04/09/15 – Sheldon Richman – 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.
On the line, I got Sheldon Richman from Free Association.
That's sheldonrichman.com.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing, Sheldon?
I'm doing fine, Scott.
Thanks for inviting me back.
Good deal.
Very happy to have you here.
Hey, so you got this article.
We're running it today on antiwar.com, too.
It's called The Real Nuclear Threat in the Middle East.
Well, surely you must be referring to the U.S. Air Force or Navy, right?
Well, I guess I could have said something about that, too.
But in this case, I wanted to zero in on Israel.
Okay.
I'm sorry.
I was just kidding.
Go ahead.
Israel is constantly haranguing Iran, not happy with this framework that's been, I guess, more or less agreed to, even though it looks like Iran is making a huge amount of concessions in order to get sanctions lifted.
But Israel has sort of put itself forward in the person of Netanyahu, but he's got a lot of support, of course.
He just got reelected.
He's put himself forward as the moral judge of Iran, accusing it of all kinds of things and telling the West and the U.S. in particular basically shouldn't even be dealing with Iran, except for dropping bombs, I guess that's a way to deal with somebody.
And yet it's Israel that's the nuclear monopolist that has attacked neighbors, that occupies a territory, that oppresses the inhabitants of those occupied territories, that makes war on Gaza, open warfare on Gaza, the Gaza Strip.
But every day grinds down the Palestinians of the West Bank and treats its own, with quotation marks around that, Arab citizens as second or third class citizens.
And you would never know that Israel has an awesome nuclear arsenal as well as an awesome conventional military force by the way this morality play is portrayed in the media.
Right.
Yeah, it's funny.
I think really it's almost just a matter of zooming in a little bit because the narrative of tiny little Israel surrounded by enemies, I guess it does kind of make sense if you're just looking at a map out of focus, kind of, until you realize, well, actually, they own Egypt and Jordan outright.
I mean, America pays the bill, but still.
So those aren't enemies just because they're brown, assuming their sovereignty over all the land to the Jordan River.
And then in Syria, Assad might as well work for them.
He's never messed with them at all.
And Hezbollah, they don't like, but that's still just a militia and a defensive so-called threat, not an offensive one.
And so actually they're not really surrounded by enemies.
And actually, you know, who's even a smaller little helpless society surrounded completely with their back to the sea, surrounded by enemies, the Gazans, they're the true, you know, the fake narrative that they spin about Israel actually applies directly to their prisoners in the Gaza Strip, whatever you call it, concentration camp.
Yeah.
Well, right.
And then now, you know, with Iran is the, is the, is the bet noire, right?
The, the monster who's on the march, as Netanyahu put it in before, when he spoke before the Congress, it's gobbling up nations, you know, all of which is ridiculous.
It's absurd.
The exaggeration and the caricaturing of Iran is just, you know, so cynical.
You know, they've been up there for a long time, been, been an ally of Assad.
There's nothing new there.
And there's a civil war going on in, in, in Syria.
And the, and the U.S. is in a way on both sides of that.
In Lebanon, you know, Netanyahu will talk about Hezbollah, but Hezbollah only started to form when the, when the central government of Lebanon was unable to protect the, the South Lebanese from Israel.
Israel invaded in the, in the 80s and, and, and stayed occupied lower Lebanon for many, many years.
What was it, 15 years?
There was no Hezbollah before that.
So to act like that's some act of imperialism by Iran is wrong.
And then even in, in Yemen, you know, I heard Christiane Amanpour say the other day on CNN, that she's seen no evidence that the Houthis are basically agents of the Iranians.
No, she's saying that, that's saying something.
She often finds, she often is able to see evidence that no one else can see.
Yeah, I've heard a lot of expert opinion along those lines and I've heard nothing contradicting that, really.
Yeah.
And like I said, if she says it, that's saying something.
So, you know, this is a fairy tale that Netanyahu and many in the United States, the neocons, the war party is floating.
That somehow, you know, and of course the, the unspoken thing is, and I know you've pointed this out, if you're going to demonize Iran like this and just manufacture to, to echo here, Garrett Porter's great book, to manufacture a crisis that, you know, even aside from the new so-called bogus nuclear crisis that, that Iran is on the march, like some sort of, you know, Nazi Germany in the Middle East is to, by definition, I think, engender some sympathy for ISIS and for the worst of the, of the radical Sunnis, because you really can't be on both sides.
And if you're going to be demonizing Iran, that I think shows some sympathy for some very, very nasty people.
Now, you know, I'm not a fan of the Iranian regime.
It's a theocracy.
I don't want to live under any theocracy.
And, but I think, I think what the U.S. does there and what Israel does toward Iran certainly does not help to encourage a true liberal movement in Iran.
It's quite the opposite.
Yeah, no doubt about that.
And we can see, you know, leading up to and ever since the so-called Green Revolution in 2009, over the disputed election there, that the actual democratic, little d democratic activists there in Tehran, the number one accusation the government used against them was that you guys are all CIA.
So maybe some of them appreciated, you know, NED money and maybe some of them didn't.
I don't know the exact proportions there, but certainly being painted as agents of the Americans is the number one, you know, worst public relations disaster that they could suffer.
Just the same, you know, the way they try to accuse Snowden of leaking to the Russians or this kind of thing.
They did an article called The American Disease, which I think came out last year at one point.
I think it was last year that I wrote this article, The American Disease, and it was exactly on that.
If the U.S. is going to be doing what it's been doing for a very long time with, you know, first of all, the CIA and then these nongovernmental organizations, which look like they have some distance from the government, but really are filled with taxpayer money.
Even when the U.S. is not involved in a, let's say, liberal movement, it's going to be accused of it, given the history of it, and that's going to seem like a reasonable accusation to a lot of people.
So, you know, the U.S. policy has created this very bad situation for genuine liberals in these places where they would like to have a, say, a peaceful revolution against an oppressive government.
We've tainted them, even if we're not doing anything.
Of course, we usually are, we being the government, usually is doing something.
But even if you could come up with a case where it wasn't, it would still be a reasonable, you know, conclusion that the U.S. is probably behind it, given the fact that it was behind, it's been behind so much else.
Yeah, and of course, what's funny there is Mousavi, the guy that was being supported in that Green Revolution, he's just another conservative Republican Ayatollah guy, you know, part of the revolution since 79.
And I think was already the former president in the 80s, something like this.
He was no pro-Western American hero or whatever they were trying to paint him as, like, oh, this guy, we like him, he would do what we say if it was him.
But there's no reason to think that any of that was true beyond just, you know, American self-centered projection.
Like, oh, this looks like one of those color-coded revolutions we're always putting on.
You know, maybe we could be the winners in this.
What?
That's right.
And, you know, and then the people who point out that these are not genuine, that the U.S., the CIA, the NED is behind it, you know, it's relatively easy to marginalize those people by just saying, oh, so you're in favor of the oppressive regime.
I get it.
Right.
So they can use that against them like they've done in Ukraine.
Yeah, like they always try to do no matter what, you pro-Saddam Husseinite, you.
We'll be right back, y'all, with the great Sheldon Richman in just a minute.
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All right, you guys, welcome back.
It's me on the line with Sheldon Richman.
He's at SheldonRichman.com.
This piece is called The Real Nuclear Threat in the Middle East.
Israel, of course, armed to the teeth with hundreds of A and H bombs and nuclear submarines, second-strike capability, etc., etc., like that.
Not members of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, where at least nuclear weapon states that are members of it promise not to proliferate and lie that someday they'll get rid of theirs.
But they're not members of that.
They're the ones sitting on all the nukes.
And then I think it's very important that you point out in this article where Benjamin Netanyahu was trying to move the goalposts the other day and said the nuclear deal should include Iranian recognition of Israel.
And Obama said, yeah, right, whatever.
Forget about that pretty quick.
But you point out in this article that the Iranians have been ready to recognize Israel for a long time now, and they've said so officially.
Well, that's right.
That was one half of the reason I wanted to write this piece.
I mean, I've written a lot about Iran and Israel, so I was wondering, okay, why am I doing it again?
What can I say that I haven't said?
But one thing I haven't seen enough emphasized is Iran's stance over the years on a couple of things.
Number one is what you just said.
They announced in 2003, I think it is, they offered a grand bargain to the Bush administration, which would have, number one, started negotiations on the nuclear matter just to reassure the world that they're not building weapons.
And as we know from Gareth's work and Mohamed Sahami's work and others, they were not.
And so it was willing to open all that up.
And part of the grand bargain was embracing the Arab League.
This is something that just most people don't know anything about.
It's hardly ever discussed on the news.
I shouldn't even say hardly ever.
It's never discussed.
The Arab League's 2002 peace initiative, which offered a comprehensive peace to the Israelis.
It said if you settle the matter with the Palestinians, allow there to be a Palestinian state in the pre-'67, the territories that were occupied in the 67, and address the refugee problem within the context of UN resolutions, we will make peace with you.
We will enter into treaties.
And I use this to refute Netanyahu, who says we can't have a nuclear weapons-free zone or a weapons-of-mass-destruction-free zone in the Middle East until we have peace with the other Arab states recognize us.
Well, they've been on record willing to recognize for many years.
Iran has signed on to that.
Iran supports a weapons-of-mass-destruction-free zone.
It's renewed its call for that.
But nobody ever talks about Iran making these overtures.
By the way, that 2003 offer by the Iranians was rebuffed by the Bush administration.
It was faxed to the Bush people by Switzerland, because we weren't directly, I guess we weren't in direct contact over things like this with Iran.
And the Bush people got mad at the Swiss for even faxing it.
It was like, how dare you?
How dare you bring this to our attention?
Right.
Yeah.
Apparently there was a whole anecdote of them screaming at him, that kind of thing.
I think it was John Bolton and his staff really went after the Swiss ambassador personally for daring.
Yeah.
So if you're going to talk about Iran, my point was, talk about this stuff too.
Why is the coverage of Iran merely demonization?
If you listen to the media and the pundits, the analysts, all these professional experts they bring on, if they were talking about Israelis the way they talk about the Iranians, people would call them anti-Semites.
They would say, oh, well, the Iranians can't be trusted.
They're so clever.
They're deceitful.
I mean, the Iranians.
So like I said, if you talk about the Israelis that way, Netanyahu would be screaming that you were anti-Semite, that you're saying Jews are deceitful.
And I don't know why there's such a huge double standard.
Well, I guess I do know why there's a huge double standard, but there is.
Yeah, there was just one the other day where Ron Dermer, the ambassador, who's an American, but the Israeli ambassador to the United States and the one who engineered the Netanyahu speech, supposedly, and all that, wrote an article in Time where it all starts out about the crafty Persian rug salesman and how they're such hard bargainers or whatever.
And immediately even liberal Zionists were tweeting about, hey, man, if somebody wrote an essay like that that started with the Jewish diamond merchant, you'd be screaming at the top of your lungs.
Are you kidding?
Yeah.
I've seen references to the Persian bazaar, you know, where people are bargaining over rugs and other things.
You're right.
They play into all these sort of Orientalist stereotypes.
They don't mind that at all.
The mainstream media, the pundits and the politicians don't mind that at all.
Politicians, too.
We'll talk about those clever, deceitful Iranians.
And you don't hear anybody.
Obviously, the Iranian-Americans would be complaining, but I don't see them getting on TV very much.
I mean, sometimes they do, but not that often.
And so it's just like what they did with the Palestinians, right?
If you keep any respectable Palestinian off TV, then the only impression Americans will get is that, you know, it's people who hijack planes or bomb airports or something like that, you know.
And the same thing with the Iranians.
You never see a respectable Iranian come on TV.
I mean, there are some exceptions these days.
Trita Parsi has been getting on TV, I'm happy to say.
But it's still rare.
And most people won't get that impression of Iranians that they're just people.
Let's sit down and talk and see, you know, the whole picture is, no, these people can't be trusted.
What are we talking about?
You can't trust these people.
That's the impression Americans get subliminally and sometimes extremely obviously.
And it's not just no Iranians, but it's just there's a very small number of people who've made it their hobby or their, you know, who made a decision that they want to keep up with the history of the Iranian nuclear program and the negotiations surrounding it.
You know what I mean?
It's you, me, Trita, and a handful of other people even care at all or have been paying that much attention.
So when it comes to especially TV news, all the presumptions always are left standing.
No one ever says, well, actually, that's not quite true about any aspect of the thing, because none of them know anything about it.
So it just becomes what everybody knows, that they're making nukes, threatening Israel every day and this kind of thing.
Right.
And, you know, even if they were to have somebody on, you know, like Mohammed Sahimi or Gareth or Gareth Porter, you know, they would feel compelled to bring someone on to rebut that person because they can't let – they couldn't just let that person speak, you know, by him or herself or herself.
Right.
But on the other hand, the other side gets on by themselves all the time and, you know, without anybody to challenge them, including from the interviewer.
You know, in even sort of subtle ways, the case is so rigged that no wonder the American people generally think, and I heard Rand Paul saying yesterday, that Iran is a threat.
Yeah.
And he always said that.
And you're a liar if you say that he changed his position on that.
Anyway.
Yeah.
No.
And it's funny because I saw, too, where Rouhani, the president of Iran, gave this speech where he's like, man, we're really excited about this deal and we think that maybe this can be a good first step toward, you know, friendlier relations with our neighbors.
And he seemed to be talking about Saudi and Israel and America and that this could sort of be the end of the Cold War here, the beginning of the end of it.
Something – I'm putting words in his mouth, but it was more or less along those lines.
And the State Department immediately said, not a chance, pal.
We hate your guts.
We still hate you.
Our negotiation is about the nuclear program full stop and should no way be taken to mean that we would ever negotiate with you about anything else, you terrorist.
Right.
Right.
And of course, the latest reporting today, I heard it summarized on CNN or MSNBC, but I didn't see anybody quote it.
They have Rouhani saying if sanctions aren't lifted the day of the signing of the agreement, we're not going to sign the agreement.
So now they're putting out this negative news that maybe things aren't going so well.
Right.
Well, and they still have plenty of time to screw it up too.
And, you know, I actually saw the Israelis had said, well, you know, maybe if they would completely close down Fordo and resolve the possible military dimensions, which that's in the deal that they would resolve that.
So that should be taken care of.
And they have one more demand, which I forget.
Oh, and immediate inspections everywhere all the time.
And I thought at first maybe that was a climb down.
But then I guess they really can't say we demand or they can, but they would rather not say we demand a complete end to all nuclear everything.
So they're still just making impossible demands, trying to sabotage it.
Seeming reasonable ones.
So I took that climb down out of context.
It wasn't one.
Anyway.
So, yeah, we'll have more to cover along these lines.
Thanks again for coming back on the show.
Talk about it.
My pleasure.
Any time.
That's a great show.
The Richmond Y'all show the Richmond dot com.
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