For Antiwar.com and Chaos Radio 95.9 in Austin, TX, I'm Scott Horton, and this is Antiwar Radio.
All right, so now to our next guest.
It's Mohamed Sahimi.
He's a professor of chemical engineering and materials science at the NIOC at the University of Southern California, has published extensively on Iran's nuclear program and its political developments.
Welcome back to the show, Mohamed.
How are you doing?
I'm not too bad.
It's great to be back in your program, Scott.
Well, I'm happy to have you here.
And everybody, you can find Mohamed's articles at original.antiwar.com slash Sahimi, which is S-A-H-I-M-I, original.antiwar.com slash Sahimi.
And I'm looking at sanctions only hurt ordinary Iranians.
Well, too obvious, too true and too relevant.
Because as this article begins on Thursday, January the 28th, the Senate approved legislation that allows the president to impose sanctions on any entity that exports gasoline to Iran or help expand its refining capacity by denying them loans from American financial institutions.
A largely similar legislation has already been passed by the House of Representatives.
All right, so tell us about exactly what's in here.
Basically, is it as simple as that?
They're going to put or at least the president is now authorized to blockade all refined petroleum into Iran?
Well, there was a resolution in 2008 that was pushed by AIPAC.
They wanted to impose gasoline sanctions on Iran so that Iran would not import the extra gasoline that it needs.
Iran has a lot of oil but doesn't have enough refining capacity.
And over the past several years, it has had to import up to 40 percent of its gasoline consumption.
So in 2008, there was this resolution pushed by AIPAC, American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee, that would impose a gasoline sanction.
But it would also enforce it in the sense that it would use U.S. naval forces in the Persian Gulf in order to prevent any country to send its gasoline to Iran.
And of course, that would have led to war, and that's why AIPAC was forced to withdraw it.
The new resolution authorizes the president to punish those companies, especially a company in Switzerland that is basically an intermediate between the Iranian government and some other oil companies, to sell gasoline to Iran.
And it also prevents any company to help Iran to expand its refining capacity.
Iran is already building at least one new refinery in Iran, and another one is in the planning stage.
So within two or three years, Iran will have at least one more new refinery, and that would basically address a large fraction of the gasoline that Iran needs to import.
But at the same time, the resolution is bad because it imposes hardship on ordinary Iranians on one hand.
And as I explained in the article, it also helps the hardliner to have a tighter grip on what's going on in Iran.
The Iranian Revolutionary Guards have actually started to control a large part of the Iranian economy, including oil and gas.
Therefore, any type of sanctions on gasoline, oil, and gas will actually hurt ordinary Iranians, but also help the Revolutionary Guards to have tighter control because they control everything.
They benefit on one hand because it increases the price of everything in Iran, and they benefit economically.
And on the other hand, it helps them to say, look, foreign countries are imposing sanctions on us.
This sanction is not, let's say, on weapons or anything.
It is on everyday stuff that we need, from food to gasoline to oil and so on, if it gets to that.
And therefore, we need to rally against all these foreign powers.
And therefore, let's forget about what's happening within Iran, all the political developments, all the push for democracy, and so on.
So at this stage, any sort of economic sanctions that have to do with what ordinary Iranians need in their daily lives will not only hurt them economically, but it will also push back people's struggle for democracy in Iran.
And that's why this resolution is so bad at this point.
Amazing.
Well, first of all, the economic point that you make there is pretty compelling, and I guess I wouldn't expect anybody in Congress or the State Department to understand anything about this.
But if they ban exports or try to put some kind of blockade to prevent anyone from exporting refined petroleum products to Iran, then that simply means that all the prices for petroleum products in Iran will go through the roof.
And it will be the IGRC who benefit, who get to make even more money for the same amount of work, just like when Dick Cheney bombs Iraq and drives up the price for Exxon.
Precisely.
And what really bothers me about it is that the sponsors of such resolutions, on one hand, they say, well, we want to help the great Iranian people to push for democracy and have a democratic government, because that will be good for the Middle East, and then turn around and try to impose tough sanctions on Iran that will hurt the same people that they claim to be wanting to help in order for Iran to become democratic.
Well, the two of them don't go hand in hand.
They're mutually exclusive.
If we want Iranian people to be able to push the hardliners in Iran, to move towards a democratic system, we cannot do anything that, first of all, hurts them economically, and secondly, gives the hardliner an excuse to rally people against the foreign powers and foreign governments who are imposing those sanctions and finding a justification for their rule in Iran, and try to get people to forget about what's happening within the country and instead concentrate on the foreign threat.
The two of them don't go hand in hand.
Well, of course, if the US was successful in really disrupting their energy supplies inside the country in terms of oil resources, then all that is, is more pressure on them to focus on nuclear power.
Oh, exactly.
And you see, that's another aspect, because one of the reasons they have always, in the West, they have always presented against Iran's nuclear program is that, hey, Iran has a lot of natural gas and oil.
Why does it need nuclear energy?
Fine, if that's the argument, then let the Iranian natural gas and oil industry to develop.
But it cannot be developed unless there is foreign investment, unless there is no sanctions, and so on.
So, on one hand, we say, you have a lot of oil and gas, you don't need nuclear energy.
On the other hand, we say, we don't like you, so we are going to impose all these sanctions against you.
So, you are not going to be able to use your oil and gas, therefore, you have to move towards nuclear energy.
I mean, this is just a maddening sort of argument that they always use against Iran, and I don't understand it.
Well, I mean, it depends on which way you analyze it from.
I mean, as you well know, the enemy of the war party in America is the moderates in Iran.
And if there's an alternative, you know, even just another Rafsanjani or Khatami who comes to power, who seems like a reasonable face who can be dealt with, well, that really screws up the plans of the war party, who much prefer to focus on Ahmadinejad, the same way that when it was Rafsanjani and Khatami, they focused on the Ayatollah Khamenei, because, you know, whichever is the scarier boogeyman.
And that's why, of course, it makes sense.
The degree of truth behind it, I don't really know.
I don't know if it's clear to you the degree to which the CIA is attempting to influence the Green Revolution or help it there.
But even the implication that America is helping the Green Revolution in Iran degrades the value of that Green Revolution immeasurably and makes them just seem like puppets and helps to further marginalize them.
So, rather than getting a color-coded revolution, we're just solidifying the power of Ahmadinejad and hardliners like him.
I have no doubt that the CIA and the Israeli Mossad try to manipulate the Green Movement in Iran.
There is no question that they would do their best in order to be able to have influence there.
But at the same time, I believe that the Green Movement in Iran is largely indigenous.
It is out of the fact that the Iran presidential election of June 12 was basically stolen.
Now, since you mentioned Rafsanjani and Khatami, let me just point out two things.
Back in the 1990s, when Rafsanjani was the president, Iran invited foreign oil companies to come in and develop Iran's offshore oil fields.
The true winner of the betting process was a European oil company.
But because Rafsanjani wanted to improve Iran and the United States' relationship, the government awarded the contract for the development of that offshore field to Conoco, the American oil company Conoco.
Then President Clinton not only prevented Conoco to go into Iran and develop the offshore oil field, but also imposed total sanctions on Iran.
So, the gesture on Rafsanjani's part, who is one of the moderate figures within the Iranian government, was rebuffed.
Then when Khatami was president, and everybody was talking about Iran's nuclear program, Khatami agreed to suspend Iran's uranium enrichment program.
And in fact, Iran did do that from October of 2003 to February of 2006.
In return, the United States and European countries were supposed to propose to Iran economic incentives and other ways so that Iran would benefit from suspension of its uranium enrichment program.
But Iran got nothing.
It just got some vague promises in the distant future that if Iran does this and if Iran does that, we may do this or we may do that.
In other words, what they wanted to do was they wanted Iran to give up a solid fact on the ground, which was Iran's uranium enrichment program and facility in return for some vague promises.
And of course, Iran has a long history of dealing with Western powers and Russia, whereby they make all sorts of promises to Iran, and they never deliver on those promises.
And the only thing they want is to get Iran to do this or to do that or to give up this or to give up that.
So, two moderate figures within the Iranian political establishment, Rafsanjani in the 1990s and Khatami from 1997 to 2005, tried to improve the relationship with the United States.
But as you pointed out, this is not what the war party in the United States wants.
The war party in the United States wants war with Iran, and they don't settle for anything less than that.
There was an article by Robert Kagan, the so-called brain behind the Iraq invasion, in the Washington Post, where he sheds crocodile tears for Iranians about how they are trying to make a new Iranian revolution and make Iran democratic.
And then, in order to aid that process, he proposes to impose tough sanctions on Iran.
This is the type of war party mentality that we have to deal with in this country.
And as you said, they love to have Ahmadinejad, or a figure like Ahmadinejad, in power, because that justifies whatever they want to do to Iran.
And they don't have any interest in having a moderate, reformist, forward-looking leadership emerge to Iran to move Iran toward a more open society, a more democratic state, which would benefit everybody in the Middle East, and it would also be in the true national interest of the United States.
Since I'm on radio, I'm Scott Horton, and I'm talking with Mohammad Sahimi.
He's a professor at USC and writes for Antiwar.com, and we're talking about his recent article, Sanctions Only Hurt Ordinary Iranians.
And this is the part of the show where your Libertarian host says, thank God for the Red Chinese, because basically, Hillary Clinton is trying to push the Congressional version of these sanctions through the United Nations Security Council, and China is saying, no.
Yeah, China is not interested in these sanctions for several reasons.
First of all, China imports a lot of oil from the Middle East, and China considers Iran basically a strategic prize in that area.
Saudi Arabia is closely allied with the United States.
Other Arab countries on the Persian Gulf do have oil, but not enough of it, and therefore Iran, with its huge oil reservoir, the third largest oil reserve in the world, is a strategic prize as far as China is concerned.
China has signed agreements with Iran to invest in Iran's natural gas and oil industry.
If all the projects that they have agreed on to work on actually are carried out, the total investment would be worth close to $100 billion, which is a very large sum.
At the same time, China is not interested in having Iran going back to the American influence domain, because that would basically complete a chain of countries next to China, Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq, that would be basically allied with the United States, and the United States could use it to monitor what China does.
Remember, Afghanistan has a small common border with China, so the United States' presence in Afghanistan also gives it the ability to monitor what China does.
So China is not interested in these sanctions that they are going to push through the United Nations Security Council, and that's why China has resisted, and that's why in the negotiations that they had in New York a few weeks ago about how to proceed regarding Iran and its nuclear program, China sent a low-level delegation instead of its foreign minister or higher authority to indicate its displeasure and the fact that it doesn't want to go along with this type of sanctions, at least not at this stage.
Now whether future will bring something else, we don't know, but at this stage China is not interested.
Well, you know, I think people need to recognize doing the shoe on the other foot thing, how we would react if any combination of powers on earth attempted to block our importation of refined petroleum or oil of any kind, we would nuke them all off the face of the earth in a day.
I mean we've killed this government, pardon me for being so loose with the term we, this government has killed more than a million people in the name of the deaths of 3,000 on September 11th.
There was some kind of real blockade against this country, we would nuke capital cities, they would nuke capital cities off the face of the earth until that blockade was over.
And precisely, and remember we are there, or the United States is there, not because it wanted to help Iraqi people to have democracy or Afghans to have a country free of Taliban and so on, but because they want to control energy resources of that area.
Remember during the Clinton administration, when the Taliban came to power in 1996, the Clinton administration almost signed an agreement with Taliban, whereby the Taliban would allow an oil and gas pipeline from Central Asia to go to pass through Afghanistan to go to Pakistan, so that they can bypass Iran and also control Central Asian oil and natural gas.
The only reason that prevented that agreement from being signed was the fact that Taliban treated women badly, and therefore the United States having a Secretary of State being a woman, Madeleine Albright, they were just basically ashamed into signing that agreement.
Otherwise, they wanted to sign that agreement.
Even when the September 11 terrorist attack happened, the Bush administration gave an ultimatum to the Taliban and said, if you deliver to us Al-Qaeda, we won't attack you.
So they still wanted to have some sort of deal with Taliban, and the only reason that didn't happen was because Taliban resisted that.
But in any case, as you pointed out, the United States is there, not because it's worried about democracy or anything, or human rights or anything like that.
It is there because it wants to control energy resources of that area.
Now, the United States doesn't even need energy resources of the Middle East, because the United States imports most of its oil from Canada, Mexico, and West Africa.
The United States is there because it wants to control the resources so that its future rival, China, and a revived Russia cannot have access to those resources.
That's why we are there, and that's why up to a million Iraqi people were killed as a result of the invasion, because they want to control the second largest oil reserve in the world, namely Iraq.
Yeah, well, that's very well said.
I think that's right, especially if you just go back to Rebuilding America's Defenses, the PNAC policy paper from back then.
I think the oil companies were somewhat in on that, and maybe this is wrong, but I tend to think that the oil company's will is more or less expressed through the point of view of people like James Baker, and that it's not so much just about their profits as much as it is about the Pentagon and the long-term strategy of controlling Eurasia for the long term to keep any near-peer competitor from ever being able to have any military or other influence on par with the United States anywhere in the world, other than in their own country, and maybe not even then.
Yes, exactly, and as I said, the problem with Iran is the same thing.
I mean, it's not that, for example, that Iran's nuclear program is any threat to any physical threat to Israel or the United States.
There is no conceivable scenario under which Iran, even if armed with a nuclear warhead, will attack Israel or the United States, because the Iranian leader, as crazy or as irrational as they may sound, are totally irrational and calculating when it comes to their foreign policy, and they know full well that even if Iran does have a nuclear weapon arsenal, and there is no evidence that Iran is actually building such an arsenal, even if they have it, they will not attack Israel because they know very well that any attack of that sort will be matched by a counter-attack by Israel that has up to 400 nuclear warheads and the United States that can evaporate Iran many, many times over.
So there is no rational or any conceivable scenario under which Iran, even if it is armed with nuclear weapons, will attack Israel.
So the question is not whether Iran is a danger to the rest of the region if it is armed with nuclear weapons.
The question is control and hegemony over the Middle East, over the resources of the Middle East, and over the fact that the United States and Israel want to say the first and the last vote in the Middle East.
That's the question that we are dealing with in the Middle East, and we are dealing with regard to Iran.
Well, you know, I've kind of had a problem on this show because the lies, well just in general and writing and everything too, the lies from the American side about Iran's nuclear program are so consistent.
I mean, the narrative just never ceases.
Sometimes it ebbs and flows a little bit, but there's a constant drone in the background always every news cycle of the Iranian nuclear threat, the Iranian nuclear threat, and apparently everybody knows the Iranians are making nuclear weapons.
So that means, of course, as you know, you and I have talked about on the show, it means for me going through what we actually know about the Iranian nuclear program over and over again and, in essence, defending the Iranian position that, at least so far as anybody knows, it's simply a peaceful program.
My problem is that if I lived in a country that was governed by a limited constitutional republic and didn't have a fleet of aircraft carriers off the coast of Iran right now, etc., and troops occupying the countries to either side of it, I would like nothing better than to sit around on anti-war radio complaining about the Iranian government's war against the Iranian people and what a crappy dictatorship it is over there and how horrible it must be to live under it.
In fact, now that I live in Los Angeles, I keep meeting Iranians all the time who tell me about the Ayatollahs and how bad those guys are.
And I don't carry any brief for these guys.
I don't want to defend them.
I'm just trying to defend the truth and prevent a war as best I can because the assertions that the war agenda is based on are all a bunch of damn lies.
But help me out here with this one, Mohammed.
Can you tell me about the Ayatollah and what it is like to live in Iran?
Well, life in Iran right now is difficult.
It is because Iranians voted on June 12th to elect a new president, and they voted in large numbers.
Up to 85% of people voted because they wanted to make some good changes in Iran's political system peacefully and without any violence.
Now, the hardliners apparently stole the election and declared Ahmadinejad re-elected again.
And that started basically a movement in Iran that has spread over the past several months, and it has become stronger.
And in about a week, we will have the 31st anniversary of the Iranian Revolution, which is celebrated every year by the government.
But this year, the green movement is also going to go out and demonstrate and show its strength.
Now, as you said, when we talk about Iran's nuclear program and problems like that, it is not that we support the Iranian government.
I personally do not support and, in fact, despise people like Ahmadinejad.
But we are talking about the national right of a country that has been no threat to the United States, that has abided largely by its obligation under international law regarding its nuclear program, that the International Atomic Energy Agency has never been able to find any evidence that it is actually trying to make a nuclear weapon.
And yet, as you said, the lie that Iran is making nuclear weapons has been repeated so many times that it has taken a life of its own, and it is taken as a fact.
There is no truth to it.
Iran hasn't made a nuclear weapon.
Iran, there is no evidence that it is making a nuclear program.
In fact, some documents about internal debates within the Obama administration were leaked a few weeks ago to the New York Times that indicated that the Obama administration believes that Iran does not have any breakout capability for at least three years.
And let me explain what breakout capability is for those listeners that don't know what it is.
That means that Iran does not have any capability at this point to convert its low-enriched uranium, which is fuel for nuclear reactors, to high-enriched uranium, which is used in a nuclear weapon.
And the Obama administration's internal discussion indicated that they believe that Iran does not have such a capability for at least three years.
So that means that, at least for the next three years, Iran is in no position, even if it wanted to, to make a nuclear weapon.
So that means that there is ample time, ample room for diplomacy.
And yet, we see all sorts of talk about tough sanctions, which eventually lead to war, or even war itself.
I mean, the other day, the United States announced that it's going to put an anti-missile system in the Arab-Persian Gulf that is facing Iran.
Why is that?
Why do they need such a defense system?
What is the threat that they are facing?
These are all scare tactics, gunboat diplomacy, in order to pressure Iran to go along with what they want.
And obviously, those guys in Iran, as crazy and as irrational as they may be to their own people, that's their internal affairs.
Iranian people can decide on their own what they should do with their own government.
But when it comes to foreign power, the foreign powers have no right to exploit Iran's internal situation in order to advance their agenda, namely, dominating Iran, interfering Iran's internal affairs, and stopping Iran's peaceful nuclear program.
All right.
And now, there's one thing I wanted to add here, if only because I missed it when it was new.
And I think I found this link from ThinkProgress, and their article about the pressure on the National Intelligence Council to come up with a new national intelligence estimate, which would be more in line with the Israeli position on Iran's development of a nuclear weapon.
But this one is from Voice of America.
U.S. defense spy chief, Iran undecided on nuclear bomb.
This is from January 12th of 2010.
It says, in an exclusive VOA interview, the Pentagon's top intelligence official says there's no evidence that Iran has made a final decision to build nuclear weapons.
But the chief of the DIA adds that much about Iran's inner workings remain murky.
Lieutenant General Ronald Burgess said the key finding that Iran has not yet committed itself to nuclear weapons contained in a controversial 2007 national intelligence estimate, NIE, is still valid.
Quote, the bottom line assessments of the NIE still hold true, he said.
So, this is in line with what Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, told Carl Levin and John McCain under sworn oath approximately a year ago.
And this is also in line with Mark Hosenball's report from, I think it was late September, early October, that the CIA had recently put papers on Barack Obama's desk saying the same thing.
That, and in fact saying also that despite the, despite pressure from the Israelis and the Germans and an internal argument between these intelligence agencies, the CIA was sticking by their guns and saying that there is no evidence that the Iranians are making nuclear weapons or that they've even, that they've even made the choice to do so.
And yet, there is a new NIE, according to Newsweek, coming around on Iran, again by Mark Hosenball, this one from January 15th, saying that the pressure is on to abandon that official intelligence position and pick up the narrative where, you know, William Crystal left it, Mohammed.
And let me add to what you said.
The IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, has reported over the past several months that Iran's uranium enrichment program has, in fact, slowed down.
Iran is producing less low-energy uranium than in the past.
Iran is spinning fewer centrifuges at Natanz, and Iran is not, has not moved any closer to be able to convert its low-enriched uranium to high-energy uranium.
Remember, Iran needs uranium enriched at 20% for its research reactor in Tehran, which it uses for medical purposes to generate isotopes and so on.
If Iran cannot convert its low-enriched uranium at 3.5% to about 20% for its medical reactor, why is it that anybody believes that Iran can actually go from 3.5% to 90%, which is needed for nuclear weapons?
Iran is negotiating with the outside world in order to import the 20% enriched uranium for its medical research reactor.
Right, which, by the way, is, of course, the key of the poison pill in Obama's promise to negotiate honestly with the Iranians, is that they have to export their uranium and wait to get it back and leave it in the hands and trust the French to give it back to them, rather than just having a swap meeting in Turkey and swapping equal amounts for 20%, which, again, as you just said, you still can't make a bomb out of.
It's, from my position anyway, it sure seems to me like the Iranian counteroffer is perfectly reasonable, but, you know, this is really not much different than the Cheney stand, which was, we won't talk with you at all.
The Obama stand is, we'll talk to you and give you our list of demands, and that will be the extent of our negotiations, it sure seems like.
The deal that Iran was supposed to have with the West involved Russia and France, and as I discussed in an article on antiwar.com, there is a long history of distrust between Iran and France and Russia.
Iran, for example, paid close to 1.2 billion dollars in the 1970s to France in return for 10% of Eurodif consortium that generates enriched uranium.
But after the Iranian revolution, Iran neither got its money back, nor any enriched uranium.
So why should Iran, under these conditions, trust France to send its low-enriched uranium and wait for the fuel?
The argument that the West has given to Iran is that you give us low-enriched uranium and then wait because we have to prepare the fuel for your old research reactor.
Well, Iran has said that, well, we wait until you prepare the fuel, and when the fuel is ready, then we make the swap.
What is wrong with that?
I don't understand it.
Iran waits, when the fuel is ready, then they can make the swap.
But the United States says, no, you should deliver your low-enriched uranium now, and then wait for the fuel.
Nobody is going to do that.
Right.
In other words, the whole thing is designed to fail, obviously.
Exactly.
Exactly.
This is what happens when Hillary Clinton becomes America's Secretary of State.
I'm sorry, we're all out of time.
Thank you for your time.
This has been great, Mohamed.
I really appreciate it.
Thank you for having me on your program, Scott.
All right, everybody, that's Mohamed Sahimi, professor at USC, writer for antiwar.com.
You can find him at original.antiwar.com slash sahimi.
Sanctions only hurt ordinary Iranians.
