Alright, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Wharton, and our next guest on the show today is Phil Giraldi from the American Conservative Magazine and AntiWar.com.
He's the Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest Foundation as well.
And is a former CIA and DIA officer.
Welcome, Phil.
How are you doing?
I'm fine, Scott.
How about you?
I'm doing great.
Appreciate you joining us today.
The news says that the Iranians say that they shot down an American drone over one of their nuclear sites today.
You buy it?
Yeah, I would think that drones are vulnerable to their anti-aircraft systems.
They fly relatively slow, and some of the bigger ones tend to be out of range.
But I would imagine they wanted to get in and get some close shots.
So I think the story is probably true.
Now, why in the world would Barack Peace-loving Obama approve the flying of American drones, you know, military vehicles, in the airspace of independent, sovereign Iran right now?
Well, we fly drones in the airspace of Pakistan.
We fly drones in the airspace of Yemen.
We fly drones in the airspace of Mogadishu, which admittedly is hardly a sovereign state.
We use drones all over the place.
We use them along the Mexican border, Canadian border.
Well, here's the thing.
I mean, I'm not apologizing for the thing.
But in context, we have the quote-unquote permission of our puppets in those first three countries, at least, that you name.
I guess probably Mexico counts, too.
But in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, we have at least – in Somalia, it's more of a joke than anything else – but at least something we can point at that says, yes, please come and use your drones to help us in our war inside our own country, which is a bit different than picking a fight inside Iran, which has certainly not invited us to help them put down insurrections inside their own state there.
Yeah, your point is a good one.
The fact is the leaders in all of those countries you cite have not publicly said that they've invited U.S. drones to attack their citizens.
But the fact is that there appear to be secret agreements in those places indicating that that's okay.
And you're right.
Iran is a different case.
I mean, the U.S. has not declared war with Iran, is not in a state of hostilities with Iran, and apparently feels empowered to send drones over Iran anyway.
Is that an act of war?
I'm not sure.
But anyway, it would be considered a provocation by most countries.
Now, I'm sure you saw this piece in Al Jazeera by M.J. Rosenberg about – I don't know if he's a former colleague of yours exactly, but you must know him – Robert Baer, the former CIA officer.
Yeah, I've seen it.
And how he told Ian Masters, the host of Background Briefing on KPFK in Los Angeles, that he was very worried – in fact, he sounded a lot like what you said on the show maybe a month and a half or so ago on June – must have been right after June 9th when your article, Target Iran, appeared at Antiwar.com, that Netanyahu is planning to start a war that will drag the U.S. in sometime late this summer, early fall.
And in fact, going beyond that, in your article, you also talk about this thing at Sixth Emperor Tyrannus blog that says that the Pentagon – oh, and I guess this is also in that Robert Baer piece too – that the Pentagon is basically going ahead and getting ready for this.
Does that mean that Obama has said, yeah, as soon as the Israelis start the war, then we're jumping in too, and this is already policy decided, or what?
I don't think it quite means that.
I think it means that the Pentagon, as usual, is doing a contingency plan and is expecting that there is at least a certain possibility of war with Iran.
I think it's clear, at least to me, that if Israel were to start a war with Iran, the U.S. would indeed get dragged in.
I don't see any possible scenario to stay out of it that Obama would have the guts to embrace.
So I think that war would be an inevitability.
The question is to what extent are the real crazies in charge in Israel.
According to Meir Dagan, the recent head of Mossad, he seems to think they are.
Now, Baer is an interesting guy.
Baer has long been talking about the threat from Iran.
If you've followed any of his writings and his interviews and stuff like that, he's kind of a hawk on Iran.
So if indeed his interview with Ian Reid was the way it reads in the text that I've seen, then he's kind of maybe doing a reversal.
But at the same time, if you read the words carefully, he's not backing away from the sense that Iran is some kind of threat.
I think he kind of accepts that.
So that makes him somewhat different than the viewpoint that we have been expressing, that Iran's threat has not been demonstrated.
And so, you know, it's kind of a funny interview, I think, in some ways.
Well, I mean, hey, even if you think Iran's a threat, that doesn't mean that Netanyahu bombing the hell out of them here real soon is a great idea, you know?
No, absolutely right.
And Baer comes to the right conclusion, which is that he says in his interview that it would be a catastrophe or use similar words to that, a deep hole, I think he said, or something, a black hole, if we were to get involved in this kind of a war.
And it would be a catastrophe for the region.
So he's got the right conclusion.
And, you know, the question becomes to what extent have we gotten into a position where Israel can essentially control what we do in a major region of the world and can basically bring about the commitment of American troops in yet another war, which we can't possibly win?
Well, you know, I don't know if you know the explanation for this.
It's Mayor Dagan, the former head of the Mossad, who is saying that he thinks Netanyahu's crazy, that he wants to bomb Iran, and that it'll be a total disaster over there.
And yet he was the guy in the WikiLeaks who was threatening the very same thing to Nicholas Burns, the Undersecretary of State, as Larissa Alexandrovna, my wife, wrote in an article last fall where she quoted you in a different part of the article about financing terrorist groups inside Iran, but still, same piece, had it where these two, Nicholas Burns and Mayor Dagan, were plotting to back terrorists inside Iran, at the same time that the Israelis were saying, our red line is different from yours, but we don't care, we'll start the war without you and force you into it.
Wouldn't you rather just go ahead and start it yourself, basically blackmailing the U.S. in a war?
Well, but you have to look at it that way.
That's what Dagan was doing.
I mean, Dagan was trying to get...
He figures that it would be a disaster for Israel to attack Iran, but not such a bad thing for the United States to do it, that the United States could actually do it, and successfully destroy a lot of Iran's nuclear infrastructure, which Israel can't do.
I mean, the current Netanyahu plan for doing it is crazy, but U.S., go ahead.
Still, you don't think his position's really changed.
It's just two sides of the same argument there.
Right.
I think that's exactly what it is.
It's two sides of an argument, and one side is, what is the Israeli interest?
Dagan is saying the Israeli interest is to not attack Iran, because that would be a disaster for Israel.
Other sources in Israel have been pointing out that Iran does have enough missile capability, and certainly Hezbollah does, that it would be some, shall we say, some miserable months for the Israelis.
But the United States, on the other hand, has the strategic capabilities where it could easily bomb Iran and destroy quite a lot of its infrastructure.
It would be a long-term disaster for the United States, too, let's face it.
But at the same time, if you're looking at it from the very narrow Israeli objective, which is what all these guys are doing, then it's much better to have the U.S. do it.
Well, now, wasn't it Mullen that had told the Israelis before, no, we're not doing this, and we expect for there to be no USS Liberty incidents or anything, no tripwires for war here, guys, just a year or two ago?
That's right.
Mullen basically said, don't try another one of these tricks like the USS Liberty to get us involved in a war.
He was basically talking about what they call a false flag operation, where you pretend to be someone else.
And in this case, it would be probably Israeli commandos pretending to be Iranians.
Well, is he still telling them that?
I mean, I know he's on his way out, but it seems like he could tell them that.
Don't do it.
You're right.
He's still sending that.
I don't think the Obama administration wants a war.
But that may not be enough.
Yeah.
All right.
Hold it right there.
Phil Zaroli, everybody.
We'll be right back.
All right, so we've got six wars.
I was calling Somalia, you know, and a half after the five there.
But now that I've read and talked with Jeremy Scahill, I know better.
That counts as war number six.
Could it be seven?
And could the seventh be the worst of all, a war with Iran?
And could the government of Israel get the United States into a war with Iran, even if that's not what the American empire wants?
Isn't it as simple, Phil, as Barack Obama calling up Benjamin Netanyahu and saying you better not do this, don't ever do it?
We all know that Iran isn't really making nukes, and this is all a bunch of propaganda.
We've got your sanctions, and you get the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and you ought to be happy with that and just leave it at that.
Can he not do that?
Yeah, he could do that, but it wouldn't be a safe move for him because the Israel lobby would come after him.
Netanyahu would unleash it on him.
And Netanyahu basically wants a military solution to Iran, and he wants us to do it.
So I think that whatever you're going to be seeing, and certainly, I mean, we're talking about this, but the timetable for this is fairly tight.
The Israeli media is predicting and Dagan, Mayer Dagan, are predicting we might see something by September.
In fact, they're looking at that date as being a likely date because of a turnover at the Joint Chiefs of Staff with Mullen leaving, the changeover with Panetta going to the Secretary of Defense position, and a new CIA director in Petraeus.
So, you know, the timing is very tight for this, plus September is, of course, the date when the Palestinians might be declaring statehood.
So this would be an attempt to take that story off of the media screen.
So, you know, there's a lot of chat that this is what's going to happen.
I don't know how credible all of it is, but certainly there are some people in Israel in particular who are raising the alarm on this and are quite credible.
So I don't know.
Yeah, sure, Obama could stop it, but I don't see Obama having the backbone to do it.
Well, and isn't Netanyahu really crazy enough to do it?
Because, I mean, to be honest, you talk about this in your article, Target Iran, Hezbollah would go probably full scale there in southern Lebanon.
You'd have Iranian intelligence working in who knows what countries, from Azerbaijan to Kyrgyzstan to Pakistan to who knows what, attacking American targets in Iraq and Afghanistan, in the Gulf.
We've got the Fifth Fleet right there at Bahrain across the Gulf.
And, of course, they don't have their friendly puppet dictator in Egypt anymore, although maybe that's an overstatement.
It seems like this could really put a lot of things in jeopardy for Israel's long-term future rather than being some great coup d'etat where they would run off with the prize and have everything their way at the end.
It seems like it would obviously be a disaster for America and for Israel.
Is he really that out of it, this Netanyahu guy?
Well, you know, I don't think he is particularly sane.
I mean, if you saw the speech in Congress, the U.S. Congress, in which he received standing ovations 29 times, you have to question whether, first of all, the congressman was sane and certainly whether he is.
But his speech was a total repudiation of any peace process.
If the guy had wanted to even pretend that there was a peace process, he could have done that in his speech because no matter what he did, he could have shat on the congressman.
They still would have given him a standing ovation.
But he didn't do that.
He deliberately went out to basically break the peace process in little pieces.
And so I don't think the guy is completely tightly wrapped.
I think he is somehow in the grip of megalomania of a certain type.
And how this will translate, who knows, because he's clearly now surrounded by people who think just like he does or worse.
So will Israel go after Iran or get us to go after Iran?
I think that's the key issue here.
If Israel goes after Iran, it will be one hell of a mess, and the U.S. will get sucked in.
But does Israel have the leverage to actually get the United States to go after Iran?
That's what they would like to see happen.
And I don't know.
I don't have a good answer to that.
I know certainly that the Israeli embassy in Washington and AIPAC have been working very hard to make that happen.
Well, is there any expert that says that Israel could start this war and that America wouldn't be dragged in immediately in all the different war games at all the foundations and think tanks and whatever?
I don't know if anybody is gaming it, but the fact is I can't see anyone coming up with a plausible reason why it wouldn't happen.
Because let's face it, if Israel attacked Iran tomorrow, by tomorrow evening, key congressmen would be calling on the United States to support our noble little ally.
The media would be probably critical about Israel staging the attack, but at the same time would be calling on the U.S. to help Israel.
So how is Obama going to stand up against that?
He wants to get elected next year.
And you have the Christian fundamentalists that, as far as I'm concerned, have become a complete group of extremists on this issue.
These are supposed to be Christian leaders.
I don't quite get it.
But they've become complete hawks on the Iran issue.
I think I did a piece on that, too, for any war.
And, you know, so it's a...
I don't see any...
I guess Rand Paul and Ron Paul maybe will stand up.
Denis Kucinich will stand up and say nay.
But they'll be the only voices saying that.
And you and I...
Plus, you know, they've got Chinese supersonic sea-skimming missiles over there, right?
So why wouldn't they just hit back against America immediately anyway?
If it's on, it's on, right?
Well, I think that it would be a given that if Israeli planes were to attack, that the Iranians would assume that this was all done with connivance of the United States, which might or might not be true.
But, yeah, you're right.
You know, suddenly you've got that issue, too.
It's like Pearl Harbor, you know, in a sense that the United States would have never gone to war if the Japanese hadn't attacked first.
If the Iranians are stupid enough, or like Fort Sumter in the Civil War, are stupid enough to attack the United States after an Israeli attack, then it's 100% sure that they'd have a war.
Yeah.
Well, I guess you think, I mean, back in the Bush years we talked about how, you know, Cheney's plan was to use nukes, or at least to threaten to use nukes on them.
You think that there's a chance that Obama, if Israel started a war, that Obama would try to not get into it, maybe call the Iranians and say, this isn't us?
I mean, hell, he's got to let them use Iraqi airspace to get there, doesn't he?
Well, unless they pry with Saudi Arabia or just, you know, violate somebody's airspace, the Iraqis can't stop them.
This is what Dick Cheney was counting on in 2007 when he sent David Wilmser around, saying that he didn't trust George Bush to start the war, but he was trying to get Ehud Olmert to go ahead and start it and run around Bush, force Bush into it, by the fact that there'd be boats at the bottom of the water and Bush would have to fight back by then.
Yeah, I think it's the same kind of thinking.
You can have some kind of incident that makes it inevitable that this will happen, but I'm more pessimistic than that and I think that virtually any initiative by the Israelis to start fighting with Iran will lead to a war with the United States, and that's what I'm afraid of.
As for the nuclear issue, I don't think that's off the table.
I think that basically if that plan is still kind of out there, it's never been repudiated, and I think that if you get into a situation where the U.S. has attacked Iran and Iran is retaliating with, shall we say, terrorist attacks and all kinds of other stuff, that the U.S. could very well say, look, if you keep this up, we're going to nuke you.
Obama is weak enough to do this kind of stuff and stupid enough to do this kind of stuff, and he's surrounded by idiots.
Who in the National Security Council or Hillary Clinton's state, who's going to tell him no?
I don't know, I guess.
Over these last few years, we've been hoping that the military guys, or that's the best chance we've had this whole time, is people like Admiral Fallon saying, not on my watch.
Everybody held their breath during Petraeus.
Mullen's been a little better on it, but do you know about the new guy?
Not anything at all.
I think there was some speculation that this new guy was picked because he would be malleable.
So that's a bad sign right there, if that's true.
Hey, did you hear that Rick Perry was hanging out with Doug Fythe and good old what's-his-name from the Office of Special Plans there?
I'm no surprise there.
I had heard that he had visited with Fythe.
Why is that guy's name escaping me?
It was Karen Katowski's boss, Bill Lutie.
Oh, yeah, yeah, okay.
So not just a couple of neocons, but a couple of neocons from the Office of Special Plans that manufactured the lies that led us into war.
I think the dream ticket for the Republicans is Rick Perry and Michelle Bachmann.
Then you and I could dig a hole in our backyards and make it as deep as we could, put some cans of ravioli down there so we have something to eat, and just wait for the end.
I don't know.
I mean, it's so obvious that it should be Rick Perry and Barack Obama running together, and then we could have Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich on the other side, and then it would be the Us Party versus them.
That would be good.
Then we'd have a real two-party democracy in America.
That's right.
Anyway, thanks very much for your time, Phil.
It's been good.
Scare the hell out of me, man.
All right, y'all.
Antiwar.com/Giraldi.
