05/28/15 – Trita Parsi – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
Getting right to the interviews here with Trita Parsi, founder and president of the National Iranian American Council.
That's niacouncil.org, niacouncil.org.
He's got the spotlight today on antiwar.com with Paul Pilar.
It's at the Huffington Post, the Iran talks game changer, an Israeli-Hezbollah war.
Now, Trita, we only got five minutes, and so two things for you to address here.
First of all, the announcement yesterday that the French want to throw up new roadblocks to the negotiation I guess more access to military sites, I guess, possibly or clearly unrelated to nuclear material under the agreement, or they're going to throw a monkey wrench in it there.
And then, obviously, this gigantic headline that you've got here at the Huffington Post.
So please go ahead, sir.
Yes, essentially what we're arguing is that mindful of the failure of the opponents of the deal to kill it in Washington, and it's looking bad for them right now, what they may be looking for is a game changer.
And something that could qualify as a game changer is if there would be a military confrontation between Israel and Hezbollah.
I mean, see the argument that they're using right now that a deal would lift sanctions on Iran and give it a bunch of money that it will end up giving to Hezbollah.
That's an argument that so far hasn't resonated that well.
But once you have a situation in which Hezbollah rockets are hitting Israel, it is plausible that it suddenly will become much more potent.
And in an act of desperation, combined with several other factors, the fact that Hezbollah is arming itself right now but at the same time is very weak because it's overextended due to its involvement in Syria, and the fact that there is a very strong argument, a strong campaign being made in Israel right now to try to justify a preemptive attack against Hezbollah, which is made by people inside the government right now saying it's better to attack them now than to wait for them to attack Israel.
We're making the argument that potentially this could happen, but the driver of it, the decisive driver would be to try to kill the Iran deal by shifting the momentum in the Iran debate in Washington.
Now, as far as the rhetoric inside Israel, is it much hotter than usual on this issue?
It has picked up, and it's interesting in the specificity of it.
They're looking at the number of rockets, they're pointing out the weakness of Hezbollah elsewhere, and then making the argument that Israel should not have to wait to be attacked.
They essentially say that the confrontation with Hezbollah is inevitable, then it's better for it to be at the time of choosing of Israel rather than for Israel to wait to get attacked.
And we've seen this before.
There's been plenty of times in which there has been that type of a noise out of Israel and nothing has happened.
And then there's been time in which that noise has been there, and then later on it did happen.
So we're not making the argument that this is going to happen.
We're making the argument that if it does happen, it could actually be motivated not just by Hezbollah's rockets, but by a desire, a calculation that it will help kill the Iran deal in Washington.
Makes good sense.
Okay, now, so what about the French?
Are they really going to screw this thing up?
Look, the French always try to position themselves as the ones that are tougher than anyone else on the nuclear issue.
Oftentimes, frankly, it's just a lot of rhetoric.
There has been cases in which they have come in and they have sabotaged things, but that's not necessarily because they were more hawkish than the other side.
It was frankly more because of them deliberately going in there and disagreeing with things that already had been established.
You're going to see a lot of drama, a tremendous amount of drama between now and end of June from both sides, and there's going to be talks about, oh, we need more time to negotiate.
Essentially what is happening when you reach the climax of a major negotiation like this is that they start to negotiate at least part of it in public with a lot of psychological signals, and that's what we're seeing right now.
The French have said that there's no way we can finish this by June.
The Iranians come out and say we probably will need more time.
They're essentially saying time is on our side, so we're okay with extending the negotiations.
Reality is time is on no one's side.
This deal needs to be struck as quickly as possible.
Well, and so you're saying that the French are in a position that they can back down from.
They're not really, I mean, isn't it obvious that sabotage, right, to say we have to be able to go wherever we want to your military bases?
Yeah.
I mean, look, there's going to be some inspections of military sites because that's already included in the additional protocol.
The question now is if there's a request to go way beyond that, and that could be a very tough negotiation, and the Iranians may not give in.
The Iranians may give in.
The French may not give in.
The French may give in.
I mean, it remains to be seen, but none of the things that we've seen so far are so serious that they would have a significant chance of killing the negotiations.
The real threat to the negotiations is what's going to happen in the Senate and in Congress after a deal is struck.
Right.
Okay.
Thanks for coming back on the show.
I sure appreciate it.
Thank you so much for having me.
That's Trita Parsi, y'all.
He is the founder and the president of the National Iranian American Council.
That's niacouncil.org, and it's the spotlight today on antiwar.com, the Iran talks game changer, an Israeli Hezbollah war.
That's fff.org, and tell them Scott sent you.