Hey, I'm Scott.
Welcome back to the show, man.
I've got to stop tapping my pen on this pad.
I bet that sounds really bad out there in radio land, doesn't it?
Hey, chat room guys, does this sound terrible the way I'm always tapping my fingers and things?
See, I used to smoke cigarettes.
And now that I don't smoke cigarettes, I don't know what to do.
I need one of them, uh, squeezy thingies, you know, what you call it.
Anyway, Garrett Porter's on the line.
Uh, he's got a brand new piece out for IPS news.
That's IPS news.net.
And you will be able to find it soon at original.antiwar.com/Porter, really just antiwar.com/Porter.
And it'll take you there.
US hard line in failed Iran talks driven by Israel.
You don't say welcome back, Gareth.
Hi, Scott.
It's been a long time.
I know.
Uh, how have you been?
Well, I'm about the same as I was 24 hours ago.
Okay.
Great.
Yeah.
That's great to hear.
No.
All right.
Uh, so Israel, uh, or kowtowing to Israel is, uh, the, the riddle behind why would Obama make such a big deal about having these talks and having James Risen tell the truth that Iran is not making nukes on the front page of the New York times a few times in a row and, and have his, uh, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff go out there and, uh, kind of pick a fight and all this pressure to get the Israelis to be quiet because we're going to go and do these talks and then show up and botch the talks, obviously deliberately announcing that no matter what they do, the sanctions will never be lifted.
Uh, which was just guaranteed to make sure that the talks went nowhere.
Why in the world did he do that?
Why would even Israel want him to do that?
Yeah.
I mean, the, the reason clearly is that in the preparation for these talks, inevitably the United States consulted with the Israelis back in March.
And, uh, it's, it's a matter of record, uh, a hood Barack, uh, basically, uh, gave out the information to the news media that he had these consultations.
Then in the consultations, he demanded that one of the things the United States had to put on the table, uh, with, uh, uh, in conjunction with the P five plus one is that, uh, that Iran, uh, would have to give up the Fordow enrichment facility, close it down.
And in fact, uh, the Israelis wanted to be dismantled as part of the U S position.
Um, and in addition to that, what he didn't say was that this was, of course, a pretty quid pro quo, part of the quid pro quo for Israel going along with putting off till the end of the talks, a demand that had to do with any enrichment by the, uh, the Iranian.
In other words, that the demand that Iran had to suspend enrichment, but, um, clearly this was part of the Israeli position that, uh, the United States had to, uh, demand that, that Iran suspend enrichment as part of its negotiating position.
And, uh, the concession that Israel was making was that this had to come at the end.
This could come at the end of the process, but, uh, Michael Adler, as I have, but wait a minute, what difference does that make?
Whether the demand comes at the end of the process?
Seems like that's even worse.
And if, well, that's, that's exactly right.
I mean, it's, it's a bit misleading, uh, for the United States to enter into a process, uh, where it does not make clear that it is intending at the end to say, okay, now you have to suspend enrichment.
Although I, I have a feeling that this is at least implied, was at least implied by us officials, uh, in Baghdad, that that was the case that, that we were talking about a long process, which at the end, if the, uh, if the Iranians wanted us to actually suspend or get rid of, uh, some of these, uh, onerous, uh, sanctions against Iran, particularly the oil sanctions, that they would have to suspend their enrichment for at least a period of time.
Uh, so I think this is the package that was agreed upon by the United States in its talks with Israel and Michael Adler, who did a piece in March in the daily beast, uh, essentially, uh, said the same thing.
I mean, he, he very strongly implied in that account of the U S position that there would have to be as a matter of confidence building, quote unquote, a suspension, at least for a period of time of the, uh, of low, uh, low enrichment that is normal enrichment, 3.5% level by, by Iran.
So this is really the essential background to understanding why the United States went into these talks, ensuring that they would be a failure.
And there's no doubt that the United States understood that that was the consequence of this, uh, by essentially saying, uh, no removal of sanctions under any circumstances, uh, as part of the deal, which would involve the Iranian stopping all 20% enrichment, giving up their, um, their entire supply of 20% enriched uranium, uh, shipping it out of the country and presumably, uh, apparently also giving up, uh, the Fordo enrichment facility.
Well, I don't know.
I, that one to me seems like a deal breaker, uh, the Fordo thing.
Maybe that is within the realm of possibility by itself.
Uh, was a deal breaker, you know, in the context of, uh, this kind of limited deal.
I mean, certainly the Iranians are going to be willing to give up Fordo as part of a much broader deal, you know, but not, well, that's the whole thing is it's, it's so easy to see.
It's not even chess.
It's just checkers.
They're playing here where each side has built up a big something to give away on our side.
We built up all these sanctions against them on their side.
They built up this giant stockpile of 20% enriched uranium and they keep adding more and more centrifuges to a Fordo all the time.
And they've built all that up just so that they can give that up.
So all these two sides have to do is give up their two things that they've built up against each other.
And then they have a deal.
It's, it's plain as day.
It's easy.
It's so easy to see.
It's ridiculous.
In other words, for it to not work out means that it was deliberately scotched.
It means that, well, as we already said, the Americans came in there and said, no matter what you do, we'll never lift the sanctions.
You know what, just, just apropos of that precise point, Laura Rosen, who has been covering these talks from Baghdad, has tweeted in the last 48 hours that she, she didn't give a quote.
She didn't cite a source, but she said something to the effect that U.S. position is there's nothing Iran can do.
It'll be 10 to 15 years before the sanctions are lifted.
And I tweeted back to her.
I replied saying, is this based on your sources, U.S. official sources?
If so, it's a huge story, but I can't find anything in print.
She didn't respond.
But something, something was going on there.
They were, they were leaking privately and not for the record on background, I think, that they don't intend to basically do anything about sanctions for a long, long time.
Yeah.
Well, this is like what happened in 1997 with Ralph Eckes was about to certify Iraq as weapons of mass destruction free.
And so now we can go ahead and work on undoing the security council resolutions, mandating these sanctions and Madeleine Albright, or maybe it was Bill even beat her to it, but they raced out to declare that the sanctions regime will stay until regime change, until Saddam Hussein is gone.
That there's no amount of compliance by him that could ever lead to the sanctions being removed.
And it was only then that he kicked the inspectors out or really limited their, their inspection ability enough that Clinton went and pulled them out himself and bombed him.
That's a very good historical parallel.
I like it a lot.
Yeah, it was actually Andrew Coburn reported that for the first time on this show, that that was the thing that spurred, because I remembered, I think a lot of people probably remember Madeleine Albright's announcement of that, but he was the one who explained that it was to preempt Ralph Eckes of the United Nations from announcing that Saddam Hussein was in compliance.
And if you read the US news media carefully, you find that the centrist position in Washington on this question of sanctions is look, I mean, Iran is going to have to live with the sanctions because they're because of their terrorism policy.
And the fact that we simply can't agree with their international position.
All right.
Well, I'm sorry.
You know how it is with the break here.
We'll pick it up on the other side of the sanctions.
And yeah, there are every other policy besides their non-nuclear weapons policy, too.
After this with Gareth Porter.
All right.
So welcome back.
It's a war radio.
I'm Scott.
I'm talking with Gareth Porter.
We're talking about things.
In this case, the failure of the Iran talks yesterday, they were made to fail.
They could have had a deal.
At least they agreed that they're going to keep failing next month in Moscow, right?
Well, that's that's the plan, that there will be another round of meetings, June 18th, 19th, if I remember correctly.
And the problem is this, that the U.S. justification publicly for its position is, look, the the sanctions are still taking hold.
They haven't completely gone into effect.
And so so Iran is going to be under more and more pressure, which will make a difference in the coming meeting.
In other words, they're publicly declaring that they expect Iran will cry uncle at the Moscow meeting.
And of course, that is not going to happen.
Anybody who is objective about this situation knows that that's not going to happen.
I mean, as I point out in my story, it would require that the supreme leader of Iran cave in to pressure by the United States under circumstances that would clearly threaten his jeopardize his position as leader.
In other words, his credibility would be shot and it would definitely reduce his ability to to be an effective leader and even threaten the whole system in Iran.
So that's simply not going to happen, not not in the kind of time frame that the United States is talking about here.
Yeah, well, they don't ever do a thing right, do they?
Or is that really their plan?
They really think they can make him capitulate, that the sanctions will take effect by then and then they'll have done what we planned.
Yeah, I suspect that that is indeed the way in which the senior officials who are always quoted in these pieces by Reuters and Associated Press and New York Times, how they think about this, which is not man, it's really, you know, this is really a embarrassing position to be in where we've caved in to Israeli pressure and done something that doesn't make any sense and now is, in fact, contradictory to U.S. interests.
What they do is they justify it in just the way that I said a moment ago, they point to the fact that that now we have the Iranians where we want them.
They're under this unprecedented pressure and therefore they're going to have to give.
And, you know, you go back to the New York Times piece of a little more than a week ago, just about a week ago, May 18th.
That was the that was really the theme that went through the entire piece was that that American officials are now permitting themselves to to hope that the Iranians are now under such pressure that they will have to give in.
And I think this does play to a fundamental characteristic of the national security state, which is that anything that gives the United States a fundamental advantage is something that they treasure.
And, you know, it feeds into their their sense of being the the dominant state in in in the world, the hegemonial power, if you will.
And I think that that is really what the the ideological piece that helps to explain how the system works, how this continues year after year against all the evidence that it's not only not working, you know, in the in the way in which they claim that it's working, but that it is undermining the basic security and safety of America, of the American people.
Yeah, well, although this time, I guess, in order to relieve some of the pressure from all the Israeli threats, the administration really came out hard with the Iran is not even making nuclear bombs argument, you know, in order to tone them down.
Now, they had to move the goalpost to, well, the capability to make a nuclear bomb and whatever like that.
But it seems like they're really kind of weakening their position to to keep this up over the long term.
What are we negotiating for anyway?
If even the administration are the ones who are the sources of all the leaks saying that we're sure that they're not really a threat?
There's a contradiction here between the White House caving into Israeli pressure on one hand with regard to its negotiating position in the talks with Iran.
And on the other hand, the point that you just made, the the White House has indeed established a kind of fire firewall, if you will, an effort, it looks to me like to to establish a firewall between the the position of the administration and the position of Israel on going to war.
I mean, the Israelis obviously would love the United States to attack Iran.
That's really what they want.
They don't want to attack Iran themselves.
And as I've said, I think on your show before, I think that Bibi Netanyahu was bluffing.
I think that people in the administration probably do suspect privately that he's bluffing.
But but they have done certainly one thing that that helps to prevent the United States from being drawn into a war, or at least reduces the chance of being drawn into a war by saying, look, we think that Iran is not has not made a decision yet.
And in fact, we will know if they do make a decision because they'll have to kick out the IAEA.
And then we will we will have a signal that they're intending to go for weaponization.
And short of of that signal, there's no reason for the United States to to think about going to war.
And that is, of course, 180 degrees different from the Israeli position, which is that we can't wait for some sort of some sort of signal like kicking out the IAEA.
We have to assume that they're secretly somehow succeeding in weaponization and act on that suspicion.
Yeah.
Well, but all I'm saying is it still seems to me like the administration ultimately, you know, continues to undermine their own case for even having negotiations, for even having sanctions, for even threatening Iran at all, if they have to tell the truth in order to undermine the cause, this belly for, you know, actually setting the country on fire.
Well, then why do any of this stuff if they're not actually making nukes?
Well, we're talking about two different issues, of course.
I mean, on one hand, the White House is doing something that is important to its interest in not getting involved in a war against Iran.
I mean, that's that much is clear.
But on the negotiation side, I mean, the White House, I think, justifies its cave in to Israel by saying, well, I mean, this is not going to lead to a war.
The fact that we are turning down a deal with Iran and, in fact, substituting a position that ensures that there won't be any deal that that is not going to lead to a war with Iran.
We've already taken action that is going to keep us out of a war.
And therefore, all we're doing is prolonging this conflict with Iran in order to make sure that we're not going to be attacked by the Republicans and centrists in U.S. politics because they will be responsive to the Israeli interests here.
That's really, you know, we're talking about two different different issues.
And the White House is clearly responsive to Israeli interests on the second part of this while at the same time trying to hold out against Israeli pressure to go to war.
Yeah, you know, the false premise of my whole argument there was that there's some group of reasonable American people who would, you know, no longer support the president or would change their mind or would become some form of anti-war movement in order to stop in order to put pressure on Obama to just back off.
If he has to admit that Iran's not really a threat, then why does he keep threatening him?
And that's still just you and me talking, you know, there is a very substantial proportion of the population that definitely shares that view.
Yeah, but they're nothing compared to the Israel lobby.
That's what he has to justify himself to not organize.
They don't have the money.
They don't have the organization and they are no they're no match.
There's no doubt about that.
That's what the problem is fundamentally with U.S. policy in the Middle East.
And, you know, you got to hand it to these neocons.
I'm reading Jim Loeb's piece here at Antiwar.com.
Neocons assail possible compromise on Iran talks.
And you really only need like thirty five of these guys and some Olin Foundation money or whatever, and they just never stop here.
They've got two new reports out, one making wild claims about how quickly Iran can make a nuclear weapon from breakout capability to, you know, deployment mode or whatever.
And then the other is blaming Iran for all of our problems in Iraq and Afghanistan over all these years.
You know, one of those two countries have in common a border with Iran.
I bet it's all their fault that things haven't been going that well.
The key to your point, though, is you're mentioning the Olin Foundation.
That that to me is the point there is that the wealthy in the United States, you know, overwhelmingly support the wrong position on these issues.
There's no wealthy people.
I mean, you know, really very wealthy people who are supporting an antiwar position, who are ready to put money into a movement that would try to balance to counterbalance the influences that you're talking about.
That's the fundamental problem we're up against.
Yeah.
You know, it was Paul Gottfried, I think, the paleo conservative writer who told the history of the 1980s where the neocons went and cornered all the big foundation people and cut out any antiwar conservative voice, any voice that wasn't, you know, the guys that we would think of now is, you know, the axis of crystal, you know, and made sure that they just had a lock on all the foundation money.
And then they went and spawned all their 15 think tanks.
The same 45 guys staffed them all.
But still, right.
But there's obviously a wider problem here, the wider phenomenon, which is that when people get really wealthy, they simply don't have the consciousness that would be necessary to support something, you know, really positive in terms of U.S. national security policy.
It works the other way around.
Yeah.
They become right wing.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
Well, that's just the way things are.
All right.
Well, we're already over time.
Thanks very much for your time.
I guess we'll catch up with you when they meet in Moscow to fail some more.
All right.
Thanks again, Scott.
Thanks, Gary.
That's the great Garrett Porter, everybody.
IPS news dot net antiwar.com/Porter.
We'll be back here in just a few.
