerful country then I think it's extremely unlikely that that is actually what they're wanting Yeah, but they're wrong about everything all the time same for the israelis, too And you can see them or I don't know am I wrong to say that?
Netanyahu really would prefer anybody to the ayatollah or he really likes things just fine how they are now or at least Better, I think the next change the next big change He wants the worst possible regime in iran because that makes it easier for him to mobilize the united states against iran This is part of the reason why they preferred ahmadinejad to the green movement In other words because they're better for cold war not for a full war for regime change Yeah, I mean Their job is to get the u.s to get back into the middle east and it's easier to do So when you have an ahmadinejad iran in iran that is saying all kinds of crazy things positioning himself as a threat to the u.s Uh, and it's much more difficult if you have someone like rouhani that is far more reasonable It's striking deals and it's in favor of diplomacy.
It makes the work of the israelis and the saudis much harder Because ultimately it's not about regimes It's about balance of power and they don't want to see a strong iran because they see that as coming at their expense Thanks very much for your time.
I know you got to go.
Thank you so much Thank you.
Appreciate it.
Thank you guys.
That's trita parsi He's the author of treacherous alliance the secret dealings of israel iran and the united states All right, y'all.
Thanks find me at libertarian institute.org at scott horton.org Anti-war.com and reddit.com slash scott horton show Oh, yeah, and read my book fools errand timed and the war in afghanistan at fools errand.us
