07/07/08 – Carah Ong – The Scott Horton Show

All right, welcome back to Anti-War Radio, it's Chaos Menu 2.7 FM in Austin, Texas, streaming live at chaosradioaustin.org and antiwar.com slash radio.
Introducing our guest today, Kara Ong.
She is, let's see here, the Iran Policy Analyst at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation and her blog is irannuclearwatch.blogspot.com.
Welcome to the show, Kara.
Hi Scott, thanks for having me.
Oh, well, I'm really glad to have you here.
Very interesting blog you have here.
I've been reading it all morning and it looks like you're really up to date on all the late breaking news and analysis when it comes to America's so-called conflict with Iran.
Well, I guess it is a conflict, not a necessary one in my view.
Anyway, so I want to ask you first of all about your understanding of this new P5 plus 1, they call it the Security Council, UN Security Council plus Germany, I guess, the permanent members plus Germany, have offered a new deal by way of the European Union to the Iranians that if only they will quit expanding their uranium enrichment program that we can begin to have talks toward the having of talks.
Do you think that, well, did I even get that right and does it sound like that's going to move forward?
Yeah, you know, I actually like to call it the so-called new package of incentives because there isn't really too much different from this than previous iterations that have been offered to Iran by the P5 plus 1 and the P5 plus 1 is really the five permanent members of the Security Council, so Russia, China, France, Great Britain, and the United States plus Germany.
Germany is the plus one and the package was actually formally delivered by Javier Solana on June 14th and Javier Solana is the EU foreign policy advisor or foreign policy chief, so he actually went to Tehran and delivered the quote-unquote package of incentives.
It's essentially a letter saying what could be on the table in terms of, you know, starting negotiations with Iran.
This new letter, you know, is not all that much different, although, you know, it does appear to include something that has not been included before and it's not clear exactly what it is, but it may actually be that the U.S. would refrain from attacking Iran militarily or that members of the United Nations would refrain from attacking Iran militarily, so that appears to be one of the only significant change, although, you know, again, it's something that could be put on the table.
That is somewhat significant because security assurances is really one thing that Iran has sought for quite some time and has not received, so that could be significant, and what's even more interesting, though, about this whole process is that, you know, Iran in some ways tried to preempt this new letter by delivering its own letter to the Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, and trying to put a whole host of things on the table and, you know, so they've used that in some ways for their own media purposes, but also to say, you know, well, we also have a proposal on the table and we'd like to find some sort of agreement between the two.
I think something else that's somewhat interesting about all of this is that, in particular, the United States and President Bush, you know, basically out of hand that the Iranians were going to reject this offer and that doesn't seem to be a foregone conclusion at this point.
I mean, there seems to be some things happening behind the scenes or at least news coming out of Iran that Iran may be willing to freeze its enrichment activities for six weeks in order to jumpstart the negotiations, at least with the European Union countries as well as Russia and China, and the U.S., of course, would not join those negotiations until there was a full suspension because, of course, the United States has maintained preconditions on any sort of negotiation.
I mean, a lot of this is still up in the air, but we actually do seem to be in a time period where things are moving in a very positive direction.
Well, now, the war party is saying, in the London Telegraph, for example, that the Iranians have already rejected the offer.
Are you referring to the Con Coughlin piece?
Yes, I'm afraid so.
Con Coughlin, see, I knew exactly who you were talking about.
Con Coughlin is a huge propagandist, and he's actually repeatedly written articles that are factually incorrect.
I think there are other problems with that piece as well, that Iran's moving forward with its atomic bomb program, misquoting or misrepresenting International Atomic Energy Agency reports.
I view that article as complete propaganda, and he's known to be a very inaccurate reporter.
Oh, actually, you know what?
There's another one here.
It's actually the one I was thinking of, which is U.S. Pentagon Doubts Israeli Intelligence Over Iran's Nuclear Program, which is, that headline is very out of context compared to the rest of the article.
But anyway, it's by Tim Shipman.
OK.
And it says in here, the assessment emerged as Iran, in effect, thumbed its nose at proposals by the West to freeze its uranium enrichment program in exchange for easing sanctions, et cetera, which is actually mischaracterizing the proposal, too.
Yes, absolutely.
I saw that piece as well, and I think that one, that piece was today as well.
Yeah, I mean, again, you know, there are certainly those who, you know, are really pushing for a harder line stance against Iran and are really mischaracterizing, you know, what exactly is contained in the letter and also what Iran's response would be.
I mean, Iran, you know, has not really said one way or the other what's going to happen.
They are actually going to write a letter and have a formal response, and they have not yet done that.
OK, well, I'll definitely be keeping an eye on your blog in that news.
I did see in Gareth Porter's article where I believe he was the one who broke this story last Thursday, and his article ended with a quote from a representative of the Grand Ayatollah over there saying that, well, it looks like George Bush doesn't want this, so we're pretty sure we're going to take it.
Yeah, I mean, the Iranians like to dance the dance, if you will, and, you know, we would love to play devil's advocate whenever they can.
You know, again, it's really not clear exactly what's going to happen yet.
I don't want to say, you know, definitively one way or the other, but there are certainly reports coming from news agencies within Iran, from state-run newspapers and television programs, that by and large, you know, there is the sense that they, you know, should be willing to move forward with negotiation.
I have to tell you, I'm getting mixed signals here, because on one hand, we have the drum beat for war has been louder in the last couple of weeks than it has been in quite a long time, maybe since the early spring of 2007, and yet at the very same time, we see moves toward negotiation, and we also see people like the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff making it quite clear in public that he's opposed.
So I wonder what you think, in the larger sense, about the drum beat for war now and whether this is something that you think is actually a danger of something happening in the next few months or not.
Yeah, I would actually argue that really the drum beat has been increasing since October of last year.
I mean, there tend to be these ups and downs in the news cycle, but really, it's been a steady beat since October of last year when President Bush said that Iran, with the knowledge of nuclear weapons, could usher in World War III.
And Vice President Cheney made very similar remarks, you know, very threatening towards Iran at a conference of the Washington Institute of Near East Policy at an event that they had held, and that was also in October.
And then, you know, come November, we had a new updated U.S. national intelligence estimate on Iran released, which had very significant findings, including, I think, one of the more important ones, that Iran was making its decision on a cost-benefit analysis and, you know, that some combination of threats and, you know, and offers of incentives, if perceived as credible, you know, could convince Iran to forego a nuclear weapons program and to keep its covert nuclear program, which the intelligence estimate found was halted in 2003, to keep the program halted.
As soon as the key findings were released to the public, immediately we saw a campaign saying, you know, that obviously President Bush knew about these findings before they were released, otherwise he wouldn't have, you know, changed the goalpost in October where he said that it was the knowledge.
Right.
But, you know, really, since then, we've seen just a continual drumbeat.
Also, a move more towards not just the nuclear program, but also focusing on Iran's role in Iraq.
In April of this year, President Bush, on April 10th, saying that Iran and al-Qaida presented the greatest threat to American security in this new century, a tremendous focus has been placed on what Iran is doing inside of Iraq, you know, claims that they're supplying weapons and training to militias that are harming American troops.
And so, certainly, they've been making this case for quite some time, but also what we're seeing is U.S. officials flying to Israel, Israeli officials coming here.
Certainly, Israel trying to make the case that they have different intelligence than the U.S. has over Iran's nuclear program, trying to make the case that Iran is bound and determined to get a nuclear program and that they must stop it.
I think there really is a split in terms of who believes what and who believes, you know, is the best way to solving all of this.
And as you mentioned, I mean, Admiral Michael Mullen, Kevin Cosgrove, our Admiral in the Persian Gulf, as well as Secretary of Defense Robert Gates have been very clear that we need to pursue diplomacy, that the diplomatic option is the best course of action right now.
Certainly, the State Department, you know, believes in the diplomatic option, but there is also this sort of push and pull and struggle with the administration, you know, who still seem to be bent on attacking Iran militarily before they leave office.
And it's unclear if that's really going to happen.
I mean, the current rumor in D.C. is that, you know, that it will happen and that it's going to happen after the November election, so it won't harm any Republican chances at the office.
But, you know, it is deeply disturbing that this is even being contemplated.
And here's the thing about that.
I think, you know, maybe what you're getting at beyond, I don't know exactly what your view is of Iran having nuclear weapons or, you know, if they ever did, you know, whether you would think that was okay or not.
I personally don't care if they have them or not, but all indications are, as you said when you referred to the NIE of last November, that they are not even attempting to develop nuclear weapons right now.
And my understanding, and please correct me if I'm wrong, is that in order for them to even attempt to begin to enrich highly enriched uranium to weapons grade above 90 percent, they would have to withdraw from the Nonproliferation Treaty, kick out the IAEA, and announce that, ha, we fooled you.
We only went along with the safeguards agreement long enough to get our enrichment centrifuges up and going.
And now we're withdrawing, and now we're going to attempt to begin to enrich enough, any weapons grade uranium so that we can make a bomb out of it.
And then even at that point, we would have a couple of years to bomb them before they were ready, right?
Yeah.
I mean, it's going to be very, very difficult, you know, without, you know, short of Iran purchasing, you know, some sort of already fabricated and assembled, or assembled, you know, nuclear weapon on a black market.
You know, it's going to take, even by our own intelligence estimate, it's going to take up to a decade before Iran really has the capability to produce enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon.
And this has been, you know, sort of the consistent estimates on this for actually a number of years.
I mean, so this isn't something that's new.
And, you know, I mean, my opinion is, is that Iran, like, you know, would like to be like a Japan.
You know, it would like to have all of the material, it would like to have all of the technology and know-how, but it isn't necessarily bent on acquiring nuclear weapons.
I mean, there are certainly hardliners in Iran who would like to see a nuclear weapons program.
They think it's essential for their national security needs.
You know, they do feel threatened, and they, you know, they do want to increase their power in the region, but that does not, in my opinion, represent the majority of even those who are in power in Iran, and certainly not the majority of the people of Iran.
I mean, when we talk about the people of Iran, you know, if you walk on the streets in Iran, most people can tell you about centrifuges, can tell you about enrichment, and can tell you that they have a right to enrichment under the Nonproliferation Treaty, which is very interesting because, you know, it's not really an issue where you walk around the streets of other countries, you know, most people wouldn't even know what a centrifuge is.
So it's very interesting, you know, how this issue has become such a central role, but by and large, the issue of nuclear enrichment, the issue of nuclear power has become an issue of prestige inside of Iran.
And, you know, again, I just don't think that they are driven towards nuclear weapons, and that's certainly the conclusions of the 16th Bi-Agencies in the National Intelligence Estimate.
Right.
Now, the IAEA, which is on site, they can continue to prove the negative.
Nothing has been diverted to a secret nuclear weapons program or military purpose or any other thing.
And yet, in the same article in the Telegraph that we were talking about, the spin here is that the Pentagon doubts that the Israelis have found all the secret nuclear facilities that must be there.
And so maybe that's a reason to not start bombing them, is because wherever their secret weapons program is, we don't know where it is.
You know, that has been, you know, one of the talking points of those actually in favor of military attacks.
I mean, this is, this article does prevent, you know, present very conflicting arguments in many respects.
But, you know, one of the arguments for those in favor of military attacks has been, you know, that we don't know exactly where all of Iran's nuclear facilities are, that we only know what's been declared to the IAEA.
And it's likely that they have some sort of secret facility, and they're much further along than we actually think.
And, you know, there is, of course, the possibility that that is true.
So the best way, and this is actually, you know, something that the International Atomic Energy Agency Director General has called for, is for Iran to reimplement the additional protocol to allow more intrusive inspections.
And that would certainly be a confidence building measure that Iran could do, you know, to, you know, give some trust back, because there are concerns that Iran was pursuing a covert nuclear weapons program prior to 2003.
So, you know, Iran does need to restore some confidence.
And that's part of the reason why Western countries are calling on Iran to suspend enrichment.
So, you know, it does go both ways.
And Iran certainly does need to restore some confidence into the Western powers.
But threatening Iran militarily is not going to accomplish anything.
And in fact, it only, you know, bolsters the position of hardliners in Iran who would seek a nuclear weapons program.
You know, I'm curious about the whole thing about they had a weapons program up until 2003.
In a sense, I sort of thought that that was propaganda in itself inside the NIE, that maybe the anti-war factions were sort of conceding something that maybe was halfway true or something to the others.
You know, how juries often compromise.
They'll find the guy guilty of, you know, a lesser charge or whatever, rather than fight about it.
I mean, I actually saw that in very similar terms, you know, as possibly a face-saving gesture, you know, to say, well, we've been right so far and they did have a nuclear weapons program, but they stopped it and this is why it worked.
And so this is what we should be doing.
You know, I did actually kind of take that because there is not, you know, consensus in the international community that Iran had a nuclear weapons program.
Now, if you look at the more recent International Atomic Energy Agency reports on Iran from the director general to the board of governors, I mean, you'll find that what has become sort of a central issue, once again, is the so-called laptop, which found studies for weaponization and other various things related to the development of a nuclear weapon.
You know, Iran, you know, dismisses this information out of hand.
You know, they say that, you know, this is just propaganda, that the evidence was fabricated.
You know, so the IAEA is trying to get more clear answers, you know, from Iran exactly about, you know, what role this laptop has played and, you know, what, if any of this is true.
So, you know, if Iran is more forthcoming and helping with answers to that question, you know, that would be another, you know, confidence-building measure on the part of Iran to really help resolve this issue about whether or not Iran actually did have a covert nuclear weapons program.
Well, now, a couple of things there.
I believe Dr. Prather pointed out.
He's our nuclear physicist at antiwar.com.
We keep him around because he used to make nuclear bombs.
And so he knows about this stuff.
And I believe he pointed out that in the most recent IAEA report, they said, yeah, you know, it's kind of confounding that the Iranians have not answered every question about this stuff.
On the other hand, we have not been able to produce the documents for them to even refute.
They have not seen the evidence against them in order to dispute it.
They've just been told that there is such evidence and dispute that.
Don't they say that in the most recent IAEA report?
Well, no.
I mean, Iran was actually presented just before the March IAEA report was delivered.
Iran was presented, you know, with the evidence.
In fact, part of the issue was that, you know, the U.S. and Israel had this evidence and had not handed it over to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
And they did so in March, I believe it was, or the end of February, you know, as the IAEA was wrapping up the questions and answers with Iran from the August 2007 modality to answer some outstanding questions.
So all of a sudden, you know, the U.S. turns over this intelligence to the IAEA.
And really, I mean, the only reason why they would do that would be to block any sort of progress and to raise new issues.
And certainly that was part of, you know, an effort to bring more sanctions to bear against Iran for its nuclear program, because in the middle of March, a new Security Council resolution was passed imposing more sanctions.
Right.
And so in a sense, too, it sort of shows, or at least, you know, if I was running the Iranian government, I would have taken the lesson from that, that it doesn't matter how many questions we answer.
They're just going to keep making up new questions no matter what.
Well, I mean, certainly there were political motivations behind that.
And this has sort of been an ongoing issue about this laptop for a number of years.
And, you know, it would be very helpful.
I mean, you know, Iran's response, again, to that was that, you know, that it was all fabricated data, that it was, you know, they just dismissed it out of hand.
So, you know, it would be helpful, though, for their own case, if Iran would actually respond to those.
But I mean, one thing that Director General Abadi did say was that he wished that Iran would have been more proactive in terms of answering the questions agreed to in the modality.
I mean, this was an issue that was raised because the IAEA had to keep going back to Iran.
Iranians weren't forthcoming.
And certainly there's a reason for them to do so, because clearly there are political motivations against Iran.
But even the director general has said that it would be more useful if Iran was more proactive rather than reactive to questions.
And, you know, it's basically, you know, if the inspectors didn't ask just the right question, they wouldn't get the right answer.
And that makes conditions and the IAEA's work to really verify compliance much more difficult.
Now, as far as the nuclear weapons program, such as it ever existed before 2003 or up to and including 2003, is all this information just from that laptop or is there something else I'm missing here?
I mean, I know that they got they went to the black market in order to get some of the equipment that they needed in order to have a nuclear program.
But none of that was really in violation of their safeguards agreement or their signature to the nonproliferation treaty.
And so technically it would be because they're obtaining that from from other countries who already had sanctions against them or, you know, we're sort of I mean, getting something clandestinely off of a black market is not exactly on the up and up.
I mean, this is the very same stuff that they're spinning under the presence of IAEA inspectors at Natanz and working at Boucher and all this stuff.
Right.
I mean, this is the very same stuff that they're using now above board now.
But they the inspectors were after the fact, though, and IAEA presence was after the fact.
It wasn't that they said we'd like to do this.
You know, it went through normal venues, you know, went and purchased materials, you know, off the global market, purchased technology off the global market, which, of course, they weren't allowed to do.
I mean, Clinton wouldn't let the Chinese or the Russians.
That's what the problem is.
That's why there's so much mistrust is that they didn't go about it that way.
It was discovered after the fact.
And then all of a sudden, the IAEA inspectors were invited in.
I see.
Well, so is there anything else, though, that would indicate that it's actually that they ever had a weapons program besides that laptop?
I mean, unless new evidence is uncovered or, you know, I mean, a lot of I think, you know, what's helpful is most what's most helpful beyond the laptop is actually the answers and the documents produced by Iran for the International Atomic Energy Agency under that August 2007 modality, you know, because that really revealed, I think, in a lot of ways, a little bit about how the black market works, about who's operating, you know, and that could be helpful, you know, for counterproliferation beyond just Iran, but into other countries, too, if there's more access to those individuals who are operating in the black market.
And, you know, I mean, I think that actually provided a number of leads.
But really, other than that laptop, I have not seen other substantial evidence.
Now, there may be some that hasn't been presented.
That essentially is the core of the case against Iran.
OK.
Now, I don't know whether you have a comment on this or not, but I feel I have to go ahead and bring this up as long as we're talking about this laptop that it came from the National Council for Resistance in Iran, which is the political front for the Mujahideen Al-Khalq, and which is widely known to be also a front for Israeli intelligence.
I don't know of any reason to believe this laptop even came from inside the borders of Persia at all.
Do you?
Yeah, I don't know.
It's a hard question.
And, you know, I think the source is of serious consideration.
I mean, as you mentioned, I mean, the Mujahideen is actually on the state sponsor of terrorism list.
You know, when they came out in 2002 with allegations about Iran's nuclear program, it ended up being true because Iran did have a secret nuclear program at that time.
So at least in part, their allegations were true.
You know, whether or not the laptop is fabricated is, again, it's anyone's guess.
And so that's why it would be extremely helpful if Iran were to be proactive and provide a lot more intelligence about what is, you know, the evidence being presented from that laptop.
Yeah.
I mean, I agree with you, but I hate to think that the burden of proof is really on them when the IAEA, you know, and the CIA and everybody says that they have no evidence of any weapons program.
It sort of seems like the burden needs to shift here to our side.
Yeah, I mean, I understand what you're saying, though, it would be helpful that we're at a standoff.
And I think that unfortunately, the nuclear program has really become one of the issues front and center for really what is a broader range of issues dating back to really the 1950s between the U.S. and Iran.
I think that the nuclear issue is being, you know, really promulgated as sort of the core of tensions when it isn't.
You know, it is one thing that the U.S. and the West is using politically against Iran.
But I think it, you know, is much more about the strained relations between the United States and Iran that dates back more than a half a century.
Right.
Yeah, I think that's probably true.
I know that's what Scott Ritter says in his book, Target Iran, that regime change is the policy and disarmament is simply the excuse.
In fact, this was something that Robert Dreyfuss brought up Friday in his argument that now we're not going to have a war was that, come on, the Israelis are smart.
They know just as well as you know that the Iranians are enriching and enriching to 3.6 percent in the presence of IAEA safeguard inspectors and so forth.
They know that they're not really going to have a war over a 3.6 percent U-235 enrichment program.
Well, I don't put it past them, because if you look at what happened in Syria, I mean, I don't put it past them.
I'm sorry.
Like, you know, again, I don't know what the chances are that there is actually going to be a military attack, whether it's the U.S. or Israel before, you know, the end of this year or in the next 12 months or whatever.
But what I can say is that of any country in the Middle East, you know, Israel has proactively attacked nuclear reactors that were used specifically for power, but also even, you know, in unknown cases, such as most recently this Syria in the case of the Al-Khabar facility and whether or not, you know, that actually was a reactor, I think, is still of some debate.
But more than any other country, Israel has used preventive military strikes and made the case that, you know, that those countries were going to, you know, use those facilities to create nuclear weapons to threaten Israel.
So you look at the Osirak reactor that Israel bombed in Iraq, for example, you know, as another example of that.
Right.
In fact, it's kind of a funny footnote that Iraq didn't have a nuclear weapons program at all before that, and it was IAEA safeguarded, inspected, and everything like that until they bombed it.
Then they began their underground nuclear weapons program that was discovered during the Gulf War or at the end of the Gulf War.
Absolutely.
And certainly before the bombing, you know, that reactor was not being used to create nuclear weapons or massive amounts of highly enriched uranium.
Well, that was a long time ago.
Who can remember all those details?
I'm sure it was probably justified when they did it.
Come on.
All right.
No.
So now I want to point out one thing I really like about your blog here.
It's IranNuclearWatch.blogspot.com.
And up at the top, you have a picture of a big Iranian and a big American standing with their arms folded and their backs to each other.
And yet at their feet, I take it, those guys are the state and at their feet are us regular people.
And they're all standing around shaking hands and being friends.
And so I wanted to ask you about this outreach that you're doing between civilians.
I know that you have something to do with that red phone thing that they did, right?
Where American and Iranian civilians got to talk to each other over the red phones.
Yes, absolutely.
We co-organized that with Nick Jalen, who's with the Enough Fear campaign.
And he was really sort of the genius behind, you know, doing these red phones.
And we've been talking about it for, you know, almost a couple of years, actually.
And he did, you know, he did them on a smaller scale in New York and Boston.
And then, you know, I asked him about coming to D.C. and, you know, doing this with the Campaign for a New American Policy on Iran.
And so we set up these phones for members of Congress, Hill staffers, foreign policy community, anyone just even walking along the streets along the Capitol.
And we had, you know, over 50 conversations between American citizens and Iranians in D.C.
And the whole point of it was, you know, to really have an exercise in civilian diplomacy.
And the reality is that the United States and Iran haven't talked for more than 30 years, has really complicated matters and only made things worse.
And we really need to start talking to each other.
And if we normal citizens can do it, certainly, you know, our government should be doing it.
Well, now, there was some news, wasn't there, recently, that the State Department is going to try to open some kind of office or another in Tehran.
And yet, you wrote on your blog that this actually foretold bad circumstances rather than an increasing of regular civilian relations.
How's that?
Yeah, you know, I titled that a diplomatic overture, question mark.
And I really thought about it later.
I said, really, I should have called that a diplomatic underture.
You know, I mean, immediately after this was announced or leaked to the media, because it wasn't really announced, but it was leaked to the media.
And, you know, one State Department official said, you know, oh, this is meant to undermine the regime in Iran.
And we're going to use it to reach out to dissidents and students and others inside of Iran.
And I have to chuckle at that, because, you know, I mean, you certainly would not make some sort of announcement to the media that that's what the intention of this is, because the Iranians have to approve it anyway.
You know, so it really undermines the effort from the get-go.
But also, you know, there are logistic things, you know, in regards to actually setting up a visa office.
And this was, you know, the office would likely be set up at the Swiss embassy and would have, you know, probably three of our foreign service officers there.
And they would be processing visas.
You know, they're certainly not going to have time, you know, with all of the administrative things that they're going to have to do, they're not going to have time to go out and be reaching out to dissidents.
So, I mean, the logistics of it is also laughable.
But, you know, they undermine themselves from the get-go on this.
And it's really disappointing, because this really could have been something credible and a wonderful opening, you know, particularly as a gesture to the people of Iran who would use that, you know, use the intersection to file for visas to come to the United States.
And it really would enhance our cultural exchanges.
Now, the Iranians haven't dismissed it out of hand, and really no official proposal has yet been delivered to Iran.
It was just leaked that this is what the State Department was considering.
You know, but the Iranians, you know, could actually still accept it.
And, you know, there is somewhat of a silver lining if they do accept it, because, you know, it could actually be used to enhance cultural ties under different circumstances or a different administration.
Yeah, well, you know, the symphony went to North Korea.
And I happen to remember when Madeleine Albright went to North Korea and saw their symphony and big parade thing.
And that's the kind of thing that can really help to humanize those who happen to live within other shapes on the map, which a lot of times don't seem to really be humans at all, depending on who you are and where you are.
But, you know, the cultural exchange thing, I think, really helps bring across the notion that, like, hey, these people look just like a guy I knew in high school.
And they really are people just like us.
And that Iran just means the Iranian government.
You know, there's still a bunch of people who live there, millions of them.
But so I'm curious about the democracy promotion idea.
They have, I guess, some sort of semblance of democracy there, although we all know that the Ayatollahs really rule the place when it comes down to it.
But what about the idea of the American, oh, I don't know, say, for example, Central Intelligence Agency financing and promoting the interests of dissidents inside Iran?
Is that going to help bring our countries closer together?
Oh, clearly not.
I mean, we, you know, we we've actually known for quite some time that there were special operations inside of Iran, that there were, you know, there there have been a couple of reports, you know, over the last couple of years about, you know, the funding of dissidents and cross-border raids, you know, in different in various sections, you know, on the in Balochistan and up near the Turkish border, the Iraq-Turkish-Iranian border.
But Seymour Hersh had, you know, released his article last week, you know, talking about that, that really this is much more extensive than I think we really knew.
And certainly most of this is still classified.
But I think what's most disturbing about it, you know, he says up to about 400 million has been authorized for covert operations.
And the most disturbing aspect to me is that we had members of Congress, both Republican and Democrat, the leadership who authorized this presidential finding and essentially authorized not only that, but it really grazed the line between military and intelligence operations, which are already pretty fuzzy.
But, you know, the fact that Congress is really just abdicating their congressional oversight authority that, you know, granted to them by the Constitution is very deeply disturbing to me as an American citizen, as a taxpayer and as someone who is, you know, deeply concerned about the prospects of military confrontation with Iran.
All right.
Now, to wrap up the show here, I'll bring up Bob Dreyfuss again from last week.
When I asked him whether he thought there was going to be a war with Iran, one of the things that I brought up were the congressional resolutions that are going through the House and the Senate.
Sorry for the mixed tense there in my language.
But anyway, these congressional resolutions, which basically demand a blockade on all refined petroleum imports to Iran and that kind of thing.
And Dreyfuss's response to that was, yeah, right.
But who cares what Congress says?
Certainly George Bush doesn't.
And so it doesn't really matter what they say.
That's not really going to have an effect on the policy.
The policy is going to be what Bush wants, not what Congress demands.
What do you think of that?
Well, I love Bob and Bob is a very good friend of mine.
In fact, Bob and I went to Iran together on a delegation.
And Bob and I are having lunch on Wednesday.
Oh, good.
So you guys can fight all about this.
I deeply respect him and his work.
My problem with this resolution, though, is that it is very broad.
And the language is deliberately ambiguous.
I don't believe that this is an unequivocal demand for a blockade.
I think the language, depending on how it's interpreted and implemented, could be construed as a blockade.
And of course, without United Nations Security Council resolution, it could be an act of war.
But again, it all depends on implementation, interpretation.
And certainly the United States isn't going to be able to get the rest of the international community to go along with something like this.
But I have a problem with it because, more broadly, because this is just more saber rattling, it's more, and I also should mention that the administration has actually backed away from it.
The administration, the spokesperson for the administration said that what the resolution is demanding is unrealistic.
So my problem with it is actually much more broad, that basically Congress is willing to send this message that they're prepared to take a more belligerent attitude and possibly more belligerent actions towards Iran.
And just as we are having these multilateral talks with Iran over the nuclear program, just as there might be the possibility for progress in that, Congress is now trying to send a very negative signal, which would be extremely counterproductive for what's going on there, because the blockade would harm, could harm our allies, because we'd be stopping ally ships going in and out of the region, or in and out of the country as well.
Because there are European ally countries, Japan, China, Russia, and other countries who do business with Iran and do ship stuff in and out of Iran.
So this is something that would harm them too.
So it's just not the message we should be sending.
And I don't know what Congress is really thinking.
I mean, it doesn't make sense.
We don't need more saber rattling.
We don't need a more all sticks, no carrots approach.
What we really need is for Congress to be pressing for diplomacy without preconditions.
And this resolution does nothing to further our diplomatic effort.
All right, everybody.
Kara Ong is the Iran Policy Analyst at the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation.
And her blog is irannuclearwatch.blogspot.com.
She is the co-editor of two books, Imagine a Line in the Sky, International Perspectives on Ballistic Missile Defense, and Hold Hope, Wage Peace.
Thank you very much for your time today.
Thank you so much for having me, Scott.