All right y'all, welcome back to the show, it's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton and our first guest on the show today is Flint Leverett.
He is the Director of the Iran Initiative and Senior Research Fellow at the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation.
That's newamerica.net.
He and his wife Hillary Mann Leverett keep the blog raceforiran.com, which I highly suggest you keep at the top of your bookmarks.
They both have a new piece at cnn.com called Iranian Plots and American Hubris, which you can also find at raceforiran.com.
And briefly, let me tell you that Flint served in the government from 1992 to 2003.
He was Senior Director for Middle East Affairs at the National Security Council, Middle East expert on the Secretary of State's policy planning staff, and Senior Analyst at the CIA.
He left the Bush administration and government service in the spring of 2003 because of disagreements about Middle Eastern policy and the conduct of the war on terror more generally, etc.
Like that, again, you can find him at newamerica.net and raceforiran.com.
Welcome to the show, Flint.
How are you doing?
Thanks very much for having me.
I'm very happy to have you here.
Now, we're going to have Ray McGovern on here later to see if we can tie up some of these threads and make sense out of the actual accusations of this terror plot by some faction or another inside Iran.
I think for purposes of our discussion, at least at first here, suffice it to say, you're not alone.
All over, at least in print, a little bit on TV, but certainly many major newspapers have published many major statements by many major Iran experts who say that they are not buying this, at least as presented by Eric Holder, at least until we have a lot more information about it.
But that being said, I really wanted to get to the heart of the matter here in your article.
And this, I saw your wife on CNN International the other day, two days ago, talking about this as well.
And that is Iran's true national security strategy.
What is Iran up to?
What is the chess game that they're playing in the Middle East?
And then why that makes this plot seem even more implausible?
Yeah, I think that there are a lot of reasons to question the plausibility of what the Obama administration has alleged about Iranian government involvement in this so-called plot.
A lot of reasons for skepticism.
But one that we're stressing is it really doesn't, not only doesn't fit in Iran's national security strategy, it would actually work at cross-purposes to that strategy.
What do I mean by that?
Well, I mean, I think if you, Iran's national security strategy is not very, very well understood in the United States.
I mean, very few Americans spend the kind of time talking to Iranian officials, others that you would really need to, to start to understand it in an accurate and granular way.
I think that the best way to explain it is it consists really of three elements.
One is Iran does seek alliances, relationships with proxy actors in important regional states.
These are groups that are important political and social movements in their respective arenas.
In a number of cases, they have paramilitary capabilities associated with them.
Hezbollah in Lebanon is a good example of that.
But Iran has worked very hard over years to cultivate a wide range of proxy relationships.
You know, Shia political parties and militias in Iraq, who are now the major political forces in Iraq.
They have allies in Afghanistan.
They have Hezbollah in Lebanon.
They have Hamas and other groups in the Palestinian arena.
And these help them basically to keep various sorts of regional states from being used as platforms against them.
They don't have a lot of conventional military power.
The idea that Iran is going to conquer anyone or invade anyone using conventional military force is just, it's just crazy.
They do not have that kind of power projection capability.
So they rely on these proxy relationships to a great extent.
Second point is asymmetric military capabilities, ballistic missiles, the kinds of capabilities that would let Iran put shipping in the Persian Gulf at risk.
They develop these capabilities so that if, you know, they were attacked, if there were serious aggression against them, people would have to think that Iran would be able to do things in response that would impose real costs on those who committed the aggression.
I actually don't think they are using weapons of mass destruction for this purpose.
Keep in mind, this is a country that for eight years in the 1980s was attacked by Saddam Hussein, an aggressive war.
Saddam used chemical weapons repeatedly against both civilian and military targets.
In Iran, and Iran consistently through this period, even though it had chemical agents and the capacity to manufacture more, it refused on orders from Ayatollah Khomeini, it refused to go ahead and do that so that it would be able to respond in kind.
I don't think Iran is using WMD for this purpose, but it is developing various types of asymmetric military capabilities.
The third point is that they do what we call a soft power offensive.
They think they can actually do a better job of winning hearts and minds across the Middle East than the United States and its allies can.
That with their message of independence, with their message of independence from outside powers of resistance to what they portray as American and Israeli hegemonic ambitions in the Middle East, they think that's going to appeal to more people than the countervailing American message.
In that context, to do something like assassinate a Saudi ambassador, it would actually work at cross purposes with this strategy.
They think this strategy in the short run by cultivating public opinion, it constrains Arab states that might otherwise be inclined to work with the United States to take coercive action against them.
And over the longer run, it can actually undermine these regimes.
You know, people speculate here about how the Islamic Republic must be all stressed out about the Arab Spring.
I can tell you it's quite the opposite.
They are delighted by the Arab Spring.
They think they are winning from the Arab Spring.
If more states in the region become even somewhat more reflective of their populations, Iranians calculate those states who are bound to become less interested in strategic cooperation with the United States, with Israel, more open to their message.
And having more states like Egypt, post-Mubarak, pursuing a more independent foreign policy in the region, that is an enormous strategic gain for Iran.
And they are not going to put that strategy at risk by doing something stupid like trying to kill the Saudi ambassador here in Washington.
All right.
Now, there's a lot to go over there.
But I guess to do the argument ad absurdum, one only need refer to Rick Santorum, who declared yesterday that, in referring to Iran's mythical nuclear weapons program, that they must not be allowed to have nuclear weapons because then no one will be able to attack them.
They would have the ability to deter offensive force.
And we can't have that.
And it sounds like, and I'm clearly oversimplifying from what you just went over here, Flint, but it sounds like really what you're saying is that their national security strategy is to be able to, at all costs, remain independent from America.
That's about it.
They're not an expansionist power, as you say.
And that's why we don't like it.
They are not an expansionist power.
They are absolutely determined to remain independent.
And that's why so many people here don't like them.
As I said, they don't have conventional military power to project beyond their borders.
Senator Santorum's remarks, I mean, I don't believe the Islamic Republic is trying to fabricate nuclear weapons.
There's no evidence that they're trying to fabricate nuclear weapons.
Well, the current National Intelligence Council is unanimous about that as well.
Now, I'm sorry, we'll have to hold it right there, Flint, and go out to this break.
But when we get back, we'll have more with Flint Leverett from the New America Foundation and RaceForIran.com.
The new one at CNN.com is Iranian plots and American hubris.
All right, everybody, welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Flint Leverett from the New America Foundation and RaceForIran.com.
And we're talking about the Leverett family/National Intelligence Council, Seymour Hersh consensus that the Iranians just are not pursuing nuclear weapons.
Is that right, Flint?
Yeah, I think that's right.
I think they are doing things which you could say would give them a nuclear weapons option.
You know, they're mastering some of the things that they would need to know how to do if they were to decide at some point in future to make nuclear weapons.
And some people get very, very spooked by that.
But there's no evidence that at this point, they're trying to develop nuclear weapons.
And they say in all kinds of authoritative ways, including religious ways that I think have real significance in a political order that legitimates itself on the basis of Islam, that this would be an immoral, delegitimating course for them to take.
But I wanted to pick up on the Santorum quote.
I mean, apart from disagreeing with Senator Santorum that I think that they're trying to build nuclear weapons.
I mean, he does, you know, he really reveals something there that I think is important in that we don't want Iran to have the capability to preserve its independence.
So that we even get upset when, say, they are contemplating and have signed a contract to buy anti-aircraft radars and missiles from Russia.
We put all kinds of pressures on Russia.
Israel puts all kinds of pressures on Russia to back out of the contract.
Now, anti-aircraft missiles can't be used for anything other than defense.
The kinds of radars that Iran is inched in mind can't be used for anything other than defense.
But, you know, it's part of our national security strategy that Iran is supposed to be open to attack at our whim.
And if Iran takes steps to make itself less vulnerable to attack, that is considered a provocative act.
Right, a threat.
Yes, it's a threat.
Yeah, all right.
Now, and the reason I brought up Seymour Hersh there, I just mentioned his name, but he wrote a very important piece this year called Iran and the Bomb, where he has quite detailed descriptions of the CIA and the military's undercover operations inside Iran.
Not so much assassinating scientists, but their attempts to, you know, gather intelligence about their nuclear program.
They really have come up with nothing to this day.
Yeah.
I just think that's really worth emphasizing.
You can even find the PDF online of the whole article, if you look, people.
That's right.
And it is worth looking at.
All right.
Now, I wanted to ask you about the plausibility that, well, you know, they're a loose faction of the Quds Force is responsible for this.
Does that sound like the kind of thing that's plausible to you?
Look, I suppose anything is possible.
You know, I'm obviously not a musician to say categorically that didn't happen.
But, you know, I think that the main point to stress here is that there is no evidence this was a decision taken by the Iranian government.
There was no, you know, sit down at the major power centers at which they vetted this idea and said, yeah, we think this is a good idea and we give our authorization for this.
There's absolutely no evidence for that.
And, you know, as you've said, a lot of people, not just us, coming out and saying it makes utterly no sense and, in fact, flies in the face of what we know about the way Iran goes about trying to provide security for itself.
Even people who've had experience on the operational side in the CIA have come out and said this is just utterly contrary to the way that they have personally observed the Quds Force as part of the Revolutionary Guard that handles overseas operations.
It's just it's contrary to everything that these American intelligence operatives have observed over years about the way the Quds Force does business.
Well, at least on the surface, it seemed like really bad timing to have this story break right in the midst of the Iranian government making all these new overtures about negotiating on nuclear fuel swaps so that they are no longer enriching up to 20% for the fuel for their targets for their medical isotope reactor there.
And now all of that seems dead in the wind, but I wonder whether you think those were real credible overtures in the first place there.
Yes, I think they were utterly credible.
They're fully in keeping with what Iran's position has been on the Tehran Research Reactor from the get-go.
Keep in mind, this reactor was actually provided by the United States to the Shah.
In the 1960s, when it was provided to the Shah, it operated on uranium that was enriched to 90%, which is very, very close to the level that you need to have weapons-grade fissile material.
After the revolution, as part of the Islamic Republic's effort to dismantle the purely weapons-related parts of the Shah's nuclear program, which we helped the Shah do, the Islamic Republic reconfigured the reactor in the 1980s to operate on fuel enriched to just below 20%, which really reduces the proliferation risks of operating that reactor.
And so what has happened now is that 25 years after they did that reconfiguration, they need to refuel it.
They need to get more of this fuel with uranium that's enriched to the nearly 20% level.
And their initial proposal two years ago was to the IAEA, help us go out on the market and buy this under your supervision, under your monitoring.
The fuel will be monitored.
The disposition of it will be monitored.
When it's done, it will be removed and taken out of Iran.
That's what the Iranians originally proposed.
And instead, it's the United States that comes back with this kind of Rube Goldberg plan of, oh, well, you have to give us all of your low enriched uranium.
And then at some point down the road in the future, if we're well disposed towards you, we will maybe see about getting you new fuel for the TRR.
And the Iranian response to that was, we need to negotiate some details here.
And the American position, the Obama administration's position was, no, this is a take or leave it proposition.
And if you don't take it by December 31st, 2009, we're going to start working on sanctions, on more sanctions on you if you win.
So even after that, the Iranians kept trying to work with Brazil and Turkey to find some way to do this kind of swap, where they would not have to be enriching the 20%.
They could just buy fuel and they would be prepared, say, to let a big part of their LEU, the low enriched uranium, go to Turkey in escrow.
So that if in the end, the West didn't come through with the fuel that it had promised, and the Iranians have had some experience with that in the past, you know, the Turks would give back the low enriched uranium.
And in fact, President Obama in the spring of 2010 sent letters to Brazilian President Lula and Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan laying out the conditions for such a deal to be acceptable to the United States.
This is what's really so appalling.
Obama lied in those letters to Lula and Erdogan.
His calculation was, oh, if we insist on these conditions, the Iranians will never agree.
Brazil and Turkey will fail in their efforts to broker this deal.
And then when we go to the Security Council, where Brazil and Turkey were both sitting, they'll have to vote with us and we'll have unanimous counsel.
It was just an utterly cynical and dishonest diplomatic ploy.
And he sent those letters and Lula and Erdogan took them seriously.
They negotiate a deal with the Iranians.
It's announced in May 2010.
It meets every one of the conditions Obama laid down in the letter and the administration rejects the deal.
The only thing that Brazil and Turkey did wrong in this setting was that they actually succeeded in negotiating a deal that met all of the conditions that Obama laid out in his letters to Erdogan and Lula.
Obama stooped to that level of kind of crude duplicity.
Well, and even shades of Dick Cheney and the Swiss ambassador back in 2003, they even publicly, in this case, castigated the Brazilians and Turks for being so bold as to interfere in this.
Yes.
Yes.
And I don't know why they thought if they were going to treat the Brazilians and Turks like this, that the world would not, in relatively short order, be seeing the letters that Obama had sent to Lula and Erdogan.
But the Brazilian letter was leaked.
It is publicly available on the web, including on our website.
And I've been told by Turkish officials that the letter that Erdogan received was, in substance, it was essentially indistinguishable from the letter that Obama sent to Lula.
And if you match up the conditions laid out in that letter to the Tehran declaration that Brazil and Turkey negotiated with Iran in May of 2010, they met every one of those conditions.
We could have had this deal back in the spring of 2010, and Iran would not be enriching at 20% today.
But that's not the game Obama was playing.
Well, you know, I did an interview with your wife, Hilary Mann Leverett.
It must have been New Year's Eve or at the very end of last year.
And we sort of did an Obama administration in review of their Iran policy.
And she concluded that basically not much different than George W. Bush, that Barack Obama was continuing to lay, I think the way she put it, was lay the stepping stones to war.
That basically we have to check off the list that, oh, we tried to negotiate with them about this, and we tried to negotiate with them about that.
But you see, they're just intransigent.
They just won't do what they're told.
They just won't cease enriching uranium.
They just won't answer all the questions in the alleged studies documents.
They have a secret weapons factory at com and whatever, whatever, until finally they can lay the groundwork to go ahead and have a war.
And, you know, you guys write in your new piece at CNN that Obama and his advisers would serve themselves well to think carefully about whether they want to bring us closer to another Middle Eastern war.
And now my problem, Flint, is that for years, the war party in Israel and in the United States has been trying to push us into a war under any excuse they could.
Even George W. Bush told Dick Cheney, know about it.
Admiral Fallon and the CIA and everybody intervened in 2007 and stopped it.
And I just wonder on the, you know, two minutes to midnight kind of thing, how close do you think we really are to this?
And what even makes sense about a war?
I mean, what are you going to do?
Just a few weeks of airstrikes or something?
You can't send the army into Tehran.
I mean, it doesn't even seem to make any sense the end goal of having a war because there's no plausible imagination of how it's supposed to play out positively for our side.
Um, I look, I absolutely agree.
I think a military confrontation with Iran would be a disaster for American interests.
But, you know, the way that the Obama administration is handling this, you know, I think you're absolutely right.
We wrote about this almost from the beginning of the administration that the administration was basically just going through the motions on diplomacy to sort of check that box on the way toward more sanctions, more coercive options.
And if you look at some of the Iran-related WikiLeaks documents, the State Department cables that came out in the WikiLeaks, um, uh, uh, disclosures, um, you know, they basically confirmed that, that in, you know, the first half of 2009 before the Iranian election, before any of these other things that came up later, um, you know, you basically have senior Obama administration officials going around and telling the Europeans and other people that, oh yeah, we're going to go through the motions on the diplomacy, but we really want to get ready for, for, for more sanctions.
They were never serious about, about, you know, kind of Nixon to China-like, uh, strategic realignment with, with the Obama group.
Although even then, sanctions is one thing and bombing is something else.
Yeah, but there, you know, um, um, as, as, as Ron Paul likes to point out in some of his, his campaign appearances, you know, once you start sanctioning a country, the odds that you're going to end up at war with them go up pretty, pretty, pretty dramatically.
And, and I think that I, I, I don't believe that President Obama wants a war with Iran, but the way he is managing, or to my mind, mismanaging the Iran account, he is doing things that can only end up increasing the domestic pressures here in the United States, um, for military action against Iran.
That can only increase the pressure from, from Israel, um, for military action against Iran.
And he puts himself in a position more and more where if he doesn't take military action, he pays a higher and higher political price for it.
And, you know, now maybe he, you know, resist that pressure for as long as he is in office, as long as he needs to resist it.
But maybe at some point, you know, this, this guy has not exactly been a profile in political courage in office.
And at some point, you know, maybe he just decides, you know, he can't resist it anymore.
And, um, that's the scenario that I, that I worry about.
I also worry about, you know, whether Obama gets reelected next year or not.
Um, maybe at some point he does get succeeded and that successor could take office as early as, as January, um, 2013.
That successor, when he comes, I think is very likely to be even more hawkish on Iran than Obama.
And if you have these pressures building and then you have a more hawkish president take office, say in 2013, you know, then I think the odds of a military confrontation go up, go up even higher.
Yeah.
All the more reason for people to support Ron Paul's quest for the nomination there, because at the very least, even if he lost Obama, he would diffuse that pressure from the right to strike Iran.
He would criticize Obama for being such a hawk on Iran.
Well, um, Congressman Paul actually seems to remember what, what real conservatism is about when it, when it comes to foreign policy.
All right.
Now I've already kept you over time, but I want to get a very short answer from you if I can here about, uh, the accusations continuing today.
In fact, that Iran is behind every attack against American troops in Iraq and taking into account the fact that we've basically fought for the pro-Iran factions there, no matter how much our government doesn't like the Iranians, we're their best ally in Iran this whole time, it seems to me.
And I wonder whether you give any credibility to these accusations that Iran is behind the Shiite militias that dare to shoot at American soldiers.
Look, Iran has ties to all of the major Shia groups in Iran, including, you know, the political parties that make up current Iranian government, including the political party from which the current Iraqi prime minister, uh, uh, hails, you know, Iran supported these groups for, for decades in exile when these groups were, you know, anti-Saddam resistance movements.
And after the U.S. invasion, the overthrow of Saddam, these groups came back and they became, you know, the most important political players in Iran, in Iraq, excuse me.
And, and yes, Iran has, has ties to these groups.
You know, if you look at given the kinds of ties that Iran has inside Iraq, you know, if Iran really wanted to make life more miserable for American soldiers in Iraq, then it has been, you know, they have multiple ways to do it.
Yeah, they could snap their fingers.
Yes, they could really, really make life hard on the ground for American soldiers in Iraq.
I would argue that in terms of what they could do in Iraq to undermine the American position there, raise the cost for American soldiers there.
I think they've actually been pretty restrained.
All right.
I'm sorry.
We have to leave it there.
We're way over time.
I appreciate your time so much today on the show, Flint.
Okay.
Thanks for having me.
Flint Leverett, newamerica.net, raceforiran.com.
We'll be right back with Andy Worthington right after this.
