All right y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton and I got Gareth Porter on the line from Interpress Service.
He's an independent historian and journalist.
We rerun virtually everything he writes, with very few exceptions, you know, copyrights and stuff, but pretty much all of it is at original.antiwar.com/porter.
Welcome back to the show.
Welcome back to America from wherever the hell you've been in the world.
Thanks very much, Scott.
Good to be on your show again.
Well, I'm very happy to have you here.
I missed you.
I don't understand what's going on in the world because I haven't had you around to tell me what the hell's going on.
Well, I've been in Vienna and Israel and then took a couple of weeks off in Doha to write things up and I'm glad to be back.
Excellent.
Well, Vienna, that's where the IAEA headquarters is there, and then Israel, that's where the War Party headquarters is.
Let's get to that in a second.
I want to start with the thing that I most want to understand, which is whether Barack Obama actually means to make a deal with the Iranians at all, or whether he's just checking off the last thing, because it seems like on one hand he's saying, I'm very roughly, terribly paraphrasing, if only you would accept the additional protocol, we'll go ahead and let you enrich uranium and it'll be all right, give up your 20 percent, something like that.
Maybe the basis of a deal, but on the other hand, they're also making demands, they couldn't, you know, like close down Fordo and that kind of thing, and they're saying, but this is your last chance and the window is closing, so they're kind of painting themselves into a corner.
It seems like they want to have a conflict, but then of course there's all these counter indications, like all the effort Obama just went through to not have a war in the last few weeks.
Yeah, as always, Scott, it's very difficult to disentangle the public politics from the actual negotiating position of of the U.S. government, and that's because, for one thing, clearly Obama is in fact using leaks to the press to buttress his case politically to the right-wing Republicans and to the Israelis that he's got Israel's back, and that, I think, is at least a large part of why you're reading in the news media, particularly the New York Times, of course, that Obama intends to demand the closing of Fordo enrichment facility.
In fact, it's a dismantlement.
That, I think, everyone knows in Washington that that's a non-starter, at least those people who are certifiably sane rather than, you know, just completely insane.
And so I think that there is, in fact, a distinction here between what the Obama administration is leaking to the press about its negotiating position going into these talks and what it, in fact, intends, ultimately at least, to propose to the Iranians.
Now, that does not mean that the Obama administration will not present in these talks a demand for the dismantlement of Fordo.
I think they probably will.
But, you know, this reminds me very much of a historical precedent for putting on the table a negotiating demand that the U.S. negotiator knew full well that it would be rejected and intended to follow up with a plan B, a set of more moderate, if you will, demands to the adversary.
And I'm thinking here of the November 1972 negotiations between Henry Kissinger and the North Vietnamese.
When Kissinger put on the table a set of demands that were given to him by the puppet regime of the United States in South Vietnam, the coup regime, that Kissinger put on the table knowing full well he'd have to take them back shortly after that.
And that's exactly what happened, in fact.
He did, in fact, take back those demands and put on the table a set of more moderate demands, which made it possible, ultimately, for the United States to reach an agreement with North Vietnam.
I think the same thing is happening here, that the Obama administration is mollifying Israel and the right wing in this country, who are putting that demand on the table.
Now, you know, I have to say that it is a risk for the United States to do that, because it's not clear how the Iranians will react.
Will they view this, in fact, as confirmation that Obama is simply a show for the Israelis and say there's no point in continuing with this?
We know that in 2005, the EU put on the table a clearly unacceptable set of demands and an unacceptable set of incentives, and the Iranians stopped the negotiations.
They said there's no point in going on with this.
The EU officials say, well, they didn't intend for this to be the final position they would take, but it was too late.
I mean, they put on the table something that was so clearly unacceptable that the Iranians withdrew from negotiations.
I think that the Iranians are not likely to do that, but that is, in fact, a finite risk that the Obama administration is taking.
Well, you know, the thing is, more than close down Fordo, because you're right, that's the kind of thing that you can take back and say, OK, well, but you just have to have lots and lots of cameras in it or whatever, find an alternative position on that same kind of issue or whatever.
But the thing that seems the most dangerous to me is what Sheldon Richman pointed out.
You know, Obama says no more of this loose talk of war, but he's got his secretary of state out there and all of her loose talk of the window closing.
And in fact, his own, the president himself, says this is your last chance.
And that, to me, is the harder thing to go back on.
So what if they don't strike a deal right now?
What if the Joint Special Operations Command and the Israelis use their Jandala or Mujahideen called terrorists to blow up the Ayatollah's niece and screw up everything?
And then what?
Last chance, window closed or not.
What?
Well, I think you're right to certainly point to the danger of unanticipated moves that could trigger a process of escalation.
I think that's always a danger.
And that is the kind of dangerous game that Obama has gotten himself into by his trying to mollify Israel and the hawks in this country.
No question about it.
Well, it seems like the opposite, best I could tell, the opposite would be to really make a deal and say, come on, guys, you take the additional protocol, go ahead and ratify it like you really mean it.
And we'll promise not to bomb you.
And we'll talk the Israelis down and we'll keep everything at, you know, 3.6 percent enriched to U-235, whatever, and make a deal and go into his election saying, look at what a great peacemaker I am and all that kind of thing.
But I'm not seeing that in the cards at all.
All I'm seeing is still this stumbling into inevitability of full scale conflict.
I think he still is stumbling.
But I do think that this talk about the window closing has to be taken with something of a grain of salt, because, I mean, this is all part of, you know, part of his strategy is clearly to try to put pressure on Iran.
And, you know, you really have to discount, you know, the very high percentage of that kind of talk.
I would say discount all of it.
It doesn't mean that they are ready to give the green light to Israel by any means.
It doesn't mean that they are planning to go to Plan B, which is a military plan by any means.
It means that they are doing what the United States always does, which is to use the only thing that it's got, which is sort of military pressure and economic pressure, to try to coerce Iran.
And it's not going to work.
But, you know, these people do basically the same thing over and over again, because they use the tools that they have in their toolbox, so to speak.
Well, now...
We've talked about that before.
Well, you talked about, you know, they could accidentally, like the Europeans blew it when they put too tough of a negotiating position forward and the talks just closed down.
But what about, you know, the 1999 example, where Madeleine Albright said, unconditional surrender and called it the Rambouillet Peace Accord.
And he refused to sign our peace accord, she said.
And it was...
But it included, you know, NATO can occupy every square inch of his country, including his house, you know, whatever.
And so it was meant to be refused.
It was meant to simply be something to check off the list.
Are you sure that's not what they're doing here?
Is just to say, hey, look, he refuses our good graces?
I don't think consciously that is the intention.
No, I think that, again, he's playing with fire.
And I think that's a serious issue.
All right, well, I'm sorry.
We'll have to hold until the other side of this break.
It's the great Gareth Porter, Interpret Service, IPSnews.net, original.antiwar.com/Porter.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back to Antiwar Radio.
I'm Scott Wharton.
I got Gareth Porter from Interpret Service.
And I have a error to correct.
Just a minute ago, I was telling the story about when I first met Gareth and started interviewing him on this radio show.
It was January 2007, the beginning of Fat Nick, Fred Kagan and his co-conspirators surge in Iraq.
And I called it January 2006.
I said, yeah.
And then we knew in November and December of 2006, this is what was going to happen.
And then in January of 2006, no, 2007, Bush gave his big announcement.
And Gareth Porter came on the show and explained that Connelly's arise tells the Fox News audience.
Yeah, we're going to bomb them.
Yeah.
And then she tells the State Department, you know, we need the actual press corps at Foggy Bottom.
Now we're not going to bomb them.
If we do, maybe in the summer, but probably not then.
Oh, OK, good.
And we all started 2007, nervous for a minute, and then breathing a sigh of relief because Gareth Porter came to our rescue.
It sounds like that's what's going on here now, as you're telling me to chill out.
Well, I think there is a little bit of a similarity in the two situations.
Yes.
But I'm astonished that you remember the detail of that interview.
That's really amazing that you were.
Well, that was when I first met you.
And I was like, hey, this guy's all right, because he knows he's clearly paying attention to every important fact.
But he's got the he even noticed the State Department briefing that I didn't.
And the important part of it that I would have never figured out.
So well, look, the thing that I would want to make sure we we've raised in this interview before we finish is go ahead.
But what I learned in Israel on my nine day trip there, I think is really quite interesting and very much changed my view of the degree of danger that we have to attribute to the Netanyahu government.
I interviewed a couple of the, so I would say leading figures in the former national security officials category in Israel.
One was the father of the Israeli anti-missile system, Uzi Rubin, a retired Brigadier General who was head of the anti-missile defense program for almost a decade from 1991 to 1999.
And then we served on the National Security Council of Israel after he finished that job.
And I also interviewed Yossi Alfer, who is a former Mossad intelligence analyst, official and later head of the Jaffe Center of National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, which is certainly one of the leading centers analyzing Israeli national security issues.
And they both had the same view in interviews with me, which is that the reason that you have not heard more, an outcry more from former national security officials in Israel in recent months as the drumbeat of war increased, is that they do not in fact believe Netanyahu is serious.
They think he's bluffing.
And they have been very concerned about, and many of these officials certainly have been very concerned about the idea of attacking Iran, which they think would be a complete disaster for Israel for all kinds of reasons.
And Uzi Rubin told me, and he knows more about the Iranian missile capabilities and the capabilities of the anti-missile system of Iran to stop those missiles before they hit Israeli targets than anybody else in the country, I would argue.
And he said, look, there's no way really that you're going to prevent the Iranians from hitting a lot of targets.
And they're going to have the ability to hit those targets with the degree of accuracy that they haven't had in the past.
And so he takes that threat of counterattack very, very seriously.
And basically, he believes that the Netanyahu government is bluffing, and that that's why many of his colleagues, like himself, have not been more aggressive about speaking out.
He said he was planning to write a piece in the near future that would challenge the policy of attacking Iran, but that he had been relatively quiet in the past about this, and that he believed that his colleagues were similarly being quiet about this, because basically, they think Netanyahu is bluffing to try to put pressure on Iran and the United States.
And that that's really the main reason for these escalating threats of war against Iran.
Well, and it is or isn't still his policy to have America fight his war foreign?
Well, I think that's right.
He hopes the United States will somehow pick up the cudgel and attack Iran.
But I think, you know, that that hope is really one that is not based on any confidence that it's going to happen.
I think that he hopes that maybe, you know, during a presidential election campaign, that the pressure will grow so intense that Obama will change his mind.
But I have to say that I think that that's increasingly unrealistic, it appears increasingly unrealistic, even in Israel.
I think that in fact, the Israelis are quite concerned about the possibility of an agreement between the United States and Iran.
I think that's far more likely in their view, than that Obama is going to attack Iran.
Yeah, it's funny, you know, I actually was invited to give a talk.
And I thought, well, go and give the case against the case for war with Iran again, because that's really important.
And then I thought, you know what, no, it really isn't.
And I know and everybody else knows, I don't know if everybody else knows, sure seems to me like Netanyahu is just crying wolf again.
And I don't want to just amplify his wolf cries.
I mean, at the same time, I think it's important, of course, to debunk all the, you know, so called reasons why we ought to have a war that people still do believe in general.
But at the same time, as far as anything immediate, oh, Panetta says it's going to happen by summer, whatever, that never seemed, you know, real to me in the first place.
So I think we need to have the most the most nuanced and most accurate understanding of both US and Israeli policy in order to put, you know, more effective pressure on on US policy.
Well, you know what that guy, Bob Bair, the former CIA officer, he was on TV, he was on the Chris Matthews show, and said, Listen, the reason that the that the Mossad are using the MEK to assassinate these scientists is because it's terrorism.
They're trying to get the Iranians to overreact and hit something belonging to the United States.
And then that will cause us to get into a war that that's what's going on there.
They're trying to bait us into the damn thing.
And poor Chris Matthews couldn't quite say you're not allowed to talk about that on my show, man.
But anyway, yeah, I agree with that.
Of course, I've been I've been saying that for quite a while that that is precisely the the Israeli.
So that's pretty bold, though.
But then again, you know, we have Seymour Hersh has just come out with his new piece about how Larissa was right all along that not the CIA, but the JSOC were running MEK inside Iran.
And the way I read it, anyway, I didn't get a chance to interview him on the show about it.
But the way I read the piece is he says, you know, if Mossad is using or when Mossad is using MEK inside Iran to kill people, they're working with the Americans.
It's a joint project the whole time.
It's American intelligence picking their targets for him and everything else.
So who's trying to bait who into what war?
I have to tell you, I don't think that the CIA is picking targets for Mossad inside Iran.
Or the Pentagon, then?
The Pentagon.
I mean, you know, you got to say that JSOC is is a power by itself.
Yeah, they're outside the Pentagon.
Remember when this was happening?
Yeah, they're the president's private army.
Yeah, exactly.
It was it was a a White House vice president and a Rumsfeld operation that was going on there.
They were they were running their own private war.
And I think JSOC was definitely operating apart from the rest of the Pentagon, certainly the Pentagon after Rumsfeld.
Okay.
I mean, I think when once Rumsfeld was gone, you had a much different situation.
So and that's why, in fact, you know, you'll you'll notice that the training of MEK people ended in 2007, precisely when Rumsfeld left the Pentagon.
Well, yeah.
And in fact, Hirsch told us a year ago that it was JSOC who were actually on the ground in Iran debunking the case for war and sort of showing that, yeah, apparently there really is nothing going on that we don't already know about.
Well, definitely.
I think the situation has changed quite dramatically in terms of the fact that the Israelis are really operating on their own here, you know, in terms of hitting both assassination and and the whatever they're doing.
I don't know how they're doing it.
I wish I could understand what they're doing to carry out covert operations that result in explosions on military bases in Iran.
But but certainly, I think that is something that neither the CIA nor the Pentagon is now involved in.
All right, well, so I guess in one minute, do you have an optimistic view of the upcoming P5 thing?
You think it's going to go anywhere at all?
I think the chances are greater that the U.S. will again flub the opportunity to reach an agreement than they are that they will be able to do so.
Just kick the can down the road again.
Yeah, the weight of history, culture and vested interests on the part of, you know, the national security state, I think are greater than the desire of Obama to reach an agreement.
That that is at least the way it's operated in the past.
I hope I'm wrong.
But I'm afraid that we're going to be disappointed once again.
All right, everybody.
That's the great Gareth Porter's latest piece at antiwar.com is called Israeli experts mum on Iran attack to support BB's bluff.
That's original.antiwar.com/Porter.
And we'll talk to you again soon.
Thanks again.
Thank you, Scott.
Bye bye.
