07/17/15 – Gareth Porter – The Scott Horton Show

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Ladies and gentlemen, the great Dr. Gareth Porter.
All right.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
I got Gareth Porter on the line.
How are you doing, Gareth?
Hi, Scott.
Glad to be back again.
Very happy to have you.
All those people, they were clapping because due to your work, in great measure, a new, a very important step toward a very possible peace has been made.
And I know you go, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm humble and modest and this and that.
But the truth of the matter is, as I told Mohammed Sahimi the other day, there are a very small number of people, experts, journalists, pundits, wonks, et cetera, in America who have made it their business to debunk the propaganda, the scaremongering, warmongering lies about Iran's nuclear program and why it means we ought to have a war against them.
And above all of them, you debunked more lies just in terms of sheer quantity.
And, of course, in quality, in taking on, completely debunking the story of the alleged studies, et cetera, et cetera.
I could go on.
You wrote the book on it, Manufactured Crisis, why they're lying to you about Iran's nuclear program or whatever the subtitle was.
And so thank you, Gareth.
And congratulations.
This is, you know, it belongs to you, this victory.
Well, Scott, you know that I regard your remarks as extremely kind and, in fact, far too kind in the sense that, realistically, what I've written has had no impact whatsoever on U.S. policy.
I think we both really know that.
No, that's not true.
That is not true.
I'm afraid to say that I have to disagree with you there.
This is a fundamental disagreement, and I'm going to have to insist on my position on this because it does relate to what we're going to talk about today.
No, no, no.
Come on.
Our government's narrative, the entire establishment's narrative, Israel's narrative, the media's narrative is Iran's illicit nuclear weapons program.
And the reason that they didn't get away with continuing to insist that that was the crisis is because there were enough Americans for people to go to, to show that that wasn't the case, to show that at least that was a dispute.
It was not a matter of fact.
And so I know that your name is not all over CNN and whatever as, you know, the book that changed the entire game or whatever, but it doesn't have to be.
And I appreciate your modesty.
It's a virtue of yours, but you shouldn't be in denial about it.
You know, it's important work.
Well, let me let me present my analysis on the current situation, which is really based on an entirely different picture of the situation.
And that is that, you know, as I prepared for this interview, and this is one of the few times that I've really consciously tried to stop and think, what do I really want to say about the nuclear deal at this moment, I had occasion to go back to the quote in Ron Susskind's article, Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush, which has been attributed now that the quote has been attributed to Karl Rove.
And what this unnamed person said is, you know, in response to what he called the reality based community, who believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.
This person, who is an aide to George W. Bush said, quote, that's not the way the world really works anymore.
We're an empire now.
And when we act, we create our own reality.
And while you're studying that reality, judiciously, as you will, will act again, creating other new realities, which you can study, too.
And that's how things will sort out.
We're history's actors, and you all of you will be left to just study what we do.
And so I thought about that, because it seems to me that what we are confronted with in this situation is a, it's an agreement that, of course, it's a good thing, it's better than the failure to have an agreement, which would bring us closer to war and would give greater power to the neoconservatives than the pro Israeli lobby and Israel.
But at the same time, we have to recognize the fact that this whole, this deal is based on a constructed reality by the Obama administration, because they're the ones who created this deal.
They're the ones who got into the negotiations.
Finally, they have constructed it in a way that falsifies the entire reality of the Iranian nuclear program.
And so what I'm trying to say is that, you know, you know, I have very, very mixed feelings about the about the agreement.
It depends on which, which level you want to approach it at, which level you want to analyze it on.
And, you know, I think it's important to go to a deeper level here to understand just how far we have been taken into, you know, kind of alternative political universe by the Obama administration in this, in this whole situation.
And of course, the news media has its own version of that alternative universe, that alternative reality, which is far to the right of the Obama administration, and you correctly point out the distinction, or at least that was the implication of what you said.
But I just want to remind everybody listening, and I think this is, you know, perhaps the only audience that I feel free to begin an interview with, with this sort of analysis, that we are, in fact, confronted with this constructed false alternative reality that has been surrounding the whole question of the Iranian nuclear program in the way the Obama administration has, has presented the issue and the result is going to continue that alternative reality.
So, you know, that's where I want to begin the interview.
I see what you mean.
So, in other words, Obama accepts all the premises about just what a terrible, nefarious regime Iran is.
He needs all that as part of his argument, the way he's constructed it, to why we need this nuclear deal so bad.
But then you're saying he's ultimately given away the store, that he's helped characterize Iran as so unreasonable that even this deal isn't enough.
Yeah, I mean, his construction of the alternative reality is that had it not been for his heroic efforts to put pressure on Iran and bring them to the table and force them to accept our red lines, Iran would be racing toward a nuclear weapon.
I mean, that's not stated as explicitly as that, but clearly that's the message.
And it's not, by the way, just because of his need for a rationale to defend his agreement.
It's also part of the larger reality here that the Obama administration is deeply embedded in an alternative reality about the Middle East in general.
And I'm sure, you know, we've talked about it on your show, and I'm sure others have as well.
But, you know, it really is important to just understand how far the Obama administration has taken us into this false construction of reality.
But, you know, in some ways it goes beyond even what the Bush administration did.
And that's pretty bad.
Yeah.
Well, now, what's funny is, at the same time, the war party is starting to abandon their entire line about the nuclear program.
Bill Kristol, the Graham Poobah propagandist of the neocons from the Weekly Standard, tweeted out a quote of Aaron David Miller saying, well, the Iranians have given up something they didn't have in exchange for a lot of money.
Now, first of all, of course, it's their money that America's been stealing.
It's not like America's putting them on the dole now.
We're just now going to stop stealing it so much.
So that's one thing.
But then the second thing is, that's right.
They're giving up something they never had because the neoconservative war party, led by Bill Kristol of all people, have pushed this myth and this narrative of the danger of Iran's nuclear program all along so badly that what Obama has done, basically, is made a deal to lift all the sanctions in exchange for Iran to continue doing exactly what they're doing, which is not making nuclear weapons, staying within the safeguards agreement, only even more so.
I mean, obviously, there are new conditions and they're scaling back their program, et cetera.
But that's right, because they lied us into this situation.
That's the kind of deal that they had to make.
Look, your safeguards agreement isn't enough.
Sign the additional protocol and we'll lift the sanctions, right?
That's what just happened.
Kristol is not abandoning the argument.
I mean, he's simply saying that, oh, the Iranians didn't really give up anything significant in this.
They still maintain the ability to go for a bomb.
This is part of the backstory that they're going to continue to insist on.
And again, I mean, I would just point out that the Obama administration is still hyping the idea that Iran wants to have a nuclear weapon.
That's the explicit position that they're taking and that this agreement is the alternative to Iran either getting a nuclear weapon or that we'll have a war with them.
And that's really buying into the most basic lies that were passed on to the administration by the neoconservatives.
So there's still a great deal of agreement simply on the nuclear issue between the neoconservatives and Obama.
But also that Obama is pushing this line about Iran as the aggressor in the Middle East as a fundamental aspect, you know, the fundamental basis of its foreign policy in the region.
And I mean, this has gotten much worse in recent months.
And we all know why that's the case.
It's a response to pressures from the US allies in the region.
And the Obama administration really doesn't have its own take on what's going on in the Middle East.
It simply absorbs the pressures and responds with policies that try to deflect and to soften the pressures from its allies.
Because what's really important to this administration, to the national security state of this administration, which is really what the White House adheres to, is the fundamental interests that involve military bases and the military budget, and the contracts that go to all these Middle Eastern allies, particularly the Sunni Arab bloc, which are going to keep the Pentagon and the generals swimming in lots of power and money for many years to come.
So that's what we're up against.
And, you know, I just did not want to sort of start a commentary on the agreement without establishing really firmly just how bad the situation is in terms of this alternative constructed reality.
Yeah, no, I mean, you're right.
Of course, Obama has pushed this whole thing, pushed that whole narrative in order that he can be the one who solves it.
But then again, if it's a year from now, a year and a half from now, and they really have turned off Fordow and, you know, reconnoitered the Arak reactor, and they've, you know, unplugged their cascading centrifuges by the thousands at Natanz, and they've expanded all these inspections, and the goons have been out and looked at empty warehouses at the Parchin military base again, and whatever, then, I mean, I guess, am I just completely naive this whole time to think, well, if we had a deal, then at least it'll be easier to argue that, no, come on, we got a deal.
If the NPT and the safeguards agreement weren't enough for you, now we got an additional protocol.
Now we got an additional this, that, and the other thing.
So really get off it.
I mean, they're not going to really continue to push the nuclear threat narrative.
They won't be able to after this, right?
Well, no, I don't think they're going to be pushing the nuclear threat narrative as an active problem.
Instead, their narrative now is, oh, no, now they have money, and they'll spend it all on Hezbollah.
Right, that's going to be the primary propaganda theme, but they will not have given up the idea that it was our heroic diplomacy and the pressure on Iran that brought this about.
So, I mean, in other words, they're going to have it both ways.
Obviously, that's the aim, and that's what they will do.
I mean, that in itself isn't too bad, other than if, you know, problems that it sets us up for, right?
Like, I don't care if they call Afghanistan a victory, if they would just get the hell out, you know?
Well, I mean, of course, we want to have changes in the immediate policy that are in the right direction.
We agree on that.
But, you know, the direction that the Obama administration's policy in the Middle East is going is absolutely the wrong direction at this point.
It's not heading in the right direction.
And I'm sorry to say that I am a pessimist on, you know, how this agreement is going to influence the direction of that policy in the future.
Wait, which direction is the right direction?
Because both directions are horrible, right?
We're either backing the jihadists like we are in Syria, those still loyal to Zawahiri, if not, you know, directly backing the Islamic State, still their clones, or we're backing Iran and the Bada Brigades that helped turn Iraq into the giant cemetery that it is right now.
So which of those is the right position?
What we should be doing is recognizing that Iran is a legitimate player in the Middle East, that it has legitimate security interests, that what it has been doing in Syria, in Lebanon, is defending the most elementary self-defense national security interests that a country can have in light of, in the face of, overt threats from Israel and, previous to that, from the Bush administration.
You know, the Hezbollah's rockets are an essential, fundamental element in the Iranian deterrent to Israeli attack.
And, you know, secondarily to U.S. attack, should a Republican administration come back into office with that sort of rhetoric.
And so, I mean, this is obviously the opposite of what the Obama administration is presenting as the reality in the Middle East.
But, you know, what I'm saying is that without recognizing that reality, we are still in a situation where the United States is backing actively the most destructive, destabilizing elements in the region.
And that has to stop.
Well, and Obama's almost out of time, and he's about to be replaced by somebody even worse than him on all of this stuff.
Exactly.
I mean, that's what is so worrisome, that he is not doing anything to put up, his administration is not doing anything to put up any barriers to the next administration continuing to carry out a policy, an aggressive policy in the Middle East that is aimed at regime change.
I mean, of course, I'm not saying that the Obama administration is actively pursuing regime change, but it would be relatively easier for the next administration to go back to the Bush administration regime change strategy because of what the Obama administration is doing.
Yeah, well, I don't know, though.
I mean, it seems like, again, in the near term future, what we're going to be hearing most about from Iran is how their guys are kicking the Islamic State's ass in Fallujah, right?
Or losing to them, but fighting our enemies, supposedly.
Well, I mean, that, of course, is the reality.
There's no doubt about that.
But is the Obama administration saying that?
No, they're not.
They're not saying that at all.
They're continuing to say that Iran is the troublemaker throughout the region.
And, you know, this is, this is, of course, the response, in part, as I've said on your show before, to the vested interests of the national security state in the United States, but also to response to pressure from the allies who, who have leverage with the national security state, because, you know, that's where our military bases are, first of all, and they're not going to give them up.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, now, so they seem to be waffling on this.
I guess they've been waffling on it all along, right, about whether they really want regime change in Syria or not.
But then Obama, just two weeks ago now, said Assad must step down.
I believe that's the first time he's said that since 2012.
The rhetoric has definitely hardened.
No question about it.
I mean, all along the line, every aspect of U.S. Middle Eastern policy has gone much harder line, more aggressive, more anti-Iran, and more prepared to support the destabilization that is being carried out by U.S. allies.
I mean, this is an extremely worrisome trend, which is not being discussed openly by the news media at all.
I mean, you know, this is kind of being covered up or hailed by the news media as, you know, well, now they're heading in the right direction.
One of the two.
Well, now, so, OK, go back to the Iraq War II there, George Jr.'s war, 03 through 11.
Oops, benefited Iran, was supposed to hurt them, rode through Damascus and Hezbollah and Tehran, all run through Baghdad, and we're going to rule the region, ended up really blowing up in their face.
So then trying to make a long story short here, redirection, right?
2007, Hearst says, hey, they decided that we really screwed up by fighting a war for Iran.
So now we're going to switch back to the Sunnis.
And then I don't know if you exactly include the awakening in that, but you do include support for, you know, bin Laden type movements in Lebanon, in Syria, and as well as in eastern Iran with the jandala there.
And then I think even included Kurdish anti-Iranian Kurdish groups as well.
And so, you know, Obama seemed to be sticking with that.
If you go to his interview with Jeffrey Goldberg in 2012, where he says, that's right, Jeffrey Goldberg, getting rid of Assad would be a great way to bring Iran down a peg.
And that's what we're doing.
And I can't tell you too much about what we're doing because it's all classified.
One of those almost, I'd tell you, but I'd have to kill you kind of joking about it sort of.
Right.
And one of the great untold stories about the Obama administration's policy is how, for the first four years of the administration, they weren't about the diplomacy at all.
They were about pressure on Iran.
It was a combination of pressure.
I'm sorry, I take way too long, but I'm trying to get to the question, which is that, I mean, is this all just so ham-handed that, well, there's a fire here, try to put it out, and there's a nuclear program here.
And I really want to do that for politics.
Or is it possible that they decided to go back to something that they think is smart, like the offshore balancing?
Is that what this is?
Is the 20-teens version of, you know, let them all fight amongst each other, that kind of stuff?
I think that's far too sophisticated to be attributed to the Obama administration.
That's what Stephen Walt said, too.
Stephen Walt, the realist guy, is like, come on, for these guys to do anything on purpose is a level of sophistication I just can't believe in.
Totally agree.
I mean, you know, we have to stop talking in terms that attribute sort of smart, academic conceptions to this administration.
I mean, they're just in a totally different place.
They're in a place of constructing alternative realities, basically constructing facts that are convenient to their political interests.
That's really the way I would describe what has been going on in the Obama administration.
You know, I haven't taken a look at trolling through the Hillary Clinton emails, but I did read a thing where Nick Gillespie talked about just what an average person she seems like.
You know, like, here's this person with so much power, and she's just so average in her thinking.
She doesn't have anything like the context she would learn from talking with you all the time like I get.
You know what I mean?
And ain't that interested in the first place?
That's totally predictable, isn't it?
I mean, people who have the power do not have any incentive to acquire a frame of analytical reference that is going to be critical.
I mean, that just goes...
Why would they?
Yeah.
And remember that Washington Post story a couple of years ago where Susan Rice took some staffers on a Saturday and they sat around in a empty wing of the State Department offices and they got a big white piece of paper and they decided, let's write up a new foreign policy on this whiteboard here.
And what we'll do is we'll do this big pivot to Asia.
We'll just forget about the Middle East because that's pretty much all over with now.
And this is at a time where Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb is spreading down into Mali and the whole place is on fire.
You know, they're spreading jihad all over the damn place.
And right as she's thinking that this is a perfect time to go and contain China.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's a wonderful example of how things get constructed so conveniently for the political interests of the people in power.
I mean, you know, it has nothing whatever to do with reality on the ground.
All right.
But now back to the nuclear program.
I mean, isn't it the case, as we've been saying for years, that this is, as I've been putting it anyway, that this is the gigantic fake outstanding issue, the outstanding issue between us and Iran that makes a normal relationship impossible.
And now they put the damn thing to bed, Gareth.
So now, I mean, there's got to be some hope in that.
No.
Well, you know, again, it's all relative.
I mean, yes, it's better.
It's better that they've solved the problem.
It takes the it takes the immediate contradiction down several pegs.
No question about that.
But it does leave a residual effect on the political atmosphere in this country.
It enables the extreme right to continue to carry on their fabrications, their political lies about Iran.
It enables them essentially.
And it creates a false sort of discussion around the whole question of policy toward Iran, it creates this, this false dilemma, if you will, excluding, you know, a whole series of possibilities that the administration doesn't want to talk about, and including possibilities that the right wing extreme right wing wants to talk about.
So I mean, it's still problematic, is all I'm saying.
It's problematic politically.
There's still relying there, too, though, because that could help prevent America from working too closely with Iran in Iraq.
And I want to see absolutely none of that anymore.
I'm tired of America fighting for Iran in Iraq.
Well, I mean, I'm, I'm with you.
I mean, I'm ready to take the position.
It's time for the but what I'm saying is that that this is the moment, in my view, for the United States to get out of the Middle East, militarily lock, stock and barrel, there's no longer even the slightest hint of rationale for the United States remaining there to have the threat of military intervention, or the idea that the United States is in some fashion going to be making a difference in regard to terrorism in the Middle East, it's not going to happen.
And so certainly not a positive one.
Not a positive one.
Exactly.
We can have a negative one, but not a positive one.
Yeah, in fact, there's this brand new quote out from Special Forces General Flynn, I believe it is saying that exact same thing, that the Iraq war and the drone war, this whole project has made the terrorism problem worse, not better.
And this is one of the most right wing people who's been in the government recently.
In fact, he's still saying we ought to be doing more against ISIS and Iran, but he's willing to admit that much anyway.
Yes, yes.
Yeah, and don't you love that?
He still wants to fight both of them, the enemies, Iran and the Islamic State.
There's no consideration here to consistency, that's for sure.
Yeah.
All right.
Now, at least, do you think that it's pretty much a safe bet that the Republicans will not be able to have the votes to override the President's veto, at least for what it is?
Well, that's the reality at the moment.
I mean, you know, I wouldn't want to count on it.
This is not a predictable universe that we inhabit politically.
And, you know, I think it's still a serious problem that needs to be carefully considered.
And if there was anything that could be done to counter the machinations of the Israeli lobby in these states where they're going to target swing Democrats in the Senate, then that absolutely needs to be done.
That's for sure.
Yeah.
All right, everybody.
That is the heroic Gareth Porter.
He's the author of Manufactured Crisis, The Truth Behind the Iran Nuclear Scare.
And he writes for MiddleEastEye and for Truthout.org.
And in fact, let me tell you here, the latest two are How a Weaker Iran Got the Hedgeman to Lift Sanctions.
That's at MiddleEastEye and then at Truthout, How Three of the Iran Negotiations' Toughest Issues Were Resolved.
Thanks very much for your time again, Gareth.
Glad to be on again.
Thanks, Scott.
Hey, Al.
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