12/07/08 – Philip Giraldi – The Scott Horton Show

KFNX News Talk Radio 1100 presents The Charles Goyette Show.
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And now filling in for America's most indefinite talk show host, from Antiwar Radio at Antiwar.com, here's Scott Horton.
Good morning, Phoenix, Arizona.
Scott Horton here, filling in on The Charles Goyette Show.
KFNX 1100 AM in Phoenix, Arizona.
Glad to have you guys listening in the audience today.
I'm doing the best I can to build the case against the case for war with Iran.
In the first hour, we talked to Dr. Gordon Prather, nuclear physicist, about how Iran does not have nuclear bombs, and they're nowhere near having nuclear bombs, and the IAEA says so.
And we talked with Juan Cole, a fluent Farsi speaker, who translated Amina Jad's October 25, 2005 speech as not at all saying that Iran threatens to wipe Israel off the map, but in fact saying something quite different indeed.
And our next guest is Philip Giraldi.
He's a former CIA counterterrorism officer.
He's a partner in Canestraro Associates.
He's a contributing editor to the American Conservative magazine.
And he writes every second Tuesday for us at antiwar.com.
Welcome to the show, Phil.
Hi.
Hi, Scott.
How are you doing?
I'm doing great.
Good to talk to you this morning.
Let me ask you, Philip Giraldi, former counterterrorism officer, to your knowledge, what is Iran's relationship with al-Qaeda?
Well, of course, it's somewhat debated, but I think that most people who are following the issue would agree that it's not a friendly relationship at all.
That al-Qaeda basically has an anti-Shiite agenda, and Iran, of course, being the great Shiite power, is threatened by al-Qaeda.
After the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001, a number of al-Qaeda members tried to flee going through Iran.
They were detained by the Iranian government and are still detained.
There are believed to be six of them, and one of them is Osama bin Laden's son.
And now, I read in the New York Sun article by Eli Lake just last week that all these al-Qaeda guys in Iranian prison are actually running al-Qaeda terrorist networks with the advice and consent of the Iranian government.
There is actually no evidence of that.
I think that this article is basically one of a number of articles we've seen lately to make a case against Iran, and the people that are doing this are basically playing free with the facts.
The Iranians no doubt maintain some kind of contact, probably at certain levels, with elements in al-Qaeda, but communication and having some common agendas against the United States, for example, don't necessarily mean that they're working together in any substantive way.
Well, you know, that's what the war party would say, is that you're being naive when you talk about the Sunni-Shia split there, that they have a common enemy, the United States, and of course they'd work together against us.
They're much more alike than they are like us.
Well, that really doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
The Iranians basically have a much different agenda in terms of how they are dealing with the United States vis-à-vis the situation in Iraq.
The Iranians, in fact, have been fairly helpful in terms of pushing for greater stability in Iraq and also in Afghanistan.
One has to go back a few years to recall that the Taliban, the close allies of the al-Qaeda, staged a major attack against the Iranian consulate general inside Afghanistan and killed 11 Iranian diplomats.
So there's no love lost between these two parties.
And now, you talk about these al-Qaeda members who were arrested, six of them, including Osama bin Laden's son, at least purportedly.
Now, if I remember right, the Iranians offered to trade some al-Qaeda members that they had arrested for members of a terrorist group called the Mujahedin al-Khalq a couple of years ago, and their offer was refused by the United States.
Why is that?
That's exactly correct.
Back in 2003, the Iranian government, going through the Swiss embassy, offered to turn over these al-Qaeda members, including Osama bin Laden's son, to the U.S. authorities.
And in return, they wanted, as a quid pro quo, the United States to do something to stop the activity of the Mujahedin al-Khalq, which is a very strange group.
We could talk about it for an hour, but it's basically an Iranian resistance group that was supported by Saddam Hussein, of all people, and is now being supported by the Pentagon.
And there have also been reports of a group called Jandala being used to kill Iranians, working an outsourced job for the United States.
Do you know anything about them?
Yeah, they're a group that's...
Iran, like many countries in the region, has ethnic minorities in certain areas, and one of the ethnic minority areas is called Balochistan, which is close to Afghanistan.
And there's a separatist movement there, which has been supported by the United States, and the United States is also supporting separatists among the Arab minority, which is closer to the border with Iraq.
So, here we are, our government is supporting terrorist groups and ethnic division in Iran.
That's right, we are.
And it's the ultimate hypocrisy that we're charging the Iranians with doing the same thing, based on a lot less evidence.
And now, the first time you and I spoke, Phil, was almost exactly two years ago, when you broke the story in the American Conservative Magazine that Vice President Dick Cheney, who, by the way, has no authority at all under the Constitution, other than to keep the bench warm until the President dies in his sleep somehow, or to break a tie vote in the Senate.
But, in any case, that the Vice President had ordered the United States Air Force to draw up plans for airstrikes against Iran, that even included the use of nuclear weapons.
Phil, is that right?
Yeah, that's correct, and I think there's a lot of evidence since that time to suggest that nuclear weapons are still very much on the table.
I know you're aware of the fact that the leading Republican presidential candidates, Mr. McCain and Giuliani and Romney, have all basically not flinched at all in their debates at the prospect of using nuclear weapons against Iran, if that should prove necessary in their judgment.
And now, best you can tell, what would necessitate the use of nuclear weapons in the event of war with Iran?
Well, there are a couple of scenarios that I've been hearing.
One of them would be to use them automatically as part of the attack scenario, because the intelligence sources suggest that a lot of the Iranian nuclear sites are buried way underground and would be very hard to get unless you used specialized weaponry to include nuclear weapons.
Another scenario I keep hearing is that nuclear weapons would be kind of a threat if the Iranians continued to fight back after we staged our attack.
We would threaten them with a nuclear attack, presumably to make them desist.
Uh-huh.
And you know, that reminds me.
I talked with Wayne White at the beginning of this year about plans that he had seen for airstrikes, and he said the premise seemed to be that we're just going to bomb them for a week or so and then call it off.
And basically what you're saying is that's what the nukes are for, our nukes, that everybody knows we in fact do have, is to tell them, listen, you're going to sit there and take it while we bomb you for a week or two, and then you're going to not fight back.
And if you do fight back, then we will use nuclear weapons on you.
Yeah, I think that's exactly what I'm hearing, that basically the nuclear weapons would kind of be in the back pocket in this one scenario, where if the Iranians persisted, for example, staging attacks in the Gulf of Hormuz or destabilizing Afghanistan or a bunch of scenarios that they could pursue, we would kind of pull the nuclear card out of the pack and threaten to use it.
It's pretty scary.
We would attack them first, even though they haven't attacked us, and then produce nuclear weapons to tell them, you know, just roll over and don't resist.
Yeah, and all to get nuclear weapons that don't exist, and to get at their relationship with Al-Qaeda, which, you know, we can all just use our Google machine, and we can tell that Al-Qaeda just warned Iran, threatened war with Iran two weeks ago.
That's right, yeah.
Al-Qaeda has constantly threatened Iran and threatened Shia Muslims in general.
Many of the horrific attacks inside Iraq are carried out by Al-Qaeda, but they target Shia mosques and Shia believers.
Uh-huh.
Because they're trying to keep us there.
They're trying to foment the ethnic civil war in Iraq to keep America there longer, so they can have their battle longer, like Zawahiri said a month or two ago.
We don't want the Americans to leave yet.
We don't want them to leave until they've had 300,000 or 400,000 casualties.
That's right.
That's right.
So we're playing into their hands.
Yep, well, as always, alright everybody, Philip Giraldi, former CIA counter-terrorism officer, partner and Canestraro associate, contributing editor at the American Conservative Magazine, and writes for us every Tuesday, thank goodness, at AntiWar.com.
Thank you very much, Phil.
Thank you, Scott.
Really appreciate it.
Alright, everybody, this is the Charles Goliath Show.
We're making the case against the case for war against Iran.
And we'll be right back.
Thanks for watching.