Alright y'all welcome back to the show It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton and on the line is Richard Silverstein From the ticket alum blog make the world a better place Richard Silverstein calm.
Welcome back to the show Richard How are you?
Hi Scott good to be with you I really appreciate you making time for us today, and I want to start this interview by mentioning your fun drive We're having a fun drive at anti-war calm this week, too I figure we have that in common.
I might as well bring it up support ticking alum if I'm pronouncing that right which I'm probably not is the top entry here at your blog Richard Silverstein comm and Boy people are about to find out why it's worth it Let's start with the fact that no matter what everybody else Pretends you broke the story that the Israeli Mossad and the Mujahideen he called communist terrorist cult Bombed a missile depot of some kind in Iran the other day That's right what happened was the Iranian Revolutionary Guards have a Missile base about 25 miles outside of Tehran and they were Moving a one of their biggest Rockets a it's called a she hob three And they had the cream of the crop of the IRG missile group there and the missile exploded and It killed 17 soldiers including the top commander who oversaw all of Iran's most highly advanced missile technology and the whole missile program and And in this act of sabotage was organized by the Mossad and their operatives in the field that actually carried out the attack or the Mujahideen which They also go by the initials me K and the headline here Where you broke the story first is Mossad and EK may have bombed Iranian missile base 40 dead and wounded and You had an Israeli source that let you know this.
That's right Someone who with the senior political and military background in Israel within 24 hours of the bomb blast Told me that the Mossad was involved with the MEK I should also say that the Iranian government itself at first denied that it was Sabotage and said that it was an accident and that it involved ammunition however yesterday the Guardian reported a former Iranian government official confirmed that it was sabotage and not an accident and now the BBC is Reporting that the mayor of Tehran is also conceding that it was sabotage So, you know when I first reported this story I felt a little bit like an actor about to go on stage and looks down make sure he has his pants on and but now I feel my source was absolutely right in in what he said to me and and and and really this confirms that there is a two-pronged strategy that Israel and The u.s.
Is following with regards to Iran one is One track might be a direct military attack on Iran to try to take out their nuclear facilities and the Alternate approach is this black ops a program which has involved major acts of terror at Missile bases.
This was the second major explosion at a missile base.
There was one a year ago that killed 18 Iranian Revolutionary Guard soldiers there was at least three assassinations of nuclear scientists in and around Tehran and An IRG military transport plane was dropped out of the sky a couple of years ago and Israeli Reporters who follow the security Beat in Israel have Reported that all of those war acts that the Mossad and the MEK had some hand in so There seems to be this Approach in Israel that if we don't want to do a full head-on military attack Then we'll try this black ops approach and see if we can delay the Iranians and take out some of their key brains in the nuclear program And and my you know, my my take on this is that neither approach is going to work the the black ops approach to me is a substitute for having a real policy towards Iran and And and it's not going to stop Iran from getting a nuclear bomb if that is what they do want to do You know the only way to really address The Iranian a nuclear threat if you want to call it that is by a negotiation Between all the parties involved and that's something that neither side seems to be interested in So it just turns out to be a huge mess really Well, you know one part of this that you highlight in I forget which of your great blog entries here at Richard Silverstein Is the question of whether this is terrorism or not for this to happen, of course when Hassan killed all those people at Fort Hood That's considered terrorism terrorism enough that they can kill all Aki for supposedly being in on it and all those kinds of things And yet you talk about how some of the commenters I guess on your blog were saying this isn't terrorism because it's a military Target and you're saying so what does that mean?
It's an act of war and it we might as well go ahead and launch the full-scale thing here or what and that's big That's the fire that they're playing with.
This isn't some game blowing up military bases.
Yeah Yeah, that's that's a good point because um what I talk about in the blog I talk about blowback and you know, there seems to be this element in Israeli policy and and maybe even u.s.
Policy that We can do whatever the hell we want to do to the Iranians and that it's a free lunch And there's no, you know, we won't pay for anything that we do But there's lots of different ways in which Israel may have to pay for doing things like this.
There could be You know, one of the things I reported in my blog was a couple years ago Israel assassinated the then leader of Hezbollah whose name was Abbas al-Musawwir and Then a couple of weeks after that assassination there was a major terror attack on the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires and The people who support Israel like to point to that attack in Buenos Aires and blame Hezbollah and blame the Iranians And and they of course do it out of context and they don't mention what preceded the attack So there's a way to play I think has cast serious doubt on that story and yeah Elements in the government, I'm not saying, you know, there's no proof ever been Stands as far as the argument goes.
I understand you.
Yeah, exactly There's going to be a price that you're going to pay I mean if you go and and try to take out Iran's key scientists and they're in their key military commanders Iran is not going to sit back and and say go right ahead, you know, take your best shot they're going to respond in some way so and and also if the Nations of the world see that Israel's policy really doesn't involve diplomacy, but rather involved assassinations and skullduggery and and bomb explosions the next time Israel needs a vote in the UN to try to stop Palestinian statehood or whatever the issue might be the world is going to say well Israel is You know Israel is a terrorist state.
Why would we want to vote in in their favor in in an international body?
So it has all sorts of repercussions and Israel tends to see things in a very short-term Way and doesn't look at the long term and there always is a long term In in these matters and this does not help them in the long term Well, but it depends on whose point of view because I guess from netanyahu's maybe it does if it brings us closer to war And I guess I worry that rather than just this blindness that you're talking about that Maybe they have a terrorist type strategy and committing terrorist attacks like this and that is of course with terrorism It's the action is in the reaction as the communists used to say it's all about that blowback and provoking it There's a headline about how the Iranian Parliament I don't know whether they have the power to do anything about this or not But they said well maybe we ought to scale back our cooperation with the IAEA after the big bogus report came out last week and that kind of thing And you know John Bolton famously told AIPAC We're trying to get them to withdraw from the treaty and kick the inspectors out because that serves our agenda better if they would You know put their hands down right now.
They have them up and I worry that really that's the point but maybe that's too smart by half for Benjamin Netanyahu either well, I think that there are figures on both sides that want that are rejectionist and would prefer to resolve this by You know by fighting it out like boxes in a boxing ring Hold it right there rich.
We got to go into this break.
We'll be right back Richard Silverstein calm All right, so welcome back to the show Santa I wore radio here on Liberty Radio Network Talking with Richard Silverstein from the ticking alarm blog Richard Silverstein calm and again, he broke the story that Massad and the mujahideen e culk me K group were behind the bombing supposed Supposed accident at a ammo depot that turned out to be sabotage in Iran the other day and his story has now been confirmed by time the Guardian Haaretz channel 10 and the BBC I Think what you said earlier on the show today Before the break, but where we left off I was asking you whether you think maybe the purpose of this is try to to try to provoke Iran from going ahead and Making nukes so that they have an excuse to go ahead and fight because that whole Was it why net said all Netanyahu wants is to be Winston Churchill.
He can't be Winston Churchill without a world war can you?
Right exactly.
I think that Netanyahu does have this kind of a megalomaniac Approach that he's going to be David and slay the Iranian Goliath There there does seem to be that kind of mystical Approach to to these things and of course Netanyahu believes that Iran is not just a threat to Israel But to the entire Jewish people Although we never explained how Iran is going to wipe out all the Jews in the world So, you know there there is that element that is very dangerous And and what's interesting about this is that there are Israelis and supporters of Israel who?
Demonized Iran and call them the mad mullahs and say that they're you know, they have this mystical vision They'll take the world and bring it down in flames in order to advance their agenda And and then there are Iranians who demonized the the West in the same way Both sides that the worst of both sides are kind of a mirror image for each other, which is kind of a strange strange notion to consider And there was one other issue that I wanted to really emphasize here And that is that the media is focusing Justifiably on the Mossad involvement because so the most everybody knows about the Mossad and they know about Israel's Reliance on spies and and and skullduggery and things like that, but we've got to focus also on the MEK Here because of the Mujahedin al-Hawq is applying to get their status as a terrorist organization removed by the Treasury Department so that they can actively pursue their political agenda here in the US and So far the US government has resisted that although the Mujahedin are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to figures like Howard Dean and and and lots of neocons to get them to lobby Congress to remove this designation but the fact that they were very involved in this attack in Iran means that they still are a terrorist organization and their Protestations that they're no longer a terrorist group Really are Blown to the wind by by this act, of course what they'll argue is, you know, we're good We're good We're the good guys with the good terrorists because we're engaged in terror on behalf of US interests and that's a really pernicious notion Although, you know, we do have to say the US does tend to Be willing to engage in acts of terror like the assassination of Anwar al-Lakhi that you mentioned earlier in the show So we also use terror when it's when it's in our interest But well, you know Trita Parsi and the guys at the National Iranian American Council Covered General McInerney saying well We want them delisted so that we can use them for terrorist attacks and then you got Newt Gingrich just the other day saying yeah That's exactly what we need to do is he might as well directly said the mujahideen al-qaeda We need to blow up and assassinate things in Iran all the time Yeah, yeah, that may be what one of the things that's holding back the CIA from being more involved with the MEK The fact that they are you know on they're designated as a terrorist group and so removing them would be a terrible zero Support inside Iran.
They are considered traitors unanimously by the people of Iran Yeah, and that's true and I know Iranian Americans here who are ardent opponents of the regime and they won't have anything to do With the MEK they are totally tainted.
They're the equivalent of the Bay of Pigs Guys who landed on the beach and 1961 Trying to overthrow Castro.
They just have no credibility inside Iran they do have however lots of money from Places like the Mossad and they have lots of technological Expertise that's that's offered to them, but that doesn't replace the fact that they have no Grassroots following, you know, they're basically just a cult of radical extremists willing to use any tactic no matter how Immoral or illegal to advance not just their own agenda, but the agenda of Western intelligence agencies against Iran Well, and you know doing things like blowing up a missile base like you said from a short-term point of view that makes perfect sense Hey look then they'll have less missiles and some missiles minus some missiles equals fewer of them and it's great and yet What they're doing really is they they could get us in a war I mean this could get us in a war right now as this story comes out I'm not saying I probably will or whatever, but I'm saying that's the kind of thing that they're messing around with here.
Yeah Missiles to shoot no matter how many little bases you blow up with MEK terrorists.
Yeah, exactly And if you think back to 1962 in the Cuban Missile Crisis It just would have taken one little match being lit at the wrong time to have turned that into a nuclear You know confrontation I mean it was a nuclear confrontation, but I mean with actually missiles being launched and fired and and and exploding so whoever is is is engaging in taxes sabotage and terrorism really is playing with fire and and it could Turn it it won't it won't just if it happens It won't just be an attack between two countries because Iran has all these proxies in in Hezbollah and Hamas and and these other Groups that will join in if Iran is attacked So it will become a regional war and then the u.s.
Will be dragged in because we're Israel's primary backer and we'll have to supply them with the weapons for the bunker buster bombs and the and the the cluster bombs and everything so we'll be in this too, and it just will be a Catastrophic event if it happens and these kinds of attacks in Iran that the Mossad and MEK did really take us Really too close to that You may remember that nuclear clock that they used to have during the Cold War You know and it used to say we're five minutes to midnight Because the nuclear powers are so close to to war with each other Well, you know There's there's a Middle East clock that I like to say and and the hands of the clock are Too way too close to midnight From my comfort I think yeah, absolutely Especially over a nuclear weapons program that doesn't exist is that story has just been falling apart all over the place Again, yeah, and I think we have to point out about that.
That's true Is that um, well while the world gets very excited about the possibility Iran wants a nuclear weapon?
They forget the fact that Israel has anywhere between 200 and 400 nuclear warheads of its own not to mention the u.s.
Arsenal so You know, and then we've got North Korea, which has nuclear weapons in Pakistan, which has nuclear weapons So if we you know add that Iran may want to get a nuclear weapon How much more dangerous can the world be than having a world where North Korea and Pakistan already have nuclear weapons?
India and America and China.
Yeah.
All right.
Hey, we got to go.
Thanks so much Richard Silverstein comm everybody.
Appreciate it Thanks
