For Pacifica Radio, September 13th, 2020.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is Anti-War Radio.
All right y'all, it is Anti-War Radio.
I'm your host, Scott Horton.
I'm the editorial director of antiwar.com and author of the book Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan.
You can find my full interview archive, more than 5,000 of them now going back to 2003 at scotthorton.org and at youtube.com slash scott horton show.
All right, as promised, our guest again this week is the great Gareth Porter, author of Manufactured Crisis and with former CIA officer John Kiriakou, the CIA insider's guide to the Iran crisis about Trump's Iran policy.
Welcome back to the show, sir.
How are you doing?
I'm doing fine, Scott.
Thanks.
Great to have you back on the show.
And we need to follow up.
We started to cover sort of a summary of four years of Trump's foreign policy here on the show last week.
And of course, we ran out of time to cover all the wars.
But of course, the key to almost all of our Middle East policy, we talked about the genocide in Yemen, our occupations of Syria and Iraq.
And all this, of course, is tied up in Iran policy.
And what does it mean for American Middle Eastern hegemony that Persia remains independent from the American empire since 1979 and ruled by that mean old Ayatollah?
And it's clearly the key to Trump's entire Middle Eastern foreign policy and really Obama and Bush's before him, a senator around.
What do we do about the Iranians?
And so even though that's not exactly one of the wars, it's kind of the centerpiece of the whole policy.
It's why, at least in part, we still have war, Americans involved in war in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, especially.
Right.
Well, you know, the connection between Iran policy and the policies in all these other places in the Middle East where the United States has been fighting, I have to say it's pretty tenuous in terms of either logic or actual, you know, cause and effect relationships between the policies.
I mean, the fact is that, yes, they do cite Iranian presence in these places, obviously in in their propaganda, in the official statements by Pompeo in particular, of course, over the last few years in justifying U.S. policy toward Iran.
They always mention the fact that that Iran has a presence in Syria, has had a presence in Syria, has been obviously in Iraq.
They've had a relationship with the Houthis.
And that has been a key part of the rationale for the whole policy of punishing Iran and particularly the policy of trying to take away and succeeding in taking away their their oil exports and trying to essentially starve Iran of having enough foreign currency in order to support its economy.
But whether that's the reason for the United States to have a military presence in these places or to continue to have support, supported the Saudis in their war, the Saudis in the UAE and their bombing campaigns in Yemen is another question entirely.
I would really doubt very much that there's much of a relationship there.
And you're saying not just in reality, but even in the minds of the policymakers, they're just invoking Iran's friendship with the Houthis as an excuse to bomb the Houthis.
Well, if we're talking about Pompeo, yes, I would say that that's not a real reason.
That's a propaganda rationale instead of being the real reason that they want to to have the presence in those places and and also not the real reason why they're punishing Iran.
Okay, but so maybe I'm wrong about this.
But here's the way I've looked at all of this since, say, about 2007, when Seymour Hersh put out his piece, The Redirection in The New Yorker, as part of his series on Bush's Iran policy.
And essentially what the redirection says is that the Bush guys, led by Elliott Abrams and Zalmay Khalilzad and others, realized that, ah, geez, we just are in the middle, really, they weren't done yet.
We're in the middle of fighting Iraq War Two for Iran and their best friends.
And they are going to end up more powerful in Iraq, not us.
And now what are we going to do about it?
They had to apologize.
It's in the WikiLeaks.
They had to apologize to the Saudi king who complained that you've given Iraq to Iran on a golden platter.
Now what are you going to do?
And so the Bush has said, well, we're going to side.
We're going to get our act together and get back in line with the Saudi kings and the Sunni GCC axis of the Arabian Gulf.
And that means tilting back towards al-Qaeda, since they don't really have ground troops.
They just have al-Qaeda terrorist shock troops.
And so Bush started backing Fatah al-Islam in Lebanon and the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria and, you know, broke off into the awakening type policy in Iraq, backing Jandala in Iran.
And that then, in my view, it seems, Garrett, that that was the same policy that Obama really picked up and that that is the bottom line explanation for why Obama sided with al-Qaeda in Syria all those years.
It was because if we accidentally, under W. Bush, gave Baghdad to Iran, well now, at least as a consolation prize, we can try to take Damascus from them.
And that's what they were doing.
In fact, Jeffrey Goldberg and Obama talked about that.
This would be a great way to take Iran down a peg.
Don't you think, Obama?
Absolutely, he says.
That's why we're doing it.
And then the same thing in Sana'a, that if the Houthis rule Sana'a, well then, at least in public relations terms, that's an Iranian proxy group taking over Yemen.
And we can't allow that and the Saudis won't stand for it.
And so genocide and we go.
Well, I agree that there is an element in this policy, a very strong element in this policy, that has responded to the U.S. government, whether it's Obama or Trump, responding to the interests of allies.
One of the allies was the Saudis, of course, in the case of Yemen, we know that.
And Obama was very responsive to that.
He wanted to satisfy the Saudis that the United States was being very supportive of their interests.
And therefore, they immediately just waved them on when the Saudis came to them in 2014, the end of 2014, and said, we intend to, you know, invade Yemen.
And the Obama officials said, yeah, sure, we support you.
Go ahead.
And then, of course, we have Israel.
And that's the other part of this that I think is crucially important in explaining why the Trump administration, particularly, is so eager to persuade the Israelis and the rest of the world that they are, you know, basically going to continue to uphold this commitment in Iraq and in Syria to oppose the Iranian presence there, and to wipe it out, to help the Israelis, you know, completely eliminate it.
And that has been, as I say, a key part of the political calculus surrounding this.
And for Pompeo, of course, as well as for Trump, it's very political.
It involves their own personal political need to satisfy the pro-Israeli interest in this country, as well as the Israelis.
And so I do think that that's a very important part of the picture.
But I am distinguishing between that and a motivation that goes to American interests or a definition of American interests.
I think that those are two separate things.
And maybe that's why I'm, you know, I'm using a slightly different metric or a different definition to discuss it than you are.
I don't think we disagree on the substance of the history here.
But I do tend to make more fundamental distinction here between American interests and those interests that are really matters of allies' interest that the United States agrees for political reasons to support.
And I also think that in both the cases, well, in the cases of both Iraq and Syria, that the evolution of the policy over the last year, year and a half to two years has been one of the Israeli side of it becoming increasingly under pressure from the domestic political interest of Trump himself.
And there's why I think you see increasing tension here between Trump and Pompeo over policies that have to do with the Middle East.
I think that that's become an increasing factor.
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All right.
So let's say that Trump is reelected.
Obviously the maximum pressure campaign is completely, you know, horrible at carrying out and accomplishing its stated goal of bringing the Ayatollah to the table on our terms.
Although I don't think that's really the purpose of it, but that's what they said it was supposed to accomplish.
But since we know that it's never going to do that, would Trump be able to back down at all from Pompeo's giant heritage foundation speech with his list of his 12 or 15 demands or something?
Yes, I think the answer is that he can back down in terms of his own view of the necessity for reaching some kind of an agreement with Iran if he's reelected.
And at the same time, he can't do it immediately because, as I think we talked about in your previous show, you know, he has to avoid crossing the pro-Israeli people who are supporting him in the election campaign, or at least that's been the assumption up to now.
But I do think that he believes that if he gets reelected, he would indeed try to do something to reach agreement with Iran.
I don't think he knows how to do it, but I think he intends to get rid of Pompeo and to replace him with somebody who would help him do that.
Well, part of the calculus.
It sure would be nice to see.
Essentially, anybody would be better than Pompeo there because he is really the bad mix of bad on things and relatively competent at his job, you know, so it's a real problem.
Yeah, no, but we know that Pompeo has twice urged Trump over the past year to use force against Iran.
And in both cases, Trump declined ultimately.
And, you know, I think Trump has a very clear idea in his head that he can't afford to have in the longer run, again, assuming that he were elected, that's obviously a big if, that he can't afford to have an advisor who is pushing him towards war with Iran.
All right.
Well, we better change the subject because time is short.
Korea.
He had a great chance to make peace in Korea and everyone attacked him on the right and the left.
Pretty much the entire consensus was, oh, he just likes dictators or some stupid thing, but he never did get his deal.
What happened?
Well, I think that that was partly a matter of, again, his own inability to know how to do it.
That is to say, you know, not having sufficient expertise close to him that is motivated, an expert who is motivated to reach such an agreement because of the politics of his choices of advisors.
I think it is the opposite case that he's surrounded by neocon types who firmly believe that it's important for the United States to avoid agreement with North Korea and to, on the contrary, use our position of power in South Korea and beyond to continue to try to convince China that we mean business and therefore, these are people, both Democrats and Republican foreign policy national security elites agree effectively that the United States must avoid any agreement with North Korea because that would soften our signals to China and they're in favor of the opposite.
So I think that's really, it's a combination of his personal inability to know how to do it and being surrounded by advisors who are pushing him in the wrong direction.
Meanwhile, Dennis Rodman could make the deal.
Anybody could make the deal.
The deal is we sign a peace treaty.
We give you a security guarantee and a real one like the one that JFK promised not to invade Cuba that America has abided by for all that time since then, a real one.
We swear to God we will not invade you.
We want to be friends.
Let's just trade and talk and travel and get along as best we can and we'll worry about nukes later, but we don't worry about France or Great Britain or even China's nukes most of the time because we get along with them and they already have the nukes.
George Bush essentially pushed them into nuclear weapons possession deliberately with John Bolton's help and so it is what it is.
It's all we got to do is make peace.
Your lowly KPFK anti-war radio host could go and make the deal right now in a day and a half.
No problem.
Of course you could.
It's not rocket science.
It's a problem of the prevailing ideology of U.S. national security policy which is going back decades and decades of belief in the necessity for coercive diplomacy, not real diplomacy.
I mean this has been an article of faith for one generation after another of the major figures in U.S. national security policy and both Democratic and Republican, doesn't matter which party's in power.
The Obama administration believed in it just as strongly as the Trump administration has in its practice believed in that idea.
So basically I think it just requires breaking through that barrier which is no small matter.
It's not intellectual difficulty.
It's a political difficulty.
Right.
Well and speaking of which, Hillary and Obama, his secretary of state, and he's the president, put out this pivot to Asia.
Not that we're leaving the Middle East but we're just expanding in Asia, that's all.
And the idea is, and maybe it's true Gareth, I don't know, that the Chinese are taking all this money that they've made and they're going to build a giant navy and take over the world with it and starting with blocking the South China Sea from free travel and trade.
And so America must go and flex its muscles and make the Chinese back down over there.
And Donald Trump has apparently bought into this narrative completely right.
And what do you think?
I believe he has.
I think you're right.
And that is the real danger here that we face more than anything else.
You know, I do believe that Trump has bought into this whole ideology surrounding China.
And there's no doubt in my mind that the Democrats are clinging to this equally strongly and that if Biden's elected, we will see a policy that may not have precisely the same rhetorical flourishes that we get from the Trump administration.
And there'll be some other differences, I'm quite sure, but fundamentally it'll be the same thrust of preparing for war with China.
And there's no doubt that the real reason for that is that the Pentagon needs this as the rationale for continuing the merry-go-round of big bucks and authority for big weapons systems of the future, which are going to cost a lot of money.
And that can only be done successfully by essentially convincing the American people that we must prepare for war with China.
And the reality is that the Chinese have no intention, have never done anything to suggest in the least that they have a desire or would even think about trying to interfere with commerce in the South China Sea area.
On the contrary, they have the biggest interest of all in freedom of commerce through the South China Seas.
And the fact is that they are not trying to coerce the Southeast Asian countries that have claims in the South China Sea at all.
And on the contrary, they have been engaged for years now in efforts to reach, to negotiate agreements with the Southeast Asian claimants, territorial claimants, on ways of sharing the resources of that region, of the South China Sea region.
And so there is absolutely no objective basis for this policy whatsoever.
Like everything else that we've seen during the Cold War and since, US belligerency, preparing for wars and carrying out wars is a matter of the interests of the national security state itself, particularly the Pentagon and the armed services.
Yeah.
Even when they're accusing them, they say they have this new doctrine of anti-access area denial.
That sounds pretty defensive.
Yeah.
I don't know what the problem is.
Does the entire Pacific Ocean belong to the United States or only 98% of it?
You know, this is a huge controversy.
But now, true or false, Donald Trump is such an obsequious secret agent of Vladimir Putin that his Eastern European policy is one of abject surrender in the face of the juggernaut of Putinist Russian aggression.
Well, what can we say?
I mean, you know, this is, this is one of the most, no, not one of the most, this is the most extreme theme that has been put forward by a combination of national security officials, political elites, and media elites in the history of this country.
I mean, it's so far from reality, and so devious and so evil that I just, I have a hard time getting my mental arms around it completely.
And it really deserves all of the scrutiny that has been given to it by the critics, including myself, and more.
It deserves more than it has gotten.
There's still more to be written about it, believe me.
We need to delve more deeply into the whole FBI, Justice Department effort to brand Trump a security risk, a personal security risk, because of his contacts with, or contacts by people who were working on behalf of the Trump campaign with Russians, which, of course, is far worse than the McCarthyist phenomenon, in the sense that McCarthy at least was limiting his attack to being member, to be membership of people in the government, outside the government, in the Communist Party, whereas this is simply having contact with Russians.
Well, and at the time, there was such a thing as the Soviet Union, and it really did occupy all of Eastern Europe up until the Elbe River halfway across Germany, and was a lawless totalitarian police state in a way that makes the current Russian Federation look like paradise.
Well, I think that's right.
I agree with that.
There was some at least understandable basis, even though it was wrongheaded, for the degree of extremism surrounding the reaction to the Cold War.
I think today, there's no excuse for it, whatever.
It's just like when George Bush and his group said, there's the Islamo-fascist caliphate, and we're out there fighting it.
But where is it?
Right?
It's just like, where is the Russian Empire in Eastern Europe?
There is not a Russian Empire in Eastern Europe.
That's the end of the argument.
That's why you can't find it, because it's not true.
Yeah, and I'm sorry to say it.
I mean, it's a really sad thing to have to say.
But today, the United States is subject to a totalitarian propaganda campaign such as, really, it's at least as bad as anything in our history.
I think it's worse.
And it resembles far too much what one might find in the Stalinist regime in terms of control over opinion, or, you know, just completely blocking out any semblance of truth about issues which are of primary concern to the regime.
And I think that this is really the fundamental problem that we must address from now on.
And it has to really bother us very, very seriously.
Yeah.
All right.
Now, Gareth, one of the things that we talked about last week was pretty funny about Donald Trump being even more explicit than Ike Eisenhower about the military-industrial complex in previous comments.
I think this was when he was being challenged over Syria, when he backed down one of the times over Syria.
But now, right after we talked, of course, the at least alleged scandal broke out of Trump insulting the memory of dead soldiers and this kind of thing.
And so in defending himself, he did it again.
And he said, well, you know, the soldiers love me, but the generals, not so much, because they just want to sell big-ticket items and make money and all these things.
I don't have the exact quote, but...
And then, of course, there was a hilarious reaction to that by the political center, that how dare he ever besmirch the honor and integrity of anybody with a star on their shirt over at the Pentagon.
And I just wondered what you thought about all of that and maybe starting with how funny it all was to see.
Well, it is indeed a very amusing piece of drama in American politics as it relates to the complex, the national security state.
And for me in particular, it was even more amusing because what Trump actually said, which, you know, is basically true, is not something that he was really the first political figure in the United States to have said.
In fact, a certain individual, who for the moment I will allow to remain a mystery, said some decades ago that the chiefs of staff of the US military, quote, they run more of a procurement enterprise than an organization responsible for implementing strategy.
Now, that individual, to just not let the mystery go on too long, was Henry Kissinger.
It's in his memoirs.
And I think he knew what he was talking about clearly.
So this is a very sort of accurate statement about the joint chiefs.
But as you point out, not one that is politically acceptable in the United States, nor has it been really for a very long time.
It was hilarious to see General McCaffrey goes right on.
I forgot if it was CNN or MSNBC to say, how dare he say this?
Now, I'm sorry, I have to go because I'm late for my board meeting over at whichever all military industrial complex firms he represents.
I know he used to be primarily a Bradley fighting vehicle salesman more than any other thing.
Right, right.
But I think, you know, what is so interesting is that he was so accurate in his identification of the role that the joint chiefs actually play, despite the fact that the mythology surrounding that was very different.
Yeah, of course.
Well, and the other thing, of course, and this must not go unmentioned, is that this guy's the biggest hypocrite of all time.
I mean, he's the guy who doesn't just sign but brags and boasts that he has signed the biggest military budgets ever.
And he is a guy, they're talking about giving him the Nobel Peace Prize now for not starting any new wars.
He just kept eight going, including an outright genocide against the civilian population of Yemen, that you might say, you know, OK, but they attacked us.
But no, that was a QAP.
And we're fighting on their side in this one against the Houthis.
And the people we're fighting against never so much as threaten the United States once.
I think one thing you can say about this entire little fracas is that it would provide the best possible material for any talented and aware comedian who wants to do the kind of stuff that used to be done late night television.
Yeah.
You know, I was thinking I'm going to have to start doing stand up comedy, not because I'm funny, but just because that's the only way to get away with saying publicly what I want to do to these people.
Good point.
It does work that way.
A little bit of a license there.
Anyway, listen, thank you so much for coming back on the show, Garrett.
And I'm sorry to people interested in Latin American aspects of Trump's policy because he's had an absolutely horrible policy and what they call the troika of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.
And of course, they supported the absolutely horrendous coup down in Bolivia last fall.
And of course, we didn't have a chance to talk too much about his horrible Palestine policy.
That one will have to wait till another day to their crimes.
There are scarlet could have been much worse.
At least we're not at war in those countries, but they deserve a mention, too.
And that's about the sum of Trump's foreign policy thus far, which is good because we're all out of time.
But thank you very much for your time again on the show, Garrett.
Thanks, as always, Scott.
Glad to be on.
All right, you guys, that's the great Gareth Porter.
He wrote not just the book, but two books about America's Iran policy on the nuclear program and the overall policy, the Trump policy of maximum pressure.
And he writes for antiwar.com and for the Gray Zone Project and many other places.
And I'm Scott Horton.
This is Antiwar Radio.
Scott Horton dot org and YouTube dot com slash Scott Horton show.
Find all the archives there.
And I'm here every Sunday morning from eight thirty to nine on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A.
See you next week.
