04/03/15 – Reese Erlich – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, on the line, I got Reese Ehrlich and boy, oh boy, I wish I had his bio in front of me.
Hang on.
I'm paging down here.
I got it.
Reese Ehrlich.
He is the author of a great many books about the Middle East.
He's a hardcore war reporter, spends a lot of time over there.
He wrote most recently the, I think the Iran agenda, the real story of us policy and the Middle East crisis.
And he recently wrote the piece lifting us sanctions to Iran satisfaction won't be easy.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing?
Reese?
I'm doing great.
Just an update.
I do have a more recent book called inside Syria.
Oh, right.
The backstory of their civil war and what the world can expect.
But I've been following stuff in Middle East and Iran for a long time.
That's right.
I'm sorry about that.
I knew that about the inside Syria, which I still haven't read, but I sure would like to read.
Boy, if you could see my list of books I'm supposed to be reading, it's just out of control here.
Anyway, tell me the truth.
Do you take those books that you get received for free and take them down to the bookstore and sell them off?
No, they sit here in a giant pile behind me and they go nowhere.
They do nothing.
I read half of them and then I put them down and then I never do interview the damn authors of them.
It's a catastrophe.
I read articles all day and I just, and then what I'll do is I'll dedicate an entire weekend to reading a 500 page book and then the author won't do the show after I spend the whole damn weekend reading that.
Little do people know the anguish that radio show hosts go through.
It's not easy, man.
It's just a simple job.
You show up and you ask a bunch of questions.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
It's a lot tougher than that.
Yeah, no, it is an absolute catastrophe over here, man.
I can't ever keep up.
Maybe if I was a professor and I could do one of them sabbatical things where I get paid to not work for a year, then I could catch up.
That'd be great.
Anyway, enough about me.
Let's talk about the Iran nuclear deal.
What do you think?
I think it's a big step forward.
If the final agreement contains the elements that are in the preliminary one, it's a win-win for both Iran and for the U.S.
And frankly, the Iranians gave up a lot more than anybody had been expecting.
Their nuclear program will be very much constrained to producing uranium and facilities for making nuclear power and eliminating any possibility down the line of making a nuclear bomb.
So it's what the U.S. wanted to do, and the Iranians are apparently willing to make the concessions.
All right.
Now, so we all know that Iran is a member of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and as such they have a safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has, quote, continued to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran to any military or other special purpose, I think 19 million times, something like that.
And so what was the controversy even going into these talks, Reece?
Well, that's what I write about in my article, which is that actually if you take a step back, Iran has no nuclear bomb.
That's agreed to by everybody.
It has no nuclear weapons program.
That's agreed to by the United States and the European countries.
So why impose these crippling sanctions in the first place?
Why are we even in these negotiations?
Well, because the U.S., Israel, and the European powers don't like what Iran is doing in Syria and Lebanon and other parts of the Middle East.
It's a regional power engaged in backing its allies.
And that's the real reason that these sanctions were imposed.
And the bomb issue, the nuclear issue, was the convenient excuse.
It was like the weapons of mass destruction argument used to attack Iran.
You have to find some issue that gets people really, really, really scared, really worried, and oh my God, mad mullahs with atomic bombs, we've got to do something to stop them.
Well, it was basically invented.
So yeah, the big fake red herring, the big, the outstanding issue, no matter how made up it was, preventing any kind of rapprochement between the United States and Iran.
But so what's the opposite of that?
I saw that, well, I didn't see the whole thing or read the transcript, but the headlines were that the president of Iran this morning gave a speech where he said, you know, we'd like to go ahead and be friends and warm up relations with all of our adversaries.
And he seemed to be talking about America, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and everybody else.
I wonder whether you think that now that this gigantic fake manufactured crisis is out of the way or mostly out of the way, whether this really can be the beginning of the end of the Cold War with Iran.
Well, I'd like to think that's the case, but I doubt it, frankly.
And it's not for lack of trying by the Iranians.
The U.S., both liberals and conservatives, doves and hawks, have pretty much agreed that Iran can't be trusted, and it's shown up on the nuclear issue, but it's also, for example, in the statement that the U.S. issued yesterday about the talks, it made it clear that the U.S. wasn't going to lift sanctions having to do with human rights and arms trafficking.
The U.S. has a temporary alliance with Iran right now in Iraq because both are fighting the Islamic State, the extremist group using Islam as a cover.
But the U.S. is very much on the opposite sides in Syria, in Lebanon, and now in Yemen.
So I don't think, I think while it's a step forward on the nuclear issue, and hopefully will lower tensions and the prospects for a U.S. or Israeli attack on Iran, the other differences aren't going away anytime soon.
Yeah.
Well, now, so I'm actually more worried about the Saims at this point.
We all know that George Bush fought a war for the Ayatollah in Iraq for eight years there, and, you know, helped them kill a million people to kick all the Sunnis out of Baghdad and turn that into a, what, 85% or 90% Shiite city now under their control.
And as they're fighting the Islamic State, America's providing the Quds Force with air cover into Crete and so forth.
And I know that we're still, America and Israel and our allies are still on the side of Al-Qaeda in Syria while we're fighting with the Iranians.
And don't forget Yemen now, too.
Yeah.
And so do you think I'm right to worry about that, that we're going to go too far in aligning with Iran again, like in the George W. Bush years inside the war in Iraq?
Because we're hearing all kinds of stories of atrocities at the hands of the Bata Brigade and the other Shiite militias under American air cover.
Yeah.
That one is, the full screenplay is yet to be written, frankly.
I think the U.S. is improvising as it goes along.
It doesn't have a strategic plan at the moment.
And it's aligned temporarily with anybody that it thinks can help out in the short run.
So in Iraq, having lost the war previously under George Bush, remember it wasn't Obama, but it was Bush who lost the war in Iraq and signed an agreement with the Iraqi government to pull out all the U.S. troops.
And the net result of that war, as you pointed out, was to make Iran stronger.
And the Iraqi government is more closely aligned with Iran than it is with the U.S.
I don't think that's the situation the U.S. faces.
And if they're going to defeat the Islamic State, they've got to have allies somewhere.
And all those allies, with the exception of the Kurds, are probably going to be somewhere friendly to Iran.
And so I don't think it's a strategic plan by the United States to cooperate with Iran, but a tactical one.
And where it ends up, I don't even think the people in Washington know.
Yeah, well that certainly wouldn't surprise me.
But now, okay, so you brought up Yemen there.
And man, I hear all the time where you say, oh, everybody knows, like Saddam's nuclear weapons program, everybody knows Iran is backing the Houthis in Yemen.
Is that really true?
Do you even know of any anecdotes about that being the case?
Well, as it turns out, it's how you define back.
The implication, and certainly the Saudis have claimed, and the U.S. have claimed, that the Houthis are agents of Iran, and they're being funded and armed by Iran.
That's certainly not true.
It sounds like we're going to head for a break.
Yep.
We'll be right back after this with Reese Ehrlich.
He's at Global Post, lifting U.S. sanctions to Iran's satisfaction won't be easy, is his latest.
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All right, guys, welcome back.
I'm sorry.
I'm off on a tangent here asking Reese Ehrlich about Iran's role in Yemen.
But it's important.
It's a major talking point of the war party right now.
They're on the march.
Not that they've marched into Iraq.
It was Bush that marched into Iraq and gave it to him.
It was Israel that created Hezbollah by invading Lebanon and staying throughout the 1980s and 90s.
Damascus has been under the control of the Alawites and the Shiites all along.
So yeah, well, you know, just because Netanyahu says something that doesn't really mean it's true, probably means the opposite.
But they say that's the talking point anyway.
Iran is on the march all across the Middle East.
And we got interrupted by the break there.
You were addressing the Iranian role in Yemen there, Reese.
Yeah, they politically support the Houthis, which are an indigenous rebel group opposed to the U.S., opposed to Saudi Arabia and Israel, and currently allied with the former dictator Saleh.
So it's not like there's a bunch of good guys and bad guys there.
But the Saudi air attacks and possible ground invasion is going to make the situation and is making it much, much worse.
First of all, there's a huge humanitarian crisis where they're bombing civilians.
They've blockaded, set up a naval blockade and closed the airports.
So the life for civilians is very difficult.
And sooner or later, meanwhile, the Houthis are making great gains on the ground.
And as a result, Saudi Arabia and Egypt may well have to send in ground troops, which is going to make the war even more expanded.
So you can't cry, oh, my God, we're protecting the country against Iran, when in fact you're the invading force.
And the U.S., as usual, is on the wrong side on this and is backing Saudi Arabia with intelligence and surveillance and that sort of thing.
And now when you say supporting them politically, are they sending them money and guns and artillery?
Well, I've seen no credible reports about arming them, nor sending, they may be sending the money, although I've seen no accurate reports about that.
For sure, politically, they support them and have for a long time.
And so their media support, you know, writes favorably, their foreign ministry talks favorably about them.
But for sure, the Houthis are not pawns or tools or proxies for Iran.
That is absolutely the case.
They've got their own agenda.
They claim they want to bring fair elections and a fairer system to Yemen, which I have my doubts about.
But in any case, they're not backing us as proxies for Iran.
And by the way, speaking of the Saudis, there have been some threats in the media that while you know the Saudis, if Obama does this nuclear deal with Iran, they might just buy some nuclear weapons from Pakistan and they might just go ahead and embark on a nuclear weapons program of their own.
And it'll be all Obama's fault for starting a massive arms race in the Middle East.
Well, that's I think the kind of hype that is put out there to try and discourage having any kind of an agreement with Iran.
Saudi Arabia is closely allied with the U.S.
If the U.S. said, you can't do it and we're going to break relations if you do, the Saudis would never do that.
And so I think it's one of the threats that's out there to make people very, you know, that's exaggerated to make people worried.
And I guess they have less reason to be worried now.
The Saudis would have less reason to be worried now about the Iranian nuclear program than at any time since 2004 or five.
Right.
Exactly.
Let's say these talks have broken down and everybody went home.
Iran, although I don't think they wanted to develop a nuclear program, certainly from the eyes of Saudi Arabia and the U.S. and Israel, would be freer to do so than they are now.
So these folks who are so hawkish should be glad that Iran has made these concessions and is constrained as it is.
If you have a moment, I'd like to talk about some of the pitfalls that we're probably going to see in a few in the coming days.
Sure.
Yeah.
Well, overall, the agreement, I think, is a good one.
There's three areas we've got to keep an eye on in the weeks ahead, because the final agreement won't be agreed on until the end of June.
So one is what will allow the sanctions against Iran to be lifted?
The agreement, as it's spelled out so far, says Iran has to live up to a bunch of commitments in terms of limiting its nuclear capabilities, its enrichment of uranium, and so on.
And something called PMD, or possible military dimensions.
Your listeners may be familiar with the laptop of death and some of these other arcane things that have been mentioned in the past.
Basically, the U.S. claims and Israel claims that Iran had a secret program to develop nuclear weapons.
And until they come clean on that, they can't be trusted.
And now that PMD has worked into the agreement and the sanctions won't be lifted until this PMD issue is resolved.
That's a huge point of disagreement, because basically, it would allow the U.S., and particularly a future president if this stretches beyond Obama's term, to prohibit lifting the sanctions saying, oh, this PMD issue isn't resolved.
And so, believe me, in the weeks ahead, there's going to be a lot of hard negotiating and possibly changing of that wording, because otherwise, Iran could possibly make all these changes in its nuclear program and still not get anywhere in terms of lifting sanctions.
Well, but now, I mean, they do say in here that they've agreed to resolve all the possible military dimensions accusations, which we all already know are bogus anyway.
Right.
So they could, if it was on the most positive way, the U.S. and the IAEA could say, yep, Iran didn't have this program, and that clears it, and the Security Council is now free to lift the sanctions.
But if somebody wants to make trouble, remember the IAEA, after 10 years of investigating Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, never concluded that the program had ended.
And that was at the U.S. instigation, and that was one of the key excuses used to attack Iraq.
Oh, we don't know.
We think they still have weapons of mass destruction, and the IAEA has never ruled otherwise.
So the U.S. can exert a lot of pressure if it wants to, to disrupt the agreement, whatever is written on paper.
I see.
And, OK, so I'm sorry, go ahead.
All right.
So, and then the final, so one is the PMD, two is the sanctions, and the third area is the so-called snapback, which is the Obama administration made a big deal about how, if the sanctions are violated after, later, they can snap back and reimpose them, except in order to do that at the U.N. level, they'd have to have the agreement of China and Russia, and that seems highly unlikely.
So I think conservatives in Congress are going to know that, and they're going to raise the issue and say, aha, once the sanctions are lifted, the Iranians will be free to break it any way they want, and the snapback is not, won't actually ever happen.
So those are the three areas that I think we'll see a lot of debate about in the upcoming weeks.
Yeah, I saw David Ignatius in his column today, the CIA writer for The Post, was pointing out he didn't really explain what he meant, but I guess that's what he was talking about when he said that the U.N. sanctioned snapback amounts to a nightmare, is that Russia-China issue there.
Exactly.
It's not going to happen.
But that's a heavy argument.
Remember, the statement that came out of the White House yesterday was written for an American audience to convince Congress and others, Israeli supporters in the U.S. and so on, that this is really a tough agreement, and they had to fudge, partly to do that.
Yeah, well, so, and now, I guess, as far as the sanctions, what Obama can waive himself and what he needs cooperation from, I guess the most recent reporting I've heard is that it seems perhaps unlikely that they'll be able to get veto-proof majorities in both houses, and I saw Josh Rogin is reporting that at least Kirk Menendez, the worst of the new sanctions, have been put on hold until at least the end of the deal there, but do you think that Congress really will have the power to obstruct Obama?
I mean, after all, the politics have really shifted toward dear leader at this point, right?
Well, it's going to be down to the wire, because there are people in Congress, and particularly the Netanyahu government in Israel and its supporters in the U.S., who don't want any agreement.
I don't think an agreement that would be big enough, good enough, because you can't trust the Iranians.
That's the way they look at it, even though the Iranians have done everything they were supposed to do for the last year and a half while these talks have gone on.
So those folks, if they can make alliances with less extreme, shall we say, hawks, they could throw up some roadblocks.
They want Congress to vote on this issue, even though Ronald Reagan reached an agreement with Iran without a congressional vote, a little detail that's left out of the narrative.
And presidents all the time have negotiated deals with foreign powers without having a congressional vote.
If it's not a treaty, it doesn't need a vote.
So I think that we're going to see this sharp debate, and it'll come down to the wire.
At the moment, I think the agreement has tilted things in Obama's favor, and I think the momentum so far is with Obama.
All right.
And now you point out in your article here, lifting U.S. sanctions to Iran's satisfaction won't be easy at the Global Post that, hey, even if they had some weapons-grade material, the ability to make an actual nuclear weapon out of it, a usable one, is an entirely different question.
As my friend Gordon Prather, the nuclear weapons physicist, likes to say, let me know when they have an equivalent of the Sandia or Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories that they could come up with any kind of actual workable nuclear device.
I mean, when people say breakout time, they're talking about a pile of weapons-grade uranium, not an actual weapon.
Exactly.
And that's part of the hype, and you've got to be very scared of the Mad Mullah's argument.
That's so distorted the discussion in the U.S. and in other parts of the world.
The building an atomic bomb is actually very complicated, and you can look to North Korea, which supposedly had its breakout, and it's not clear to this day if they've got an operational atomic bomb, because they tested them and they failed.
It's very complicated.
First of all, you have to have plutonium enriched to 90 percent, uranium and plutonium.
Then you have to miniaturize it so that it can fit on a missile head, and then you have to figure out how to trigger it.
You can't just stick a fuse in the uranium and light it.
It's a very complicated process, and Iran doesn't know how to do it.
And then, even if you have a nuclear bomb, you've got to test it somewhere.
So all along the way, if any of that happened, the U.S. would know about it.
And the idea that Iran could do this in secret and somehow accrue a nuclear arsenal unbeknownst to the West, and then use it, let alone use it to attack somebody, is just farcical, frankly.
All right.
Well, thanks very much for coming back on the show, Reese.
I sure appreciate it.
My pleasure.
All right, Joe.
That's Reese Ehrlich.
He's at the Global Post here.
Lifting U.S. sanctions to Iran's satisfaction won't be easy.
His latest book is Inside Syria, the back story of their civil war and what the world can expect.
And we're over time.
See you tomorrow.
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