02/20/15 – Gareth Porter – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton, and this is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
Oh, just in the nickel of the dime, I got Gareth Porter on the line.
He's an independent historian and journalist, writes primarily for Interpress Service.
That's IPSnews.net, IPSnews.net, the great Jim Loeb and the gang there at Interpress Service.
And then he's also done a lot of award-winning work at Truthout.org.
And lately he's been writing at Middle East Eye.
And he's the author of the book, Manufactured Crisis, the true story behind the Iranian nuclear scare.
Welcome back to the show.
Gareth, how are you doing?
I'm doing fine, Scott.
Let me just do one thing, and that is correct what is now an error about my publications.
I'm no longer writing for Interpress Service.
At all?
At all.
No, I don't do anything more for them.
So I mean, I know that's a shock.
What the hell do I know about stuff?
I should have mentioned it before, but it just, you know, the opportunity didn't arise.
So, you know, I let it go when you mentioned it before, but, you know, I just wanted to make that clear.
Okay.
That's an important point.
Well, anyway, you still got 10 million important ones written for them, and most of those also reprinted at Antiwar.com as well.
So it's still important to mention for people to go back and listen to it.
Sure.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, thanks for that update.
Gareth Porter, formerly with Interpress Service.
All right.
Now, so we got two important articles here.
One is for Middle East Eye, and the other one is for I Forgot What You Told Me.
Let's talk about the Netanyahu leverage behind the new Iran talks flap.
What in the world does all that mean?
Well, that's a reference to the flap is a reference to the situation that arose this past several days, the past few days, where the Obama administration had consulted with Netanyahu government on the current plan to negotiate with Iran.
This took place, if I remember correctly, the actual consultation took place in January.
And as a result of the consultation, which revealed to the Israelis that the Obama administration intended to offer a cap on the number of centrifuges at 6,500, the word of the story was leaked to an Israeli news outlet, and it was made public, and the Obama administration was upset and really accused Netanyahu and his crew of using this to interfere with U.S. policy and politics.
So that was the flap.
Now, the reason that I suggest that this has, in fact, begun to have an impact on the U.S. position in the negotiations, on the whole negotiating posture of the United States, is that, in a nutshell, what I have learned from a U.S. source who is very well informed on the Obama administration's negotiating strategy and calculus, the calculations that the Obama administration has made about these negotiations, is that the Obama administration has been deathly afraid that Congress would reject an agreement with Iran if the Obama administration's terms were not tough enough, that Congress would actually vote on an agreement and turn it down, and would make it clear that this agreement could not be implemented.
And if that were the case, the biggest problem that the Obama administration would have with it is not that there couldn't be an agreement, but that the United States would then be blamed by the rest of the world for the failure of the talks.
And that is, I think it's fair to say, the biggest single consideration that the Obama administration now has with regard to these talks.
They don't want to be blamed for the failure of the talks.
They don't mind if they break down, apparently.
What they do want to make sure does not happen is that the United States gets blamed for the failure of the talks.
So that means that they have to have a position that they think is tough enough to be able to make a deal with the Republicans in the Senate, the people who basically represent the Israeli point of view, to make sure that they would not vote it down.
And that's why I think what I call the gamesmanship of the Obama administration in these negotiations, which we can go into more detail about, has actually resulted in Netanyahu having more leverage rather than less leverage on the Obama administration.
And I think that's a really interesting and sad irony about the present situation.
Well, now, so all this talk about the new sanctions seems to be obscuring what at least I thought was a fact, Gareth, that most of the sanctions, what's important about them is all the international cooperation behind them and that the rest of the world has really only promised to cooperate with America on these sanctions and with many glaring exceptions by our Asian allies especially, but that they've only agreed to go along with this for a limited amount of time, like while we're negotiating in good faith for a real resolution to this.
And that once, if the talks do break down, no matter who gets the blame for how it looks, that much of the rest of the world, other than America's very closest sock puppets, are going to quit respecting the sanctions regime.
And I guess now that the dang music's playing, that means that we'll have to wait and get your answer about that on the other side of it.
It's Gareth Porter from Middle East Eye and author of Manufactured Crisis about Iran's civilian nuclear program.
We'll be right back.
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All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
And I'm off on a tangent here from Gareth's piece, but it's something that I've been puzzling over lately and trying to get a handle on.
The question at the break was, after the end of these negotiations, successful or not, much of the world's cooperation with American sanctions on Iran are set to expire anyway.
Isn't that right, Gareth, or how does that work?
They're not set to expire.
I think the question, it's a political question, not a sort of a legal question.
A political question is connected with what I said before the break, which is that the United States is concerned about who's going to get blamed if the talks break down.
If the United States is seen as to blame, which it would be, as I said, if Congress refuses to go along with the agreement, then that's obviously going to have an impact on a whole raft of countries that are crucial to the sanctions.
So that's what they're really worried about the most.
But isn't there some, there's got to be some number of countries that they're going to blame this on America anyway, or they're just going to say, listen, we promised to stick with this for as long as y'all special project here, but we got business to do.
We got to get by in the world here.
We got to do this as we want.
Well, I think that that is a problem.
I mean, I don't doubt that that's a problem.
For example, India is, you know, India is losing enormous amounts of business with Iran because of these sanctions and they don't like it at all.
I can guarantee you that.
And so there is a lot of restlessness, but at the same time, I mean, you know, these are countries that depend on the U.S. market very largely for their income, for foreign trade income and investments and so forth.
And so, you know, they do not have the kind of freedom to just tell the United States the thumb of their nose that the United States on this.
And so it's less clear cut that they would just break off, you know.
And so there's some nuances here with regard to different countries.
But I think the point still stands that the United States is concerned about some countries that are crucial to this, who would who would definitely break off if they saw the United States being responsible for the breakdown of the talks.
Well, and then but is there any way to spin this for Russia and China that they don't see right through it?
Even I mean, what would the Iranians have to do for it really to be their fault for this to not work out when the whole thing's a manufacturing crisis in the first place?
Now, that's a good question.
You know, wouldn't the Russians and the Chinese see through the gamesmanship of the of the Obama administration?
You know, to some extent, perhaps that's true.
I think that there's a lot of criticism of the position that's been taken by the United States in Russia and China.
And and it's possible, you know, that that the Obama administration is really deceiving itself in thinking that it could get away with, you know, continuing the sanctions.
I'm prepared to believe that at this moment.
I mean, I, you know, I'm focusing more on what the perception of the Obama administration is and how that actually affects U.S. policy.
But I think you're right that, you know, that that there's going to be a pretty clear perception that the United States position in these talks was not particularly, you know, necessitated by the technical requirements of ensuring against an Iranian breakout or something like that.
I mean, it was a very political a political position taken by the United States.
So I think I agree with you.
All right.
Now, so when it comes down to the prime minister of Israel, he said openly they leaked the statement that he gave to the cabinet saying, I will do anything I can to ruin this deal.
Not to put words in his mouth, but I think it's fair to say his position is no enrichment, no nuclear program of any description whatsoever.
And by do anything, it means leaking details that Obama's checking with him, as you say here.
But it also means even coming to D.C. and basically daring Congress to side with the president United States over him and and and basically demand that they thwart the president and his ability to to put this deal into practice.
And I wonder, I mean, just describing it, it sounds pretty far fetched, even for the prime minister of Israel to really be able to get away with.
I mean, I guess he's not canceling it, which I think is great kind of.
But I only think it's great because I think it's going to completely nuclear explode in his face.
It's it's ridiculous what's happening here.
So, you know, whatever leverage Obama's given him, it seems like I don't know what he thinks can happen.
I think it works both ways.
I mean, I think you've got two different things going on here.
On one hand, it's true that, you know, he does a lot of political damage to himself by the degree of, you know, just outright boldness, you know, shamelessness in interfering in U.S. politics.
That's bound to alienate a lot of people, including Democrats in in the Senate, who they need the votes up.
And so I think there's a built in contradiction there to some extent in the the Netanyahu strategy.
In some ways, you know, it's it's a bridge too far.
I mean, it's a bit like, you know, trying to get to Congress to vote in favor of legislation that would have the United States go to war against Iran, which is not going to succeed.
It's going to fail.
And, you know, I'm sure, you know, this is something you've talked about in the program or had discussed in your program before that, that that is there are limits on how far the AIPAC can can go in terms of of pushing the U.S. Congress.
It can do a lot of things.
It has a lot of power.
There's no question about that.
And and I'm not saying that there's no danger to an agreement.
I'm not saying that this is not a dangerous situation, but at the same time, you know, by pushing it this far, by being this outrageous, you know, to some extent, he's making it more difficult to to accomplish what he wants to do.
Yeah.
Three cheers for that, I say.
I mean, I think you're right.
I think he looks like an absolute clown where, you know, even Republicans and people who personally, you know, favor Netanyahu like him as in think he's a good leader of Israel or whatever, that still, hey, there are limits, pal.
You know?
Yeah.
I mean, I I think it's really quite striking, quite impressive that there are, in fact, some prominent Democrats who are saying that they won't even show up, that they're going to boycott it.
And Democrats in Congress.
I mean, that's that's something new that's that's never happened before.
So, you know, I mean, we're in uncharted territory here.
Now, on the other hand, if this whole thing fails, whether without Netanyahu or whatever, let's say the supreme leader changes his mind and says, unless you lift all the sanctions immediately, we'll never deal with you, Satan.
And then the whole thing falls apart.
Worst case scenario, we still are left with a status quo where they've got a safeguards agreement and a signature on the nonproliferation treaty and all of their nuclear material is verified to not have been diverted to any military or other special purpose.
And so the status quo is is Cold War, but not hot war.
And and I don't see they'd have to make up a whole new set of lies about some nuclear weapons program going on in Iran in order to justify starting a war to try to justify one.
I mean, so it's really not that bad of a problem if the talks fail.
Right.
Since the status quo is bad, but it's not a nightmare.
Well, I mean, you're right in an objective sense that it's absolutely true that there's no basis whatsoever for talking about war against Iran.
At the same time, you know, you've got a completely false picture that's been constructed not just by the Israelis, but by the Obama administration itself.
I mean, you know, they have started talking about as though, you know, if there's no agreement that this is this is raising a very serious danger that that the United States would have to do something about it.
And so, again, I mean, we're talking about some some very difficult scenarios to try to predict.
I mean, you know, it's difficult to see how that's going to play out.
I mean, I can I can imagine that in the end, if there is no agreement, if the Iranians walk away from the table, as I think it's distinctly not just possible, but on balance, likely if the United States is not ready to give way, particularly on the sanctions, I think that, you know, we're bound to see the Obama administration having to review its options again and say, well, do we really want to get into a situation of of threatening to do something to Iran that we don't really want to do?
But, you know, that's that's something we can't totally predict at this point.
That's for sure.
Right.
All right.
So that's the great Gareth Porter.
Thanks very much for your time, Gareth.
Appreciate it.
My pleasure.
Thanks, Scott.
All right.
So again, Gareth's at MiddleEastEye.com and at Truthout and you can find his archives also virtually everything he writes reprinted sooner or later at Original.
Antiwar.com slash Porter.
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