04/13/15 – Gareth Porter – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, you guys, welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
I got Gareth Porter on the line writing for Middle East Eye and author of Manufactured Crisis, the truth about Iran's nuclear program.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing, Gareth?
Hi, Scott.
Glad to be back.
Thanks.
Very happy to have you here.
Lots of stuff to talk about on the show today.
The possible military dimensions, which you gave a great talk about on Friday that I watched online at the Israel lobby conference that Grant Smith put on there, and some other things too.
But if it's okay, I wanted to ask you first of all about this right-wing talking point I see going around that says that there is no fatwa.
Obama says that the Iranian Supreme Leader has issued a fatwa against nuclear weapons, and they say, oh yeah, show me the fatwa.
You can't because there is no fatwa.
How do you say that?
That's interesting.
I just had a conversation this morning with somebody who raised the same question, and I had not seen the opinion pieces.
I assume you're talking about some blog or opinion piece that raised this.
Right-wing kooks on Twitter anyway.
Right.
Okay.
And I said, look, the problem here is that the people who are spouting off about the fatwa have no knowledge whatsoever about the subject, and they're taking advantage of the ignorance of the rest of the reading audience.
And the problem is that a fatwa does not depend on being published.
A fatwa can take different forms.
It can be a speech made by the individual who is issuing the fatwa.
It could be in a conversation between the individual and a minister, if it happens to be the Supreme Leader, as I illustrated in the story that I did for Foreign Policy last December about the fatwa that Ayatollah Khomeini issued on chemical weapons, against chemical weapons as well as nuclear weapons, during the Iran-Iraq war.
He did give public speeches against nuclear weapons and talked about that issue in public, but he also made it clear to the minister of Sepah, meeting with him twice during the Iran-Iraq war, as I document in that article, saying to him that he could not, that the government could not move ahead with any work on weapons of mass destruction because it was illegal under Islam.
Now, you know, that conversation that he had with the minister of Sepah constituted a fatwa.
And that is not understood, I realize, that there's a general notion that, oh, you know, it has to be written out and published, but that's got nothing to do with the truth.
And I know now that I need to write something about this, and in fact, in the conversation I was referring to this morning, I said, okay, thanks for mentioning this, I've got to write something, and I will.
Okay, good deal.
Yeah, I wonder, though, can you clarify how widely published this was?
I know you had this great article, it's when the Ayatollah said no to nukes at foreignpolicy.com.
But how widely disseminated was this, you know, ruling or pronouncement by the Ayatollah back then at the time?
And then what about, you know, the newer Ayatollah, who's been in power since, what, 88 or 89?
Okay, let me just extend, I mean, sort of continue that point and explain it one bit further.
And that is that when you are the supreme leader, as opposed to any other cleric who has a following, who has, you know, the training in Islamic jurisprudence, then any pronouncement that you make that relates to the relationship between a public policy issue, a government policy issue, and Islam, is a fatwa, okay?
I mean, it is not, you know, how widely it's disseminated.
In that case, the fatwa was not disseminated publicly.
It was simply communicated, you know, through the government channels to the issue, to the minister who had responsibility for the issue.
But it was still a fatwa, it was still binding, and of course, it prevailed.
It was the policy of Iran.
In other words, anyone there who could have been in the position to make weapons of mass destruction, they knew about it.
And that's enough.
That's right.
I mean, you know, the Minister of Sepah had presented a plan to Ayatollah Khomeini saying, okay, we've got these experts, these groups of experts on all the issues that relate to our military supply needs in this war against Iraq.
And so one of the things, or a set of things that he talked to Khomeini about were weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, and biological weapons.
And they had groups, he proposed groups on all those weapons to at least have the capability to deter the Iraqis, letting them know that they could not get off scot-free using weapons of mass destruction against Iran.
But Khomeini said no, and that did constitute an absolute Islamic jurisprudential judgment by the Supreme Leader that was a fatwa.
All right.
And then again, that article is when the Ayatollah said no to nukes.
And now, I guess, because all I'm trying to nail down there is, you know, the idea that someone could dismiss this by saying, well, you know, you have an interview with some guy who claims this, but what's the real proof if it's not written down, that kind of argument?
Well, you know, the real proof is that that did, in fact, constitute the policy.
I mean, you know, it is a fact that Iran never used weapons of mass destruction, even though it had the capability to do so.
That's well documented.
But does their political leadership still refer to this fatwa right now and say, yeah, we have a fatwa, everybody knows that, that kind of thing?
Is that their official government position on this?
This meaning what?
What is the...
On nuclear weapons, for example.
Oh yeah, absolutely, sure, of course, I mean, that is still the case.
I mean, you know, the fact that it was not disseminated publicly during the Iran-Iraq war is perfectly understandable.
I mean, it was not necessary to distribute it publicly.
By distributing it publicly, you know, the Iranian government would be communicating to the Iraqis that, you know, that they were not going to do anything in response.
So that was not a desirable situation from the Iranian point of view.
So I think it is, you know, there's a perfectly rational explanation for why they would not have distributed that fatwa during the Iran-Iraq war.
All right, now, so, geez, it's already 1240.
I guess just at the very beginning here, let's get into the possible military dimensions.
Yeah, sorry for beating that dead horse.
No, no problem.
But let me...
Teach lies.
Give me 30 seconds to explain why I believe that there's a joke here that needs to be made popular, and I'd like to get credit for it.
I think we should all call the possible military dimensions possible military dementia.
Yeah, we could try that.
Try that.
Try that.
See if you get a laugh.
I like to say the obvious bogus debunked forgeries that have been debunked for years and years, but that takes a little...
Right, right.
Possible military dementia.
I like the sound of it.
It is.
I'm just kind of, you know, I'm just joking.
But anyway.
I understand.
Sorry.
I stepped all over your punchline.
It was objectively funny.
It was objectively funny.
Yeah.
So listen, the possible military dimensions, this is a stupid question, but entertain it for me.
Thanks.
The alleged studies, the smoking laptop, the possible military dimensions, are these all one and the same thing exactly?
No.
Or does possible military dimensions include other things beyond just the alleged studies?
Correct.
It does.
It includes a raft of alleged intelligence reports and documents, which, you know, I document the fact that virtually all, if not all, of those intelligence reports and the documents, or alleged documents, did in fact come from Israel.
The circumstantial evidence, necessarily circumstantial evidence, is strong in all the cases where these issues have been discussed publicly.
I can't guarantee that it's literally true that there's absolutely nothing that they're going to raise with the Iranians that did not originate in Israel.
But I think I'm safe in saying that virtually everything at least came from Israel.
Okay.
When we get back from this break, we'll have this whole segment to talk about the possible military dimensions to go through them.
And remind me, because the first thing I want to ask you is, which all very quotable, authoritative type names have cast doubt on the provenance of these things?
And also, oh yeah, the cables, the misinterpreted cables from the book.
All right.
Hang tight, everybody.
Gareth Porter.
More right after this.
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All right, y'all.
Welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton.
Welcome back to another episode of the Scott Horton Show.
Talking with Gareth Porter.
Again, debunking lies about Iran's nuclear program.
Okay, so I'm sorry, man.
I may have brought up a whole different subject, Gareth.
But you talk in your book, and we've spoken before, about all these intercepts that American intelligence had of orders for dual-use items.
And it was a pretty long list.
And you go and tick off all the items on the list, and it's all taken care of and spoken for.
Oh, yeah?
Well, what about the magnets?
Well, they're sitting right there on the balancing machine, and whatever it was, being used for non-nuclear purposes.
Just like in all the excuses, they basically proved it.
Now, is that part of the possible military dimensions, or was it, or that's a separate group?
It's related to it, and in some ways that I can't actually describe to you.
I mean, I can't give you any details about that.
All I know is that I ran into, that I didn't run into, I went to a briefing by Olli Heinen and David Albright, what was it?
I guess it was several weeks ago now.
And after the briefing, sort of, you know, I got into a conversation with them, and no, it actually was during, it started during the briefing.
They were claiming that there were more items than were covered in the IAEA report, although they weren't specific about what they were.
I think they were referring to some of the things that are in the possible military dimensions list that the IAEA is asking Iran to explain, such as the studies of neutron, neutron activity, for example.
But, you know, I don't trust what they're saying, that these were part of the original telexes.
All I know is that they're claiming that, you know, there's a broader list that were part of the telexes.
I'll just pass that on to you for what it's worth, which is not much.
Okay, that's fine.
All right, so then go ahead then about, well, I guess do the non-laptop PMDs first, and then the rest, and you've got ten minutes.
Well, the non-laptop PMDs are essentially, it involves a set of intelligence documents and reports, which the Israelis passed on to the IAEA 2008, 2009, and at least in one case apparently after 2009, because what I'm referring to is specifically the intelligence report that there's a cylinder at the Parchin military base, the military technology testing base of Iran, which the IAEA said that an unnamed member state told them, gave them information, was to be used by Iran for, or at least it was appropriate for the use by Iran of testing nuclear weapons, doing nuclear weapons testing of some specific nature.
And it all tied in with the high explosive issue, that is the use of high explosives to, testing high explosives to use as a detonator for nuclear device.
And now customarily, IAEA member state is a euphemism for Israel, and even though they're not a member of the NPT, and they don't have a safeguards agreement, they're a member of the IAEA in an Adams for Peace kind of way that has nothing to do with the inspection type regimes, but they get to hide behind that when they're the source of the moghuls.
That is correct.
And in regard to this issue, there's no question, in my mind certainly, that all those references to, when it is a single member state, now all, not all the references are to a single member state, but where it is in the November 2011 report, which I hope many of your listeners are familiar with or know about, when it refers to a member state, then that is indeed Israel.
The circumstantial evidence in each case is very powerful, and I do talk about that in some detail in my book, at least on three of those documents or intelligence reports.
All right, now I was in an email argument with a journalist recently, and I was able to quickly Google up many statements by Mohammed ElBaradei and Robert Kelly and others in a real position to know.
Could you add to that list of who do you know who knows, who said that, or were in the greatest position to know, who said that they had doubts about the origins of the laptop and those alleged studies?
Well, as far as the laptop and the alleged studies both, ElBaradei certainly indicated, as you said, in his memoirs, that they were not authenticated.
He did say that the later set of documents, 2008 and later documents, were passed on by Israel to the IAEA, and that experts, I think as he put it in his memoirs, had said, had looked at them and said they had very serious questions about those documents, suggesting that the questions were related to their authenticity, among other things.
Then, there have been some press reports, at least one by The Guardian, I think back in 2007, if I'm not mistaken, that quoted unnamed IAEA sources as saying that other senior officials at the IAEA had their doubts about the laptop documents, because the other ones had not come out yet.
I do, in fact, have a source, a former IAEA official, who has told me that he personally had very grave doubts about the authenticity of the laptop documents.
So, that was a general view outside, at the senior level of the IAEA, outside Ollie Heinonen's shop from 2005 to 2010, or 2009, when Alberidei left.
Now, wasn't there even one quote by Ollie Heinonen, and he's known as the most hawkish former IAEA official, but didn't he even at one point say, yeah, I guess I agree with the Germans, that there are some doubts here, something like that?
I've never seen a quote that sounds like that.
He did tell me in an interview that, and maybe this is what you're thinking of, he said, well, I wouldn't say that it's evidence.
This is very close to an exact quote.
He said, I wouldn't say that it's evidence, the laptop documents.
It's simply a lead, is the way he put it to me, which is a very strange thing for him to say, because he was the one who obviously insisted, in 2008 and 2009, on wording in the IAEA documents that said, in the IAEA reports, that these documents are, quote, credible, and sort of pumping them up as good evidence to use in their investigation.
Tell us briefly about the nose cones and some of the other bogus stories and how you debunked them.
The drawings that were done of the Shahab-3 missile, apparently, it looks very much like trying to integrate a nuclear weapon into the payload of the Shahab-3, into the nose cone, or the re-entry vehicle of the Shahab-3.
The very, very serious problem that those drawings have, in terms of credibility, and in terms of authenticity, is that it depicts the re-entry vehicle of a missile, which the Iranians were no longer working on as of the year 2000.
From the year 2000, they were redesigning the original Shahab-3 nose cone, or re-entry vehicle, so that it looked completely different.
It no longer had that sort of pointy end, conical look, but rather what they call a baby bottle shape.
And the baby bottle shape was, in fact, the one that appeared in the follow-on to the Shahab-3, they had for a while at least called the Goddard-1, and it was tested for the first time in the summer of 2004.
And no one knew before that test that, in fact, they had a completely new redesigned re-entry vehicle for what had been the Shahab-3.
So, clearly, the people who were doing these drawings were unaware of the most fundamental facts about the Iranian missile program, and it is simply totally not credible that these could have been done by an outfit that was hired by the Ministry of Defense or by any part of the Iranian military-industrial complex.
And now, I forget whether you reported about the documented, in the alleged studies, quote-unquote documented experiments in using laser enrichment to create uranium tetrafluoride, aka green salt.
Yeah, I mean, that was something that they had some technology, essentially from Chinese and Russians, that they acquired in the 1990s.
The IAEA reports are quite explicit about the fact that they only did experiments, I believe it was in 2002-2003, for a period of six months, and that the experiments were a flop.
They were only able to get one-third of the level of enrichment that they needed from the laser enrichment, and so they abandoned it after six months or so of trying it.
And that was it.
That's all they did.
You know, I don't know if I ever asked you or anybody else if I ever got an easy answer out of this, of what would be the point of making uranium tetrafluoride when they already have a facility to make uranium hexafluoride?
Would it be just, they needed supposedly a secret alternative?
Okay, I'm sorry, no, I thought you were talking about only laser enrichment.
That's what I was referring to.
Well, yeah, I'm not, yeah, no, I'm talking about, I think, you know, going more like the conversion from...
Right, the conversion.
The conversion technology.
That was another part of the laptop documents.
It was called a flow chart or something to that effect.
And it depicted, you know, the process by which Iran could make tetrafluoride.
And the problem with the, I mean, one of the problems with the credibility of that is, as you say, that Iran already had picked a technology, they had worked on it for 10 years, they'd experimented on it, they had actually gone ahead and built an entire conversion facility based on that technology.
So the idea that they were going to start all over again is just laughable.
And I know that the Washington Post did a story in which they quoted some US unnamed intelligence analyst saying, well, you know, maybe they wanted to have a backup in case, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But, you know, it makes no sense whatsoever, as the Iranians pointed out to the IAEA at the time.
Right, yeah, the sneak out was always just make-believe anyway.
If they ever were going to make nukes, they would just go ahead, they would have to just go ahead, withdraw from the treaty like the North Koreans, and just say, yeah, okay, fine, we're making nukes.
At this point, they have their conversion facility already.
Right, there's no path to a sneak out that isn't going to be picked up very easily.
I mean, you know, they just, they don't have the ability to sneak out enough uranium to make any difference without it being immediately detected.
And the IAEA has said that publicly, the CIA has said that publicly.
It's just not, it's not in doubt except in the minds of David Albright and Ali Einemann.
And a few other right-wingers.
All right, so what are some other important, and I'm already keeping you over time, so if you've got to go, I understand, but if you can, could you take us through another couple of few debunked assertions in there?
I know you had them on pretending the mining company was under the umbrella of the military.
Right, I mean, this is, I'll just mention this as the other major case that I really investigated carefully.
And, you know, it was the case of an Iranian engineering firm that was named in this Green Salt, you know, that's another name for that conversion process, the Green Salt document in the laptop documents.
It was, the name of this outfit was on the document, and, you know, supposedly, therefore, they were a central part of this covert nuclear weapons research process, a research outfit.
The problem that I discovered was that, the problem with the credibility of that, is that they supposedly were doing this work in 2003, and that they had a contract to do it, which, you know, they supposedly had, you know, been able to establish that this was the outfit that was doing it, but the contract, the contract work, the name of the project, which was supposedly part, a sub-project of something called Project 5, 5.0, was actually a project that did exist.
It did exist in reality, but it turns out that the project was a matter of public record.
It had been let in two and a half years before this alleged nuclear weapons program even began.
It was in 1998.
And, you know, the earliest date on which this alleged nuclear weapons, covert nuclear weapons program, started is 2001.
So, that just doesn't really quite add up.
And I confronted Olli Heinemann with this discrepancy.
First thing he said was, well, who told you that this contract was done in 1998?
I said, it's in your report, Mr. Heinemann.
It's in the February 2008 report.
And then he said, well, you know, we have other information which we didn't publish, which, you know, indicts this organization, this engineering firm.
So, a week later, I talked to him on the phone, and I brought it up again, and this time he just said, well, I don't really have any answer to that question, why there's such a discrepancy.
All right.
And now, so, all these details, but they're important ones.
But the real point is, this is a major sticking point in the current negotiations.
We still don't have a final deal.
Absolutely.
We have to make that point.
But now, but wait a minute.
Now, let me set this up, and you can still answer it however you want, but let me set it up by saying that the White House version of the framework for the deal includes, yeah, and they're going to resolve the possible military dimensions for us, and then, so, we're good to go.
Right.
And, you know, they may well have some kind of understanding that, I mean, I'm prepared to accept that there will be a possible military dimensions part of the process by which Iran fulfills its obligations under the agreement.
But I can tell you this.
I'm quite confident that this is the case, that the Iranians have agreed that they will provide information and access to the best of their ability on all of the issues relating to PMD that the P5 plus one are ready to put on a list and present to them.
And, you know, as long as the list is not hundreds of, you know, items, as long as it's a reasonable length.
But the Iranian position is going to be that once it has provided the access, once it has provided the information that it can on all of these points, then it's finished.
They are not going to be held responsible.
They're not going to agree that the IAEA can then simply say that, well, we're not satisfied and prevent them from getting the sanctions relief.
And so I think that that at this moment is still an unresolved issue.
And that it is, I would guess, the most dangerous, the most threatening aspect of the negotiations that still remains unresolved.
Right.
They're being asked to prove a negative.
Yes.
They're being asked to, you know, admit that you've been beating your wife by conceding the date to when you allegedly stopped.
Although we're still not sure of that.
And the point is that they are counting here on the Obama administration basically saying to the IAEA, get it done, don't stand in the way of this agreement being carried out.
Because the Iranians will take the position publicly that if they are denied the sanctions relief that they deserve under this agreement, because the IAEA plays, you know, funny business with them, that they will withdraw their own cooperation under the agreement.
That's going to be, that's going to be the threat.
And I think they're quite serious about it because they don't have any choice.
Yeah.
You think Obama is going to insist that the IAEA just hurry up and throw out the trash and verify that?
Well, my guess is that that is the way it's been, you know, obviously not in such simplistic terms, but that's the implication that the Obama administration has left with the Iranians to make it palatable that they agree to put the PMD issue on the table with regard to the implementation of the agreement.
Right.
Well, yeah, that's the...
But I suspect the Supreme Leader does not totally trust the United States government, whether it's Obama or anybody else.
I mean, he certainly doesn't trust Obama for a very good reason.
And that that is still somewhat of an ambiguity in regard to the Iranian position here.
They will demand more assurances.
I think part of the problem at this point.
Right.
Yeah, it's kind of a catch-22 where the fact that it's mostly a bunch of made-up stuff and worst interpretations of stuff makes it either very easy to resolve then or makes it impossible to resolve.
Exactly.
It's either very easy or impossible.
One of the two.
All right.
Thanks for coming back on the show.
I sure appreciate everything I learned from you, Gareth.
Thanks, Scott.
All right, y'all.
That's the great Gareth Porter.
He's at Middle East Eye.
And this one is from last October, when the Ayatollah said no to nukes.
That one's at foreignpolicy.com.
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