08/18/10 – Gareth Porter – The Scott Horton Show

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I'm not a cool guy anymore.
If I ever was before.
I took a look at all the signs.
Then rolled it over in my mind.
The pieces I could not fit in.
Became a villain as part of me.
Alright y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Antiwar Radio.
I'm Scott Horton, and I'm happy to welcome back to the show my friend Gareth Porter.
He's an independent historian and journalist.
He writes for Interpress Service, that's IPSnews.net.
And of course we run all of it.
Well, other than exclusives that he does for other publications at other times.
But all of the IPS stuff and most everything else runs at Antiwar.com slash Porter.
Alright, welcome back to the show Gareth.
Hello again Scott.
Alright, so let's fight.
Because we left off at the interview day before yesterday.
I wanted to fight with you and then we had to go because I had another interview.
And you're telling me don't worry.
And I'm saying, I'm looking around and I think the drumbeat for war with Iran right now is as loud as it's been.
And maybe they're just bluffing.
But the thing is about bluffing is you can talk yourself into a pretty bad fight that way sometimes.
And I don't see any power organized to check the neocons and their push for war right now.
I don't see why Benjamin Netanyahu wouldn't just go ahead and start a war if he feels like it.
And I believe you and I know you're right.
Of course you're right when you say that Israel's not afraid of Iran.
Iran is not a threat.
There is no Manhattan Project there.
The Israelis know it as well as anybody else.
The Jeffrey Rosen article confirms exactly what you said which is they're afraid that people will move away.
Or not want to move to Israel.
They're not afraid of getting nuked.
They're afraid that there will be a brain drain as they say in there.
The weakest, coarsest belly ever.
I'm with you on that.
But why not go ahead and have a war from their point of view?
What's stopping them?
It couldn't be Barack Obama.
Okay.
Well, first of all, let me start by agreeing with almost everything that you said or at least the largest part of it.
I, too, find that the defenses, the political defenses in this country against the neocon line are very, very weak indeed.
There's no doubt that the neoconservatives in the Israeli lobby have succeeded in a spectacular way in recent years in shifting public opinion in their direction.
They have created this media narrative of a covert Iranian nuclear bomb project that I'm actually currently writing about at this moment.
The background to that, but the short version is that they have succeeded in getting the news media to adopt this narrative.
And so it's no wonder that most Americans now in polling that has been done in recent months support, if necessary, if we can't do it any other way, the use of force against Iran.
I mean, this is a terrible thing.
It's a very dangerous thing.
And I join you in saying that people shouldn't relax.
And that's what I said, if you recall, in the last conversation we had.
I wanted to make it clear that I'm not suggesting that people should relax their vigilance.
Those people who do care, who have understanding of the situation that goes beyond the people who are not following it closely, you know, need to do everything possible to fight against this danger.
Of course, of course you're not telling people to stop contradicting the lying war party.
But OK, if I understand your reasoning, though, it's reasonable.
What you're saying is that if Benjamin Netanyahu is not a nut, that he's a he's a head of state like any other rational one.
It's the same way people try to smear the Iranians and say, oh, they're so religious that they're irrational or whatever.
I mean, all of these none of these men are as dumb as George Bush or something willing to go with a breeze.
You know, they have their own minds and their own plans and whatever.
I accept that.
But so you seem to be equating the idea that if Netanyahu doesn't really believe Iran is a threat with the idea that therefore Netanyahu ain't going to have a war against them.
But but then again, I mean, we have this whole parallel universe where Iran is a threat, existential threat and nuclear bombs and terrible danger.
And the Bushehr reactor is going online.
A red line is about to be crossed.
What are we ever going to do?
Iran is going to hold the whole world hostage is the narrative out there in the world that these guys are pushing.
So it seems like, you know, since when is Benjamin Netanyahu cared if they're really a threat or not?
Is really the point.
The point is that, Scott, let me try to be as clear as I can that this narrative serves up to two possible purposes.
OK, let's just break it down.
I mean, one purpose is obviously to justify a war.
No, no question about that.
But the other potential purpose of this narrative that's been carefully crafted over the years by not just Netanyahu, but let's remember this.
It's it's the common thread uniting all post Cold War Israeli government to portray Iran as a kind of existential threat.
Sometimes the the rhetoric has been heightened as it has been under Netanyahu, but still a common thread has been a common thread ever since 1992 or something like that.
So the second purpose is that it that it serves a variety of political diplomatic purposes of of the Israeli government politically, particularly the Likud Likud next.
But not only them.
First of all, of course, it serves basically to to mobilize the base, if you will, that they have in the United States.
The neoconservative movement and those who can be mobilized to try to get the United States to do what what the Israelis are threatening to do.
That is to say, to get the United States to to take care of Iran.
And I think it's quite credible that that the Likud next, that the Netanyahu folks would like to see the United States actually attack Iran for a variety of reasons.
I mean, they believe that the United States could effectively not just take take away Iran's status as a as a as a power in the Middle East, as perhaps a real rival for Israeli domination of the Middle East from the from the Israeli point of view, but also carry out regime change.
I mean, this has really been the Israeli interest for many years now.
They have believed that the United States could carry out regime change by not just attacking the nuclear sites.
That was never the idea.
It was always to carry out a thorough a pounding of of both the military targets as well as other targets in Iran in order to really threaten the regime.
Now, I happen to think this is a complete lunacy that I mean, I hate to sort of seem to contradict myself, but I think that this is completely unrealistic.
But I do think that there there are Israelis who have argued in the past that the United States could do that.
And so that is certainly one of the interests that it serves for the Israelis.
Then a second level of interest, if that didn't work, and they have to be prepared to believe that it might not work for a whole range of reasons.
It's also useful for the Israelis, because it keeps the United States on board with Israeli policy, makes it more difficult for the US government to criticize the Israelis on a whole range of issues, makes the US a more stout ally as far as pressuring Iran, putting pressure on Iran in a whole variety of ways.
And thus makes it less likely that the United States will ever relax its attitude towards Iran and reach any kind of an agreement with Iran that would stabilize the situation in the region.
So this obviously is a first order Israeli political interest, a political diplomatic interest to make sure that there's never a rapprochement between Iran and the United States.
Well, I still don't understand why, really, but I guess that's another discussion.
Let's talk about John Bolton.
The Washington Times this morning in an unsigned editorial is saying, well, John Bolton says the Israelis got to bomb Bushehr before Friday when the Russians turn it on.
But we think they should wait a few weeks, at least, and that way when they bomb it, it'll spread radioactive fallout everywhere, and they'll never be able to turn on the Bushehr reactor again.
So I think maybe you and me need to actually talk about the Iranian nuclear program and get some facts out on the table here for people to wrap their head around and get an idea if it's all right.
Hang tight right there.
We'll be back, everybody, with Garrett Porter after this.
Facebook at Facebook dot LRN dot FM.
All right, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton talking with my friend Garrett Porter.
He writes for Interpress Service.
And like usually, he's telling me, cool my jets, man.
They're not going to start bombing Iran.
Not yet.
It's only been five years straight of them crying wolf.
I guess, Garrett, they're just going to keep on saying that Iran will have nuclear bombs any day now for the next three generations and never actually bomb them.
Well, you know, this is a very interesting question.
I've wondered myself.
I mean, it's been 20 years since they were going to have nukes any day now, so...
This is true.
You know, I was just the other, not the other day, last night, I was reading an article by none other than Chris Hedges in the New York Times, 1995.
Oh, no.
And guess what?
Oh.
I don't have it in front of me, but I can tell you that that article...
You're bumming me out already.
I don't even want to know.
That article talks about Israeli officials saying that the Iranians represent a serious threat to Israeli civilization.
The existential threat argument is right there in the article.
And Chris Hedges was saying that Bushehr is going to be, or is, the chief location for nuclear weapons research.
Okay?
I mean, this is just to underline the degree of continuity here that we're talking about in regards to Israel.
And now here we are, 15 years later, they're about to turn on the Bushehr light water reactor.
Exactly.
Exactly.
And, I mean, I can tell you that behind the scenes, the Israeli government, because Yossi Melman and Meir Javadanfar, these two Israeli authors, authors of a book on the Iranian nuclear program, interviewed a lot of Israeli intelligence officials and foreign affairs officials and so forth, and the Israelis admitted to them that they had gone overboard on the Bushehr thing.
They admitted that they really had exaggerated completely the significance of Bushehr as far as the nuclear weapons issue is concerned.
They were wrong about it.
They basically should have been looking elsewhere.
And yet, you know, you still see publicly they're talking about Bushehr as a threat and so on and so forth.
So, this is just to underline the degree of deception that is built into the warp and woof of Israeli public statements about this whole issue.
Well, you know, even before Frank Luntz, back in 1991, they tried to come up with everything in the world to convince a focus group that America needed to invade Iraq.
Instead of abolishing NATO and coming home and cashing our peace dividend, they said, come on, we've got to go to war in Iraq.
Come on, focus group, let's do this.
It took telling them Saddam Hussein might be getting nuclear weapons.
And then the focus group said, nuclear weapons?
Okay.
They weren't scared of mustard gas, but you tell a mushroom cloud and now you can launch a war.
So, we come back, at least for a moment, to John Bolton and this fascinating question of what he's thinking and why.
The idea that Israel has to bomb before Bushehr goes into operation.
I mean, you know, it raises the question for me, the interesting question, is John Bolton in on the game that the Israelis are playing?
And I wonder, indeed, if he isn't sort of a useful idiot for the Israelis.
Well, he's certainly an idiot, but as far as I know, he's just a lone crank.
Why not?
I mean, he hangs out with all these guys, who knows?
Yeah, I think that there are games within games that John Bolton's not aware of.
Well, you know, I'm sure that there's a lot of things that John Bolton's not aware of.
But then again, I mean, this is part and parcel of the War Party's thing.
He's no different than any of the lowest tier neocons writing over at Front Page Magazine.
None of this ever has to do with the actual truth.
It's always just about building a narrative and an excuse.
So, I mean, they end up all so detached from reality.
None of their arguments ever make any sense, because they're not even real arguments.
They're just talking points, you know?
Yeah, I mean, in other words, if you view it as just another layer of propaganda, then perhaps it makes sense.
But on the other hand, it's a bit like saying, you know, the world is coming to an end tomorrow.
You better repent.
And then when it doesn't happen, it kind of leaves you looking a little bit, shall we say, stupid?
Yeah, well, and that's the whole thing, though.
And this is my worry, really, is that at some point they're going to have to say, Look, the world demanded, and they did, the world, meaning the U.N.
Security Council, demanded no more enrichment of any kind.
They continue to insist.
We strangle them with crippling sanctions, and that's getting us nowhere, because they're so religious that you just can't deal with these people with any other method than force.
And then this goes back to the question of regime change.
Now, I read a Tom Clancy book one time where they dropped one bomb on the Ayatollah's house, and they got a regime change in Iran with the snap of their fingers, and everything was great.
But nobody's really that idiotic to believe that.
You can't have a regime change from the air.
How many years would it take to bomb Iran before their government fell from it?
Yes, you're right.
And I think, you know, the Israeli position, I mean, really, the real Israeli position, as reflected in people like Reuel Marc Turek and David Wormser and others, is that, look, we're going to have to pound them many times with not nuclear weapons, but with very large-scale air attacks, and they're talking about American air attacks here, which would hit a wide range of targets and would kill a lot of Iranians.
I mean, that's part of the deal.
There's no question.
They're quite explicit about this.
That the notion of an American attack would be to kill massive numbers of civilians in the hope, the vain hope, obviously, that this would discredit the regime and somehow pave the way for, you know, getting a regime that the outsiders could control.
I mean, this is where things veer off into la-la land, clearly.
But I simply want to underline one point that we haven't talked about.
This is just, you know, to make sure that this is not forgotten.
Really, in the end, the idea of the Israelis carrying out an attack, which I'm not, again, I'm not dismissing totally.
I just want to put it in a broader context that makes it clear that it's not by any means the only possible outcome of this.
The Israelis have to believe that the Obama administration will be a full participant in it.
If the Obama administration is not going to go along with it, if they're going to say no to it and they're going to resist it, then the Israelis can't do it.
And so it does depend, in the end, on a reasonable degree of certainty that the Obama administration is not just going to go along with it but will join in, will actually carry out that bombing against Iran that would prevent the Iranians from having the ability to carry out continued retaliation against Israel and against American targets.
And so that's really a critical element in the Israeli calculation.
Well, in the Goldberg article, Gareth, Rahm Emanuel insists, and I think Goldberg says he's annoyed, when he insists that we told you all options remain on the table.
Why don't you believe us?
Yeah, and of course that is part of a very complex game that's going on between the Obama administration and the Israelis.
I mean, let's be clear, the Obama administration doesn't want the Israelis to attack.
I mean, that's very clear.
They are dead set against it in the sense that they know that it would be just the worst possible thing to happen to an Obama administration.
The price of oil spiking, not doubling or tripling, maybe quadrupling, quintupling, this is the kind of nightmare scenario that is an automatic trigger for the Obama administration to be telling the Netanyahu government no.
And then the only question is whether it has the cojones to follow through.
I don't know, Gareth.
All the great leaders get us into all the worst wars.
I mean, that's what a leader in trouble does, is get into a war, not stay out of one.
Well, I mean...
You're the historian.
You tell me.
I'm not suggesting that we know for absolute certainty what the administration is saying to the Israelis, but I think that there's pretty powerful reasons here for the Obama administration to do exactly what the U.S. military and the Pentagon have in the past said it must do, even in the Bush administration, which is say no to the Israelis.
And that's the real point, isn't it?
It comes down to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the commander of the Marine Corps saying no way.
Well, I mean, I think that's obviously another major reason, apart from the knowledge that this is going to be a huge spike in the oil price of oil and some further bad news economically to the United States.
All right.
Well, thanks again, Gareth.
My pleasure.
Everybody, that's the great Gareth Cordy.
You can find him at antiwar.com.
And he mentioned there he's working on a new one that's going to be really long and really in-depth, all about Israeli policy toward Iran over the last generation or so, he told me, before the show.
So keep your eyes open for that.
We'll be right back.