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 John Blazer, assistant editor at antiwar.com.
I was going to say the new guy, but not so much the new guy anymore.
How long has it been?
You've been with antiwar.com now, John?
In about a year, exactly.
Oh, one year.
Very good.
Well, you're a great addition to the site.
I sure am happy that you're there.
And everybody, you can read everything that John Blazer writes at antiwar.com/donate this week.
We're still working on our fun drive.
Now you can find all John Blazer at antiwar.com/blog, and also they're sharing news.antiwar.com with Jason Ditz 99% of the time anyway.
So yeah, welcome back.
Good to talk to you again.
Did I already say that?
How are you doing?
I'm doing pretty well.
I'm happy to be on again.
All right.
So let's talk about the Baghdad talks that fell apart last week.
At least they did decide that they're going to meet again in Moscow, but I wonder if you see any avenue, any amount of pressure that would push really anyone on our side, the Western side to try, or even the UN side to try to really make a deal with the Iranians here and put this issue to bed, or is this all just screwing around?
And so maybe Netanyahu can have a war next year or whatever.
You know, it seems to me like Washington will make a deal so long as it can appear like they've been bullying Iran and Iran simply gave up because it's a weak, you know, a country in the middle of nowhere.
And that's what, uh, that's the kind of perception that, that Washington actually wants for these talks.
I mean, they had the perfect, they had a chance to actually make a deal, uh, in, in the Baghdad talks, uh, but it was rejected, uh, that their deal was to, um, to offer Iran spare parts for airliners, which is silly.
Uh, and, and to, um, to give them some medical isotopes, which Iran is trying to produce by, by enriching uranium to 20%.
Uh, Iran said, well, you know, we should actually get something in return.
You should give us some time, some, uh, some easing of the economic sanctions, which are being keeped on us for no apparent reason, uh, since everyone knows that Iran is not developing the weapon, um, and the U S and the West said, no, okay, well, uh, it was a perfect opportunity, which was, uh, wasted by the P five plus one, or probably more accurately the U S and it's, and it's European allies.
Yeah.
Well, in Russia and China too, right?
It's the security council plus Germany, the permanent members of the security council.
I kind of, I've read some things that basically, uh, the people who are proposing these deals, which are blatantly unfair to Iran, um, are, are the U S and it's, and it's European allies, Russia and China are there.
To sort of ratify the whole process, but, um, the ones actually putting forth these things are the Western countries.
So the Russians and the Chinese, they don't have any alternative proposals or they don't really try to play a role as intermediary here.
My understanding is that they're sort of there because the P five plus one gives it, uh, legitimacy, but I don't think from, from what I've read, that they've been offering any deals or, or trying to, um, you know, advocate for one side or the other.
They're just sort of there to ratify things.
And hopefully I think they have, they have an interest in having a deal because, um, it'll have, you know, it might end with some less intervention than the U S intervention in the Middle East, but I don't see them actually making any deals now.
All right.
Now, when they show up and they announce that actually, no matter what you do, even the most obvious, reasonable thing in front of the whole world, we're just never going to lift the sanctions anyway.
Uh, that to me seemed really clumsy, uh, as sabotage, I guess that shouldn't really be the point.
Sabotage is the point, but it seemed like they could have found a more subtle poison pill for the thing than just showing up and saying, you know, we will accept nothing less than you crawling on your belly, which we know you'll never do.
Which is, you know, too damn obvious, uh, of who's being unreasonable in the situation.
They're supposed to be the crazy ones.
And yet we're the ones who are, uh, you know, separate from rationality.
Yeah.
You know, there's, there's a couple of things.
First of all, there is some talk among a lot of realists that try to analyze the interest on both sides.
What's often said is that the Obama administration does not have the necessary political space to reciprocate to Iranian concessions.
Uh, but that's a different way of saying the Obama administration doesn't feel like averting a war and feels like continuing on with this ridiculous charade of punishing Iran for doing something it hasn't done because he wants his political reputation to be sustained.
So he's, he's actually doing something extremely dangerous on the world stage, uh, just to protect his, his pretty little reputation and not get attacked by Republicans.
Yeah.
Well, and especially in this case, he's appeasing Benjamin Netanyahu and the Likud party that rules Israel, a foreign country.
That's right.
Well, and of course you have a piece just like that, where, uh, was there somebody, uh, with credentials who's new claims to know for sure, uh, what a former administration guy was it wrote in foreign policy that this is how we got the Afghanistan surge to it was all about Obama's domestic, uh, political prospects.
That's exactly right.
But that particular piece said that, um, this is from the editor of foreignpolicy.com.
I forget his name right now.
I'd have to look it up, but he, but he said that, um, that the Obama Obama himself was against the surge, but he was being, he was being, uh, pressured by certain military types and the Hawks in his administration to do the surge.
And he did it despite his reservations, uh, in order to not get attacked by Republicans for being weak at the same time that he was supposedly going to draw down the war, the war in Iraq.
Um, and we know that little story, that side story, but the point is, I mean, this, you know, some people use this as a point to, to absolve Obama for, you know, the, the failure in Afghanistan, like he was right all along, but all it does is just prove what a wimpy is.
He was afraid that they would call him a wimp.
So he backed down and coward and gave into all of their demands.
Right.
So, so to save Barack Obama's political reputation, uh, we wasted hundreds of hundreds, more billions of dollars in Afghanistan, uh, tens of thousands of additional, uh, civilian deaths, thousands of more, uh, us military deaths and NATO deaths.
Uh, I mean, we laid waste to that country in years of additional destruction so that Barack Obama couldn't get called a wimp by his Republican contenders.
I mean, it's really sad, but anyways, back to Iran.
You know, what's important here is that, cause I, there's a quirky aspect to these negotiations and these sanctions, which is perplexing if you don't understand the geopolitics, because on the one hand, everybody involved in these talks knows that Iran is not developing nuclear weapons now, and actually has demonstrated no intention to do so, uh, including the religious that, that the Ayatollah, uh, ruled against having or seeking nuclear weapons, um, everybody knows it.
So we're still launching sanctions against them and we're still engaging in these, in these nuclear talks, which have, which are supposed to be, you know, reassuring the world of the civilian nature of Iran's nuclear program, something we already know.
But of course, the whole point of this is not about nuclear proliferation, that the U S is not concerned with Iranian nuclear proliferation in terms of weapons.
What they're concerned with is being able to prevent Iran from having a deterrent so that they can continue with avenues for regime change.
Right.
Well, this is the piece, uh, right now at the blog, U.S.
Iran policy intended to leave open avenues for regime changing.
Hey, there's a big block quote that doesn't, uh, that's not just an assertion.
That's the state department line.
We'll be right back.
All right, y'all welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with John Glazer, assistant editor at antiwar.com.
He writes at news.antiwar.com and antiwar.com/blog.
Uh, this one is called U.S.
Iran policy intended to leave open avenues for regime change.
That last bit in quotes there.
Um, this is from the state department and, uh, this is really what we're working up to in the last segment there.
America's policy toward Iran.
Why the negotiations over their nuclear program that everybody in the whole world knows is not about nuclear weapons.
Um, et cetera.
Uh, why it can't seem to get off the ground or make any progress is because they want to leave open avenues for regime change do tell John.
Right.
So first of all, there's this issue of nuclear capability, uh, as opposed to having nuclear weapons or a nuclear weapons program, nuclear capability is often referred to as something that, that means Iran has the technological capability and the know-how to build a weapon, uh, quickly if it decides to do so.
Um, now that that's virtually true for, for, you know, most countries that, that develop any sort of civilian nuclear program, but that's what they call it.
That's what they refer to as nuclear capability.
Uh, and that's what the U S doesn't like.
It doesn't like the fact that within a certain amount of time, if the U S bullies Iran enough, uh, the Iranians could make a nuclear weapon.
Now I doubt that would ever happen, but their calculus is that that is too much power and authority to, to, you know, give to an adversary.
They, the, the state department, uh, thing that I, that I found from Joshua Landis, he's a sort of establishment, very respected, uh, associate professor of at university of Oklahoma.
His focus is on Syria, but a friend wrote to him who witnessed an encounter between an Iranian opposition activist and a U S state department official at a recent conference on Iran.
And what the state department official said is basically that he admitted that part of the calculus and keeping harsh economic sanctions on Iran is to prevent Iran from attaining nuclear capability.
Uh, not because of concerns about proliferation or because of concerns that it might use that weapon on Israel, which would never happen.
Um, but because it would hinder us efforts at regime change.
So for example, the U S cannot, uh, institute regime change in Pakistan.
Washington calculates because, uh, they have nuclear weapons.
Um, they, they might want to in Pakistan.
In fact, the conditions are perfect.
Pakistan and U S relationship is at its most Rocky right now, or it has been in years and, uh, they would, they would, you know, Pakistan would be on that list of potential places to institute regime change or full men to coup or so forth.
And that would be in our interest.
Um, and they can't do that with Iran, which is the last middle Eastern country, really, that we don't have, you know, authority and control over.
Um, so that's, what's really going on here.
And that's, that sort of explains not just why the sanctions are happening and not just why the negotiations are happening, but why the U S won't reach a deal that is viable and within reach, uh, because it wants to bully Iran and it wants to get no enrichment, uh, from Iran as opposed to the acceptable 20% enrichment levels or the 3.5% enrichment levels or anything like this.
So they've adopted Netanyahu's red line at the breakout capability.
That's exactly right.
The breakout capability, you know, I mean, previously, just a few months back, the administration was saying we won't ever let them have a nuclear weapon, rest And that was pushing the red line, you know, way further on the chain.
And then Netanyahu said, no, no, no, it should be the capability at all.
And then remember all the hype was that Obama had stood up to him, but I guess not.
Right.
And now the red line has changed for virtually everyone.
Republicans have led a very widely, uh, overwhelmingly passing, uh, uh, legislation in, in the house that says that, uh, Iran and the house and the Senate that says that Iran should not get nuclear capability.
And if it does, we'll use force and so forth.
Um, and, and, you know, this is important because what it shows is that as soon as it became obvious, as soon as it became impossible for people to deny the fact that Iran does not have nuclear weapons or a nuclear weapons program, right.
They had to shift the red line to something that Iran actually was doing, which is hilarious.
Cause it was Obama that put all those stories in the New York times about how everybody knows they're not really making nukes.
Exactly.
He actually expended a lot of political capital sending out his minions from James Clapper to Panetta to, uh, you know, Hillary Clinton to Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
He sent out all these people in a public relations campaign to make clear to people that no Iran is not developing nuclear weapons, despite the rhetoric you hear, and then the red lines shifted to do, to actually attack something that Iran is doing and which many countries are doing, which is developing civilian nuclear energy.
Right.
And see, here's the thing about all of this.
It's ridiculous.
You can't have a regime change in Iran.
Saddam Hussein tried to have a regime change in Iran one time.
And all the people who hated the fact that their country had just been taken over by the Ayatollah Khomeini line up to fight for him.
I mean, there's no way, just like in this story, uh, you know, the more you clamp down and the more you put sanctions on the, on the regime, you're, the more you take the ground out from under the opponents of the regime in the country.
And, you know, for various reasons, they lose their own resources and ability to focus on anything but surviving on a day-to-day basis.
But also people just rally around whoever is in charge of their security when they're being attacked by a foreign power.
Exactly.
I mean, as Gary Fick called it, he's a professor at Columbia University who has a focus on Iran.
He described the sanctions as economic warfare.
He said, it's a blockade.
It's virtually, it's virtually a declaration of war.
Now, if this happened to the United States or any of our allies, you can bet.
Um, we'd, we'd deem it totally unacceptable for harsh crippling economic sanctions to happen, uh, while no, no crimes have been committed.
Uh, and, and we're not in, you know, in violation of any international laws.
All right.
Now tell me quickly about Syria here.
We don't have too much time to talk about it, but first of all, uh, Jason did says this thing here at news.antiwar.com UN report on Hula massacre conflicts with rebel accounts, fewer than 20 killed by regime artillery.
Really?
Is that, this is the gigantic scandal.
The last couple of days, including the fake, uh, BBC picture where they took an old Iraqi picture from 2003 of a mass grave and all this.
Yeah.
What I understand that, that piece to mean is that, uh, there's a, there's a question about how much, how many people were killed by artillery, like bombing that building and how many people were killed by, uh, shooting and knifing.
Cause a lot of people were dead in the building before, before, uh, any of the artillery went down, but yeah, I mean, that, that proves again, how poor an analysis it is when we rely on, you know, the conventional narrative in Syria.
But even if you accept the conventional narrative in Syria, um, you know, military intervention would be still just, it would worsen the conflict.
I'm glad that the white house has come out and said the military act that they oppose military action in Syria.
They have said that, and I'll, I'll give Obama a nice little pat on the back for that, back for that.
Unfortunately, though, no, that just scares me.
That means the war's going to start anytime now.
Well, that, that could happen because they do keep warning about that.
They say, uh, further atrocities could mean that the military option comes to the fore as opposed to being on the back burner, which it is now.
But even so that pat on the back means nothing because Obama's policies right now currently are acting to prolong the conflict.
I mean, I've been saying for months, well, they're not even shy about it's running in the Washington post that yeah, we're bankrolling the rebels as best we can, arming them and everything else.
Just like Phil said months ago, back in December, they only, they, they only admit, you know, themselves coming out of their own mouth that they're sending non-lethal aid.
But it's well known by now when it published in the Washington post and elsewhere that the United States is coordinating, uh, military assistance and arms with the Persian Arab Gulf, uh, uh, countries that are, that were allied with, uh, that, you know, and funneling them to the opposition in, in Syria.
Now, I've said for months that foreign meddling in Syria is prolonging the conflict.
I mean, support for the, well, and you think about it too, in context, you know, when, when America used Israel to sell missiles to the Ayatollah in the 1980s, uh, to Iran during Iran Contra, nobody, you know, pretended that that wasn't the same thing as America selling missiles to Iran.
You know what I mean?
It just meant that the Israelis were guilty too.
So using Qatar as a cutout doesn't mean a damn thing.
That's right.
Yeah, exactly.
The fact that we have to do it through the Persian Gulf allies means that it's, uh, it's an embarrassment for the Obama administration to do it.
So it's even more, it's just even a greater indication that, uh, that they're guilty of something.
Well, let's hope it doesn't get too much worse, at least, uh, you know, on the American side of the thing.
Anyway, might have to get worse before it gets better there.
Uh, thanks, John.
Appreciate it as always.
All right.
Bye-bye.
That's John Glazer, everybody.
News.antiwar.com, antiwar.com/blog, antiwar.com/donate.
