05/04/10 – Joe Lauria – The Scott Horton Show

For Antiwar.com and Chaos Radio 95.9 in Austin, Texas, I'm Scott Horton.
This is Antiwar Radio.
And we're going straight to our first guest.
It's the great independent investigative freelance journalist, Joe Loria, who is one of three who wrote this new piece, this news report at the Wall Street Journal with Jonathan Weissman and Jay Solomon called U.S. Revises Tech on Mideast Arms.
And as you may know, right now is the, I don't know, sixth or seventh, I forget, review conference for the Nonproliferation Treaty going on at the U.N. building in New York.
Our expert there on Rockefeller Land and Joe Loria is on the phone from the U.N. building right now.
Hi, Joe.
How are you doing?
I'm fine, Scott.
How are you doing?
I'm doing great.
I really appreciate you joining us back on the show.
No problem.
It's the eighth review conference.
Eighth NPT review conference.
Okay, so, first of all, Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
What's that about?
I'll tell you.
First, whatever I say is my own view.
As you say, I'm an independent freelance, whether it appeared in the Wall Street Journal or anywhere else.
The Nonproliferation Treaty went into force in 1970.
It was first concluded in 68, took two years for it to go into force.
What it does is strike a bargain between the countries that have nuclear weapons at the time or declare them.
And those are the five countries that happen also to be the five permanent members of the Security Council.
That would be the U.S., Britain, Russia, France, and China.
The three countries that are the depositories of this treaty are the U.S., Britain, and Russia.
The five countries that had weapons, that declared the weapons, agreed to disarm.
They would move towards eliminating their nuclear stockpiles completely.
The countries that did not have nuclear weapons at the time promised not to pursue them.
And they would also be allowed to, however, develop nuclear technology for civilian purposes.
And the countries that had the technology were to help them with the transfer of technology with money.
That's been the great bargain.
Now, how has it worked?
Over the last, now, 40 years, and every five years, I have a review conference at the UN in New York.
This is the eighth one after 40 years, to look back and see, well, is this thing being done?
Now, China, Russia, France, the United States, and Britain, of course, still have their nuclear arsenals.
They have not moved towards disarmament.
In the meantime, in those 40 years, several other countries have gained possession of nuclear weapons.
That is India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel.
India, Pakistan, and Israel are not members of the NPT.
So they are not obliged to disarm or to not get nuclear weapons.
They're outside the NPT.
Of course, there's a lot of effort.
Over the years, the United States wants these countries, including Israel, to join, but they haven't.
The other country, being North Korea, has been an NPT member, and they develop nuclear weapons, and they announced when they were about to be punished for this, and they have been with sanctions, that they were going to withdraw from the NPT, which you are allowed to do, but there's a long legal process to that, which they haven't gone through.
So they've announced it.
It's a de facto withdrawal, so they're no longer in.
So on this 40th year anniversary of this treaty and the 8th review conference, the United States, under a new administration, has gone in to try to tell the world, look, we're not the Bush administration.
Five years ago, this same review conference collapsed.
There wasn't even an agreed agenda after four weeks.
This was a month-long conference that began Monday at the UN building.
There wasn't even an agenda.
The U.S. had no interest in talking about disarmament.
They didn't put any interest in these nuclear-free zones.
There are five of them around the world, including in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, and the U.S. has, back in 1995, under the Clinton administration, a resolution to create, and this is what this Wall Street Journal piece was about, to create an additional nuclear-free zone in the world, and that would be in the Middle East, and the Bush administration had absolutely no interest in this whatsoever, but the Obama administration has now revived that.
So what has the Obama administration done that's different?
Two main things.
One, that they are reviving the idea of a Mideast nuclear-free zone, and two, they are trying to show the countries without nuclear weapons that have, justifiably argued over the last 40 years, that the nuclear-weapon states have not done anything really significant to disarm.
So why shouldn't we pursue weapons, or why should we uphold our side of the bargain?
This has been, obviously, a leading argument of the Iranians.
And so what has the Obama administration done?
They have had several conferences in the last month.
First of all, they signed the START treaty, reduction treaty, with the Russians, so both Russia and the U.S. can argue that they are moving towards disarmament.
We'll take a look at that in a second, whether that's really true or not.
They also had this conference in Washington, as you know, this summit against nonproliferation, specifically looking at nuclear weapons or technology getting into the hands of terrorist groups.
And now they've gone into this NPT, announcing for the first time, Hillary Clinton did yesterday, Secretary of State, the number of warheads the U.S. actually possesses.
This had always been classified information throughout the entire Cold War.
And she announced that the U.S. now has 5,113, because that's the exact number, of warheads.
And since 1991, 8,000 have been destroyed.
She says this is the same level that we had in the 1950s, when you might recall, Scott, was the missile gap, the bomb gap, and it was pretty, you know, kind of the height of the Cold War.
So we've gone back to what it was like in the 50s.
Now what about these 8,000?
Well, I'm not an expert on this, but experts say that these were probably obsolete weapons, and maybe these 5,000 that we have can do as much damage around the world, more than the 13,000 we may have had before 1991.
But there is a reduction, and they're making this argument.
They're trying to disarm, if you will, the argument by the Iranians and others that the U.S. and the other nuclear states are not disarming.
Now French President Sarkozy has made it clear France is not giving up their weapons, so it's not an across-the-board thing by any means.
All right, well, now we've gotten quite a bit to sink our teeth into here.
First of all, Barack Obama is implying that Israel has nuclear weapons.
He's calling for a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East, and this is contrary to the long-standing policy.
Or isn't this contrary to the long-standing policy of strategic ambiguity, and at least in the West we pretend like it's a secret that Israel is armed with nuclear weapons?
Well, now we're talking about policy ambiguity here, exactly what is he saying.
If you recall at his very, very first press conference ever, when he'd just been elected, and his very first question that he ever took, which he gave back to Helen Thomas, she asked him, could he name one state in the Middle East that has nuclear weapons?
And he could not come up with one.
Just couldn't think of one.
In 1995, and again now, they've actually been able to do this kind of diplomatic gymnastics that they could talk about a nuclear-free zone without admitting at all it has a nuclear arsenal.
It was pointed out to me by the Egyptian ambassador last week at a luncheon with a bunch of reporters.
I said to him, frankly, this is a non-starter, because you're going to have to admit publicly, the U.S. would and others, that Israel has an arsenal if you want a nuclear-free zone.
And he showed me a book.
It was a commission, a congressional commission, with the usual suspects like Sam Nahon and Colin, former defense secretary of these people.
Not Albright this time, surprisingly.
They did a study, and in the back of the book, in an index in the annex of the book, they say that Israel has 100 to 200 nuclear weapons.
This is not the Congress, this is the commission.
By the way, I talked to Daniel Ellsberg on this show, and he says that Mordecai Ben-Nunu says to him that Israel has at least 600 nuclear weapons, and that that includes hydrogen thermonuclear weapons.
Yeah, well, why would Ben-Nunu be in house arrest if they didn't have them?
Obviously, they've got them.
But the U.S. doesn't have to admit it.
And I asked at a press conference on Monday, Ambassador Susan Rice, the U.N. ambassador, that was answered by Elsher, who's the U.S. Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and Disarmament, can you do the question you asked me?
How can you ask for the zone if you're not going to declare publicly that Israel has a weapon?
And they just dodged the question.
But interestingly, in that story, in the Wall Street Journal, there's an Israeli official who quoted this saying, we would like to someday give up our, you know, have a nuclear-free zone.
He didn't say give up a weapon, he said we'd like to see a nuclear-free zone.
What does that tell you?
I don't know.
I mean, there was an interesting story, you may have already discussed it, which was each given by Mir Sheimer, John Mir Sheimer, the other day, at the Palestine Center in Washington.
No, I saw it, but we haven't discussed it yet.
The new Afrikaners.
He really lays out a very disturbing future choices for Israel.
As the population of Israeli Arabs grows, he says they either face, and this is purely his speculation, that Israel either ethnically cleanse their area and the West Bank of Palestinian Arabs so they can remain a Jewish state, or there's a sort of formal legal apartheid where Arabs inside living in Israel would not get to vote, so that they can maintain a majority.
Because if it's a majority Arab population, they'll obviously vote for it.
An Arab party, an Arab government, and it'll cease to be Israel.
And it's a parallel, in a way, where, and he calls these American Jews and Israelis who would support that apartheid, the new Afrikaners.
And it's an interesting parallel, because as you know, South Africa is the only state to have possessed nuclear weapons.
I should have mentioned them in that.
Those countries that have gotten the treaty had come to effect.
South Africa had nuclear weapons, and they gave them up.
Yeah, and interestingly, actually developed them under the nose of the IAEA and got away with it.
They got away with it.
And why did they give them up, and when did they give them up?
When the whites lost power.
Yeah.
They didn't want to turn the nuclear weapons over to the blacks.
Exactly.
They saw it writing on the wall that the ANC was going to gain power, and they didn't want blacks.
Maybe they would give it to other African governments.
They didn't want it to fall into the hands of the ANC.
So they gave them up.
And, of course, they tried to say that they were peace-loving and all that, but that's probably the main reason they gave it up, although they don't admit it.
And Becky has made that statement.
It makes a lot of sense.
Well, if the writing was on the wall, if Ben Shimon's horrific vision of the future of Israel should come true, and Israel became an apartheid state, he then says that it will end because the public pressure, the American Jews in particular in the lobby, would not be able to support that because they're Americans and they have American values, and eventually the world's condemnation of apartheid ended apartheid in South Africa.
He thinks the same would happen in Israel.
Again, keep in mind this is purely hypothetical.
And at that point maybe Israel would have to give up their nuclear weapons because they would fall into the hands of the Arabs.
This is, again, purely hypothetical.
Yeah, not as long as the Likud is in power.
I think Netanyahu would just line up the caterpillars and drive them all into Jordan or even nuke the West Bank before he let them take over Israel.
Well, Netanyahu said that they just would not be able to get away with a nuclear weapon like that, except in the midst of a general war in the region.
Right, exactly.
I mean, that's what he said.
I'm just quoting from the speech.
When I read that speech, and when I was researching this story for the journal, I just put two and two together, and I thought, if they're going to compare it to South Africa, if South Africa gave up the bomb, maybe that's for Israel.
But as far as the U.S. does not have to declare Israel to have a nuclear weapon to call for a nuclear-free zone.
Right.
Well, you do say in the piece here that I think the anonymous Obama administration officials that you guys quote tell you that, well, you know, we'd have to do the two-state solution first.
This would be all hinging on a final peace proposal deal worked out between the Israelis and the Palestinian Authority, and then we can work on a nuclear agreement.
So, good luck, man.
Talk to you about it in about how many years from now.
So, going back to Mishra for a moment, he declares the two-state solution dead.
It's not going to happen.
He's probably not alone in thinking that.
But that's exactly right.
That is the U.S. position.
We deal with the Arab-Israeli conflict, we get a deal there, and then we can talk about our zone.
So, in other words, Israel gets to keep them until there's a settlement.
That's what the Americans are saying there, without saying it publicly.
Now, I think it's worth pointing out that in the Axis of Evil speech, Bush basically set the policy.
Well, Perl and Frum and Gerson set the policy.
Bush read their script.
And the way it worked out in practice, it seems like to me, is that by invading Iraq, which the IAEA had verified had no nuclear program of any description whatsoever, but just basically steamrolling into Buffalo.
I'm sorry?
Not by 2003, that's correct.
Right, right.
Yeah, I mean, they'd been back in the country for six months before the invasion.
But the Bush government, they just Buffaloed full steam ahead right in there.
It doesn't matter.
The American people never heard of Mohammed al-Baradai, and we're going to do this anyway.
So they got that done.
But then at the same time, they beat the North Koreans over the head with a secret uranium enrichment program that has never been proven to have existed ever.
But it was enough to get them to withdraw from the nonproliferation treaty, kick the IAEA out, and begin making nuclear weapons out of plutonium from their old Russian reactor, their old Soviet-era reactor.
And then the Iranians said, Look, our hands are up.
Our books are wide open.
We'll even sign your additional protocol for a little while.
And they basically said, Hey, don't shoot.
We're not doing nothing.
And we continue to beat them over the head.
Hillary Clinton yesterday, of course, accused them of violating the nonproliferation treaty when what she meant to say was they're in violation of U.N.
Security Council resolutions that have nothing to do with the nonproliferation treaty whatsoever.
So it seems to me like the message is that if you're the dictator pango-pango or whatever, that the most important thing is to get a nuke to keep the Americans out.
Otherwise, they say this is all anti-proliferation effort.
But it seems like the number one thing that could possibly be motivating politicians anywhere in the world to think that maybe they really do need some atom bombs to keep the U.S. out.
Well, if you listen to the speech by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad yesterday at the General Assembly in New York, you will see that the first ten minutes of the speech is a very cogent argument for why Iran needs and should be pursuing a nuclear weapon, although he denies that they're doing so.
He says it's a shameful, disgusting thing to have them and to use them.
But his argument basically is, look, Israel and the United States, both nuclear states, are continuously making bellicose things against my country.
And he didn't even mention that the United States has invaded and occupied the country to the east, Afghanistan, and to the west, Iraq.
So they're surrounded on the west and the east by American-occupied countries with American troops.
Yeah, and in the Persian Gulf is the Navy.
And there is the U.S. making bellicose statements against Iran and Israel as well.
So I am no supporter or fan of the Iranian regime by any means at all.
I think Ahmadinejad does a disservice to his own interests by his clownish opinion at times.
The last statement he makes, I think, to Ayatollah and his fascist besiege guys running around on motorcycles with wooden sticks.
They're not anywhere near friends of democracy.
On the other hand, from the point of view of the Iranians, I think it's understandable why they would seek a nuclear weapon.
And I asked Hillary Clinton yesterday at her press conference to respond to Ahmadinejad's charge that the United States was threatening Iran.
I said, does he have any legitimate reason to think that?
And if he does, is the tough rhetoric just driving him closer to trying to get a bomb?
And she said, oh, I can't even begin to think, to understand how they think.
I can't speak for them.
So I just followed up and said, is the United States threatening Iran?
And she wouldn't answer the question.
But she did say that they made an effort, they had an open hand, not a closed fist.
And Iran has rejected all these overtures, including the low-interest uranium deal.
And there's some truth to that.
I don't think you could deny that the Iranians are not easy to deal with or to negotiate.
One reason being there's a lot of confusion, I think, within the Iranian leadership about who's actually in charge, who makes decisions.
It could be that Geneva may agree to this uranium deal, which would be that Iran would give up 90%, I think, of its already enriched uranium to go out to Russia to be further enriched, and then sent to France to be made into isotopes to be used in a reactor, a medical research reactor in Tehran.
The idea of that would be that it would set back any attempt by Iran to enrich uranium to a bomb-grade fuel for by about a year.
And that was originally agreed to in Geneva, and then they changed their minds once the negotiators got back to Tehran, and the whole thing was debated there.
So the Iranians are not easy to deal with.
But I think a good diplomat would want to put yourself in the shoes of your adversary, and I think the United States should see Iran's desire to get a bomb based on the fact that they feel threatened.
And who's threatening whom?
The Israelis feel threatened by their program.
Who's threatened?
If it's chicken and egg, who's threatened first?
Right.
Well, yeah, absolutely it is.
But, you know, it seems like as long as you're getting questions fired off at Hillary Clinton, I got one.
Is it or is it not the case that the IAEA has continued to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material to a military or other special purpose 500 million times by now?
Is it the case or is it not the case that every atom of uranium in Iran is accounted for and none of it is weapons-grade 90-plus percent, and there is no evidence anywhere in the world, is there, Ms. Clinton, that they have a secret parallel program of any kind?
You're just trying to get us to be scared of a safeguarded nuclear program.
Well, look, you're right in saying they haven't violated the NPT unless it's absolutely proven that they're developing a nuclear weapon.
But what the IAEA has done is said that they're not answering, and this is under ElBaradei, not under Amano, the new guy, who's considered a little bit more U.S.
-friendly than ElBaradei was, that they have not answered all the questions.
They've left too many questions unanswered.
It's a very important point, too, though, Joe, is that that is not about their safeguards agreement.
That has nothing to do with their safeguards agreement.
They're not in violation of their safeguards agreement.
This is a whole separate track investigation mandated by the Security Council to verify what's under every grain of sand in Iran to answer every question that they can possibly come up with.
Well, the IAEA referred the case to the Security Council, if I believe that right.
It wasn't initiated by the Security Council.
They were asked.
They weren't satisfied by the answers.
They raised suspicion.
There is no absolute proof, but they have not answered the question.
So they have been asked to suspend their enrichment until we find out what they're doing, until the Security Council finds out what they're doing.
You're right.
That is not a violation until it's proven of the NPT.
Now, you know, I wish I had the...
I know you had Scott Ritter some time ago, and there was a whole long discussion about the Additional Protocol, and I interviewed in depth a spokesman for the IAEA, and he explained to me, and I don't...
You know, it's a very complicated issue, that Iran did, in fact, agree to stay in the Additional Protocol, and they couldn't withdraw the way they said they did.
I don't know if I want to even open up this discussion, but there's a lot of debate about whether they...
Well, the thing is, it would be like if the U.S. Senate had refused to ratify the NPT, and the world said, well, but, you know, Bill Clinton said he was going to go along with it.
Sorry, that's not how the law works in this country.
It's not a treaty until the Senate ratifies it.
The Iranians were only voluntarily abiding by the unratified Additional Protocol, as long as they were in good faith agreements with the E3, good faith negotiations, which, of course, were not good faith, which was still just a front for Condoleezza Rice, etc., insisting you may not reach uranium at all, at safeguarded facilities or anywhere else.
Well, the issue then becomes, will Iran be allowed by the United States and Israel to develop a nuclear weapon?
As you know, the lead story in the Foreign Affairs magazine of...
Well, that's kind of begging the question as to whether they're even trying or even wanting.
Dennis Blair says he has no evidence they even want to yet.
One thing I think was Albarrade's belief was that they wanted to get up to capability but not do it, just so they would be able to.
The breakout, the breakout capability.
I agree with that, but I don't see what's so scandalous about that.
I mean, it's simply another step to negotiate from, but it's hardly an existential threat to anything.
Well, Israel does see it as an existential threat.
Are they going to pressure the United States to respond?
Well, the best I understand is, John, I could be wrong about this, but I don't understand how in the world the Iranians could make a bomb unless they did like North Korea, withdrew from the treaty and announced to the world, we're making a bomb now.
Because, again, all the uranium is accounted for.
I don't know.
There's a lot of gray area here.
That's why when you hear threatening statements from both sides, it's extremely worrying, because it's not a clear-cut situation.
I think we're establishing that.
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
And, of course, when you watch it on TV, any discussion, if this is 10th grade, any discussion on TV is 4th or 5th grade level discussion.
There's an Iranian nuclear bomb threat.
What are we going to do, bomb them or just starve them all to death?
And there's no question of the detail at all.
It's all just blind, baseless assertions and half-truths.
Yeah.
Diplomacy is about avoiding war and the situation, and I think part of being a good diplomat is imagining, seeing the world as your adversary does and trying to get down and work something out and engage real engagement.
Now, that deal in October was a step to build confidence.
It's fallen through, unfortunately, and that seems to be the end of it now.
Now they're going for these sanctions, and this is the next step.
So the Iranians are trying to revive this interest again in the LEU because they saw the Chinese were getting on board to discuss new sanctions, so they're worried.
So they're trying to revive that, but the U.S. has rejected it.
First of all, one reason they've rejected it is because, by now, they've been able to enrich more uranium, so sending the amount they originally agreed to send out wouldn't really have the same effect.
This is what I understand.
So now we're talking about sanctions.
That's the next step, and that could happen in June next month.
Well, I'm glad I'm not a politician, but if I was, I think the solution is obvious.
If I was the president, it would simply be, look, we've got to deal with Benjamin Netanyahu.
He's a paranoid schizophrenic, and he's armed to the teeth with hydrogen bombs.
So in order to placate him, how about this?
You guys tear down the Natanz facility, tear down your reactors and your nuclear program, and we'll give you a 100% security guarantee that we won't attack you and we won't let Israel attack you.
Deal?
Sounds like they'd accept it to me, but that's just me.
I don't know.
I don't know.
All right.
Well, anyway, listen, Joe, you're a great reporter.
I really appreciate it.
You have no idea.
Well, I'm sure you do know the shockwaves that were sent around the world when this thing hit the Wall Street Journal the other day.
No, I'm not aware of that.
Were there shockwaves around the world?
Really?
Well, all over antiwar.com anyway.
It was certainly the top headline there.
And, yeah, I mean, I saw it passed around at least on a little Facebook and whatever, for whatever that counts.
I mean, for the Americans to even imply that there's such a thing as an Israeli nuclear weapons stockpile that needs to be dealt with one way or another someday is a giant breakthrough, even though everyone's known for generations that they stole enriched uranium from Pennsylvania and made bombs out of it back in the 60s or whatever.
It is only an implication.
They have not declared it.
I mean, they only did this in 95.
So, anyway, I don't think it's a point of contention when Israel likes a settlement, for example, between the Obama and Netanyahu administrations.
Israel says they want to have a nuclear-free zone someday, too.
So it's really a diplomatic move on the U.S. part to try to get agreement from the non-nuclear states and the non-aligned movement in Egypt, which is leading the non-aligned movement, and the Arab League.
And I go to the Arab League and the Egyptians.
This is what the Wall Street Journal story advanced, that the negotiations were going on.
It was confirmed by Tauscher, then the Secretary of State for Disarmament Affairs.
So, therefore, it's really part of the U.S. move here at this conference to show we're disarming with the Russians, and we're trying to go and get a nuclear-free zone in Israel and the Middle East.
And that's really, I think, behind this, frankly.
I don't expect it to happen anytime soon.
Yeah.
Well, listen, we're both late, and we're out of time to discuss the START Treaty.
But, Joe, I'd like to talk with you about the START Treaty even later this week sometime, or next week, or sometime soon, if possible.
Okay.
Sure.
All right.
Great.
Hey, thanks a lot.
I really appreciate your time.
All the best, now.
Bye.
Everybody, that's the great Joe Lauria.
He's an independent freelance journalist.
You might remember him from the three-part series that he helped write for the London Times about the Sabel Edmonds story back in 2007.
His most important article, co-written here with Jonathan Weissman and Jay Solomon at the Wall Street Journal, is called U.S. Revises TAC on Mideast Arms.
Hey, everybody.
Scott Horton here for LibertyStickers.com.
Admit it.
Our public debate has been reduced to reading each other's bumper stickers.
So stop by LibertyStickers.com.
We've got more than a thousand anti-government, anti-war stickers for you to choose from, including The Right is Wrong, The Left is Stupid, Iraq, America's West Bank, Detain Eric Holder, Only Liars and Cowards Want War with Iran, Empire, Welfare for the Rich, War for the Poor.
I wish I could go back in time to murder Woodrow Wilson.
Old Right, New Left, Unite Against Empire.
And steroids are good when cops take them.
Fight back while you still can.
LibertyStickers.com.
Everyone else's stickers suck.