Former weapons inspector and author Scott Ritter says it is a deception that the U.S. government is concerned about Iran’s nuclear program or that they mean to use diplomacy to put an end to it, but instead is determined to have regime change in that country regardless. He also discusses some of the likely consequences if America does attack.
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For Antiwar.com and Chaos Radio 95.9 FM in Austin, Texas, I'm Scott Horton and this is Antiwar Radio.
Is Iran making nuclear weapons and is the United States preparing to wage war against them to prevent them from obtaining nuclear weapons?
My guest today is Scott Ritter.
He's a former Marine, former United Nations weapons inspector, author of an armful of books.
Endgame, War in Iraq, Frontier Justice, Iraq Confidential.
His latest is Target Iran, the truth about the White House's plans for regime change.
Welcome to Antiwar Radio, Scott.
Thanks for having me.
Well, it's great to have you on and the theme of your book here basically, Target Iran, is that nuclear disarmament is really the excuse.
The policy is regime change, is that right?
That's correct.
I mean, the Bush administration has made it clear that when it comes to the Middle East, the policy is regional transformation that's inclusive of regime change in nations that the Bush administration has identified as either being a rogue nation or a failed nation state.
And the current theocracy that governs Iran has been deemed by the Bush administration as being rogue in character in part because, as the Bush administration recently articulated in its March 2006 National Security Strategy document, Iran is, in the opinion of the Bush administration, the number one state sponsor of terror in the world today.
And so it's really not that our government is worried that they're about to have an armful of nuclear weapons then?
Well, actually the government knows that they're not about to have an armful of nuclear weapons.
The CIA is coming out.
I mean, you know, when you hear someone say that Iran is ten years away from having a nuclear weapon, that means that they're at zero right now.
Ten years is what it takes to develop it in this day and age.
That's what it takes to put in place the technology, develop the infrastructure, pump out the fissile material, etc.
Ten years is what a nuclear program takes.
So when someone says they're ten years away, it means they're doing nothing now.
That's funny because just this morning in the Financial Times, Mohamed ElBaradei, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, used that exact figure, ten years.
It's one that people continuously throw out.
What Mohamed ElBaradei and others, I'll just speak about him because I know what he's committed to.
He said repeatedly that the work of the IAEA inspectors, the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors, has uncovered no evidence that sustains the allegations that Iraq is pursuing a nuclear weapons program.
However, he notes, the type of inspections that are permitted in Iran, those inspections that are mandated by the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the safeguards inspections, even the additional protocol inspections that Iran has agreed to, does not give the IAEA inspectors the kind of access necessary to ascertain that there is no nuclear weapons program in Iran, meaning that if someone throws out the supposition that Iran has a nuclear weapons program, it doesn't matter that the IAEA doesn't find any evidence to back this up.
In order to prove a negative, the IAEA, under pressure from the United States, is saying that they have to have absolute access to every site in Iran, even though that's a violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
It's not called for by the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
And we saw in Iraq that really what happens in a situation like that is that total access still isn't good enough, because if you're not turning over your banned weapons that we know you have, well, that's just proof that you're hiding them even better than we were accusing you of hiding them, right?
Well, I mean, that's the rhetoric.
The bottom line is, as was the case in Iraq, disarmament is not the objective in Iran.
Believe me, there's much better ways to go about pursuing disarmament than what the United States and what the IAEA is doing.
Verification, disarmament, arms control all require that you have a modicum of trust, that it is a bilateral activity, that in exchange for giving something, you get something.
In the case of Iraq, it was clear that even though the Iraqis did everything in their power eventually to demonstrate that they had disarmed, that they granted full access to the inspectors, it was the American agenda of regime change that corrupted the integrity of the entire operation, creating a cloud of distrust that polluted every aspect of the inspectors' work.
The same thing is taking place today.
Iran has given the IAEA inspectors extraordinary access to facilities throughout Iran.
They've explained things, they've provided documents, they've done above and beyond what is required by the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and have demonstrated that their nuclear energy program is a program that is consistent with that which is permitted by the law.
But thanks to the United States, the IAEA has corrupted the integrity of the process by insisting Iran comply with things that it's not required to do, by creating a wall of mistrust, by buying along with the notion that somewhere in Iran, we don't know where, no one knows where, somehow we don't know how, nobody knows how, Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program.
And they just throw that out there without any evidence to back it up.
It's just a given, we are told.
The President of the United States and others in the Bush administration have said, there can be no doubt that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program.
And you know what?
There's nothing but doubt that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program.
There is no evidence whatsoever.
I need to reinforce that point.
There is no evidence whatsoever to back up the rhetoric that the Bush administration has put out there that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program.
So what's happening here basically is, the analogy I guess would be, if I pull a gun on you, and I say, hands up, drop your weapon, and you say, look at me, I'm unarmed, and I say, you haven't dropped your weapon yet, the fact that the gun's not at your feet is proof that it must still be in your waistband somewhere.
Or if I pick up a stick and say, wait a minute now, you know, and I'm going to bat your gun away, and now you say, aha, you're trying to attack me.
Right, yeah, exactly.
Okay now, so you wrote, I'm trying to remember if it was a year or two years ago, that this whole attempt, quote unquote, by the United States and the Europeans to get Iran to back down from their nuclear capability, such as it is, that rather than being plan A, and then if that doesn't work, plan B, and then if that doesn't work, plan C, and that is getting the Europeans to negotiate for us, then getting the United Nations to do sanctions if necessary, and then plan C being warfare, you said in this article a year or two ago, I forget, that this is really step one, two, and three, not plan A, B, and C.
That's correct.
It's all part of the same plan.
The Bush administration, you know, knows that there is a certain process that needs to be followed through in getting the world and the American people prepared for armed conflict.
You're not going to get the International Atomic Energy Agency to rubber stamp the Bush administration's contention.
That's one of the things that was learned by the U.S. government, that international weapons inspectors do possess a relative degree of integrity and aren't going to go about, you know, making things up at the behest of the United States.
They also know that the Security Council is an environment where the United States has near absolute control.
The United States gets to, you know, insert its will, impose, you know, its directives.
The Security Council makes the United Nations an extension, per se, of American foreign policy.
So, you know, they need to get the debate shifted from the IAEA in Vienna, Austria, to the Security Council, where the United States, because they can pressure the IAEA to shift the debate, they've now created the impression that there is something of concern.
You see, if there was nothing of concern, why shift the debate?
But now they've brought it to the Security Council, and they've started to build this trap for the Security Council members and others to say, there is a problem here, now do something about it.
So initially, they'll pass an Article 40 resolution that says, Iran must comply, and if it doesn't, it constitutes a threat.
When Iran fails to comply, now they've got to do something else.
So they'll pass an Article 41 resolution that says, because Iran didn't comply, there's now going to be economic sanctions.
And what if Iran just sweeps that aside, too?
What do you do now?
And this is where the United States has built the trap, you see.
By defining Iran as a threat worthy of a Chapter 7 resolution, if the United Nations Security Council does nothing, the United States now has every right to say that it will not allow its national security interest to be hijacked by the international community, and it will do that which is necessary to defend itself.
And this is what the Bush administration has done.
We are in that situation as we speak.
The Bush administration, this is a point I make to everybody, needs to go to no one for permission.
They have gotten the international community backed into a corner, they have gotten Congress backed into a corner.
Congress, the idiots that they are, have abrogated any constitutional responsibility, they have any constitutional authority they have when they pass these ridiculous war powers authorization resolutions in 2001, 2002.
Instead of keeping the verbiage in these resolutions specific to the task at hand, they, in their patriotic fervor, have pretty much given the President a blank check to do that which he wishes.
And today, having rubber-stamped the President's statements regarding the threat posed by Iran, who in Congress is standing up challenging the President's assertion about Iran's nuclear weapons program?
Hardly anybody.
Nobody of stature, not a single one of the would-be presidential candidates is challenging.
In fact, they've all gone overboard to embrace Iran as a threat worthy of all options remaining on the table, to paraphrase Hillary Rodham Clinton.
So, Congress is trapped, the international community is trapped, and now it's just a matter of the Bush administration picking the time and place of the fight.
And now, that United Nations trap, basically what's happened is, they've decided, I guess the rest of the countries kind of went along with American pressure on the IAEA to get it to the Security Council, because they're trying to get in between us in a war, sort of the same situation with Iraq.
The reason they passed 1441 was not to get America into a war, but to try to stop us from getting into a war.
But then, as you say, they basically accepted our premise, there's a problem, then if they're not willing to do something about it, we are.
Well, that's absolutely correct.
I mean, people feel that they need to be at the table to be part of the game.
They don't realize that once you sit at the table, you nullify yourself that to be part of the game, you need to stay out of the table.
And for whatever reason, Europe has fallen into the trap of saying, in order to get America to soften its position, we must play the game that America is dealing out here.
That's wrong.
Europe should never play the game to begin with.
I just told the United States, absolutely not.
We don't view Iran as a threat, we're not engaging on this issue, go pound sand.
Because that would have made it very difficult for the Bush administration, especially in the aftermath of a unilateral disaster in Iraq, to move strongly against Iran.
But by playing the game, they legitimize the cause the United States is embracing.
They may not believe that's what they're doing up front, but that's the end result.
And today, George W. Bush can stand before the world, before the American people, and say that Europe has reached this conclusion together with America, that America is not the only one saying this.
Right.
And now, to be clear, what it is that America is saying is that Iran cannot enrich uranium at all.
Well, the United States has said that Iran will not be permitted to have any technology that could be useful in nuclear weapons.
And the enrichment of uranium is a dual-purpose technology.
Once you have that technology to enrich uranium, you can enrich it to 5%, which is usable in a nuclear reactor, or you can enrich it to 80-90%, which is usable in a nuclear weapon.
Now, how easy is that?
Let me stop you right there.
How easy is it if you had your centrifuge equipment perfected to the degree that you could enrich uranium to electricity-grade, low-enriched uranium?
Is it simply a matter of flipping a switch, and now you can enrich it up to 94%?
Well, it's not a flip of the switch.
You basically are taking the feedstock that goes through, that's enriched to 5%, feeding it back in, and repeating that process until you get your highly enriched uranium.
So you don't need a whole new setup, then?
No, you don't need a whole new setup, but I'll tell you this.
If your initial setup is under the monitoring of the International Atomic Energy, there's no way you can enrich uranium to high enrichment levels without being caught.
I see.
But the worry is that if they get the know-how, then they can kick the IAEA out, withdraw from the NPT, and then start making a bomb.
Is that it?
Well, you know, at that point in time, the debate changes tremendously.
Right now, I don't want to go down with intent that can't be proven.
What we need to discuss is what do the facts that are available show.
I would say that one of the negotiation attacks that I would take with the Iranians is if you pursue an enrichment program, it must be under 100% verifiable monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
And should you withdraw from the NPT and kick the inspectors out, we will be right to infer ill intent.
We will be right to infer a nuclear weapons program.
That's what I would start to say, because I would tell the Iranians, you've said irresponsible things, some of your behavior has been questionable, and we have reason to doubt your sincerity.
We're willing to go down this path, but we are going to create an Iran-only caveat here, which is, Iran is permitted to pursue its Article 4 rights of enriching uranium, but it will do so with stringent inspections.
And no, Iran, you're forever married to the NPT now.
As long as you have an enrichment program, you're married to the NPT.If you kick the inspectors out or found cheating, we have a right to infer nuclear weapons intent, and this will never be tolerated.
If you go down that path and the Iranians misbehave, I myself would support a military strike against Iran, because that's legitimate.
We have a legitimate right to say Iran cannot have nuclear weapons.
There's nothing wrong with that stance.
Are you sure?
Even that?
I mean, they don't have the right to tell us that we can't have nuclear weapons.
I'm sorry, this is not the way the games played.
Nuclear weapons are, you know, I'm not one of these guys that believe because we got them, everybody's allowed to have them.
I believe we need to be getting rid of them.
But that's an argument for the American people to engage in.
The Iranians don't get a vote on that one.
I disagree strongly.
We live in a very dangerous world, and I don't want to play little feel-good games here.
The Iranians are not a nation that should be having nuclear weapons.
You know what?
The Ayatollah Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, agrees with me.
You know, he doesn't want to engage in this silly debate about whether or not Iran should have it because Israel has it.
He has said that nuclear weapons are incompatible with Islam.
I'd like to take him at his word.
Sure, well, you know, I think that America should disarm as well, but I'm just not sure that it's America's responsibility to allow or disallow other nations to have a nuclear program one way or another.
Well, again, it's not the United States alone that's saying this.
It's the international community.
This is where I would agree.
You know, we have to draw the line.
There can be no more nuclear proliferation.
We need to concur with the rest of the world that there is no more, you know, no room for the continuation of the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
There's a debate here, though.
See, here's the problem.
If we get into this debate about whether Iran can or can't have what, we've lost.
What we should be seeking here is to resolve a problem that's leading us down the path towards war.
And that problem is America's policy regime change.
That's what our focus should be on.
Right.
Well, I was going to ask you, since you're such a firm believer in nonproliferation, do you think that the Bush administration misusing the nonproliferation regime, such as the NPT and the IAEA, to make all these false accusations against Iraq and now against Iran, has that hurt the long-term future of the Nonproliferation Treaty and the IAEA's ability to keep track of these kind of things?
Oh, absolutely.
It's hurt nonproliferation not just in Iran, not just for the IAEA.
It's hurt disarmament and arms control efforts globally.
The Bush administration has what I call an incoherent disarmament arms control policy.
It doesn't have one.
It has one that's been confused with its, you know, global hegemony, its goal of global hegemony, where it uses the fear produced by the topics of arms control and disarmament to provide support for policies that, if you think about them, are actually about furthering armament, furthering proliferation.
You know, why do nations proliferate?
And generally speaking, it comes down, you know, simplistically speaking, to Newton's second law.
For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction.
And so long as the United States behaves irresponsibly, possesses nuclear weapons of its own, comes up with policies to talk about preemptive use of nuclear weapons, don't be surprised when, you know, other nations around the world react in a similar manner.
The Bush administration's policies have been devastating to disarmament, devastating to arms control, and have done nothing more than promote the proliferation of WMD.
Yeah, in fact, wasn't there just a United Nations report that came out a few weeks ago that said that they were predicting in 20 years you'll have 15 more states with nukes or something like that?
Well, they did put that report, but I don't know what the basis of that is, because I'll tell you this.
The North Korean example, the Iranian example, the Iraqi example, let's focus on the North Korean example.
There's a nation that went the path of nuclear weapons.
What have they gotten for it?
It's bankrupt.
You know, the bottom line is sound foreign policy would generate the kind of economic assistance to North Korea that a nuclear weapon wouldn't.
North Korea doesn't need a nuclear weapon.
It has enough artillery to rain 300,000 rounds of high explosive shells on the capital of South Korea per hour in a conflict.
So they didn't need to go that path.
They nearly bankrupted themselves.
And believe it or not, they didn't get the support of the world when they went this path.
I would believe that, yes, there are nations that will have access to technology that could allow them to proliferate into the nuclear weapons sphere in the next 20 years, but I believe that responsible nations are looking and saying, that's just not the route we want to go.
That's stupidity.
And you're going to see, rather than a push for proliferation, I think you're going to see the world saying, we need to back this puppy up, and there's going to be a lot of pressure put on the United States.
Just take a look at the debate that's going on in England today concerning Tony Blair's efforts to acquire a new generation of nuclear missile submarines.
Look at the argument.
The only argument that people can put forward about the need for Great Britain to have this is that, although there's no threat that manifests itself today that warrants Great Britain spending billions of dollars on a new submarine and a new missile, a nuclear missile, they say, we need to be concerned about Russia in the future.
See, that's heading us in the path towards a resumption of the Cold War, back to the bad days.
That's not pushing us forward.
That's old thinking.
That's outdated thinking.
And I'm hopeful that sometime post-George W. Bush that the United States will get in line with the rest of the world and say, you know, we need to rethink this whole direction we're taking here.
Yeah, and it may even be a silver lining of all this trouble from the Bush years that people around the world are going to renew their focus on this problem, because, I mean, let's face it, you can't use a nuke barely in any circumstance without killing innocent people with it.
These things have got to go one way or another.
I totally agree.
Look, I'm a big favor of the zero option.
That's why I just don't want to get into a discussion about can Iran have nuclear weapons.
No, they can't.
I don't believe Israel should have them.
I don't believe we should have them.
I don't believe Russia should have them.
I don't believe anybody have them.
But, you know, I just think it's a totally wrong direction to be taking a conversation to say, because we have them, others should be allowed to have it.
No, nuclear weapons are bad.
They're destabilizing.
And they have the potential of inflicting horrific harm on this planet.
And we need to be thinking long-term here.
I've got 14-year-old daughters.
I want them to grow up in a world free of the threat of nuclear holocaust.
I want them to be able to have children who can live in a world free of the threat of nuclear holocaust.
If we keep going in the direction we're heading right now, you know, I may see a nuclear holocaust in my age.
And not only would that be bad for me, that would be devastating for my children.
I just think it's time responsible humans realize that there can be no justification for possessing nuclear weapons in this day and age.
Okay, now, back to Iran specifically and their nuclear programs such as it is.
We began by talking about the experts saying they're 10 years away, which you said means they haven't started yet.
They're not even really on the path.
But there's a word I believe stuck out at me in a video I saw of you and Seymour Hersh on the stage in New York last October.
You used this word, tannamount, said to the Israeli point of view, if the Iranians have any nuclear technology whatsoever, that is tannamount to their ability to make a nuclear weapon.
And their red line is way, way back before your red line.
Is that it?
Yeah, that's the Israeli point of view.
I don't agree with this point of view, but I acknowledge your point of view.
I understand.
I'm just saying that I think it helps your argument, actually.
You accept their premise that Iran should not be allowed to have nuclear weapons.
You're just saying that they're freaking out when there's nothing to freak out about, basically.
Well, see, the Israelis have taken a very absolutist point of view, which is they want to take the potential of risk down to as close to zero as possible.
And from the Israeli perspective, once you're able to perfect the enrichment technology, there's really nothing to stop you from heading down the path towards nuclear weapons.
So they say no to enrichment technology.
The problem with the Israelis is the rest of the world just disagrees with that premise.
We have a nonproliferation treaty.
The world has signed it, Israel hasn't.
And the treaty says, no, nations are allowed to pursue this technology for peaceful purposes as long as they embrace certain verification processes.
And again, Iran is a member of the nonproliferation treaty and has IAEA inspectors crawling all over the place, and Israel's not a member at all.
That's right.
And again, I say to someone who's a friend of Israel who's sympathetic to the legitimate national security concerns of Israel, but it's time Israel stop and reflect that its basic stance when it comes to Iran is a hypocritical one with no legitimacy in the eyes of the majority of the world.
Israel can't cry wolf when they themselves are the biggest wolf on the block.
And again, you said this in your book, too, that you are very much pro-Israel.
And as you just said, you're very much in favor of the security of Israel.
But I think the way you put it in your book is that they're actually increasing the risks to themselves by imagining a danger in Iran that doesn't exist, that they're trying to basically get themselves in a war over nothing.
And how risky is that?
Very risky.
Again, genuine security is not brought about by searching for enemies.
And right now, Israel is in the hunt for enemies.
Genuine security is brought about by figuring out how to peacefully coexist with your neighbors as equals.
And one of the big problems is the Israelis refuse to provide equality to their Arab neighbors.
Israel wants to have a situation where five million people get to dictate regional terms of coexistence to hundreds of millions of people.
And that calculus just doesn't work in the long run.
It creates a situation where inevitably Israel is going to find itself in an increasingly dangerous situation.
Now, all throughout your book, you tell basically the entire history of, since really Bush came into power, our relations with Iran, their relationships with the International Atomic Energy Agency, et cetera.
And, you know, it's all very complicated stuff.
First generation centrifuges and second generation centrifuges and what came from A.Q.
Khan and what did they make themselves and which facility is where.
It seems at some places in your book like there's some smoke that, wait a minute, they've been hiding something that now they're admitting to because they're forced to admit to it.
Is there enough smoke to indicate any kind of fire in terms of a secret nuclear program?
Well, you know, you've got to put everything into proper perspective.
If you just talk about the smoke and you leave it without a context, you could say, ah, they're cheating, they're hiding something.
Therefore, we have a right to assume.
But I always like to believe in mitigating circumstances, especially ones that are legitimate.
You have to ask the question, why were the Iranians hiding this?
I mean, you know, I think you have to ask that and investigate it because invariably if they have a nuclear weapons program, the answer will be because they are pursuing a nuclear weapons program.
But if you investigate it and you find out that the answer is because since 1979 the United States has blocked every effort undertaken by the Islamic Republic of Iran to pursue its legitimate rights to acquire technology related to nuclear energy and that the Iranians have determined that possessing a nuclear energy capability is a strategic necessity, not a nicety but a necessity for its long-term survival, you might be able to say, whoa, wait a minute, they were cheating or hiding because that's the only way they could acquire this stuff.
And, you know, when you ask the question and you investigate, that's the answer that comes out.
Not that they're pursuing nuclear weapons, but that it's the United States that instigated their cheating by creating the conditions in which Iran could not acquire the technology it is permitted to acquire under law, you know, in legitimate circles.
Why did Iran go to AQ Khan?
Because that was the only outlet available for them to acquire the technology they needed.
They also have that AQ Khan is a nuclear weapons proliferator, but the technology for enrichment that AQ Khan used in his weapons program is the same technology that's usable in the energy sphere.
So, you know, you have to ask the question, you have to go down that path.
It's the same thing that happened with Saddam.
You know, I was a chief weapons inspector.
I was blocked outside of, you know, numerous sites, at gunpoint.
People said, why is Saddam blocking the inspectors?
He must be hiding weapons of mass destruction.
But if you ask the question and truly investigate it, not just ask it in a rhetorical aspect, why is he blocking?
Because he's hiding weapons.
But why is he blocking?
And then it turns out that, hey, they got some concern that the inspection teams out of the leading are staffed to the gills with CIA and British intelligence operatives who were trying to collect intelligence about the security of Saddam Hussein so that they can assassinate Saddam as part of their unilateral regime change national security objectives.
Ah, doesn't that put the blockages in a little bit different perspective?
Of course it does.
And I would say the same thing holds true with Iran and its nuclear program.
Now, something we always hear about Iran's nuclear program is, oh, come on, Persia's sitting on a sea of oil.
What could they possibly need a civilian nuclear energy program for?
I'd like to, you know, I'd love to be a congressman for a day with the subpoena authority.
I'd subpoena Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and say, hey, you guys, in 1976, Dick, when you were White House Chief of Staff and Donald, when you were the Secretary of Defense for Gerald Ford, you guys concurred that Iran had every right to pursue a nuclear energy program inclusive of indigenous enrichment of Iranian capabilities.
And yet Iran at that time was one of the largest oil producers, a nation awash in a sea of oil.
Why did you reach that conclusion?
If you don't want to testify, I'll just pull out the documents you signed.
You reached that conclusion because you agreed with the expert opinion in Iran and in the United States that Iran had a finite amount of oil, that this oil needed to be exported for Iran to retain economic viability, that Iran was a developing economy, that if it didn't acquire an alternative energy source, would eventually be consuming, you know, the bulk of the oil meant for exporting, for exportation, thereby destroying Iran's ability to generate the income needed to build its economy, it would self-destruct.
Wow, we knew that in 1976.
And the people that knew it were the same people that, you know, 30 years later are saying Iran is awash in a sea of oil.
There's no reason for them to be pursuing a nuclear program other than to acquire nuclear weapons.
So it's simply a matter of opportunity cost, as if I own a shop and I have some gasoline and some coal, I want to sell my coal and burn my gasoline or burn my gasoline and sell my coal, it's simply a matter of which one's cheaper for me, right?
Well, for the Iranians right now, you know, there is no market for them to, you know, let's say they had, you know, nuclear, they could enrich fuel.
The market for, you know, nuclear fuel isn't that great.
The market for petroleum is huge.
You know, but, you know, let's say you have gasoline and gasoline is at $6, you know, whatever, a gallon, I'm throwing out a hypothetical number, and you've got coal, what are you going to heat your house with?
Coal that if you sell it you get 39 cents of, you know, an equivalent unit, or gas that if you sell you get $6.
You're going to sell the gas and heat your house with coal.
The Iranians are going down the same path.
They want, you know, and the amount of money they're spending on their nuclear program is not that much money when you think about it.
You know, they're spending about $30 billion a year to import gasoline.
Now, wait a minute, they're a nation awash in a sea of oil.
What do they need gasoline for?
Because they don't have any refining capacity.
It was all destroyed during the Iran-Iraq war.
So they have to import refined oil products to feed their national, you know, requirement for, you know, for consumption.
Iran's got a serious energy problem.
They need an alternative source of energy.
Okay, now, last week I spoke with Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, and he agreed with what you said at the beginning of the show, that there is no evidence that Iran has a secret nuclear weapons program.
But, he said, he kind of believes that they do, and his CIA friends believe that they do too, even though they can't prove it.
What do you say about that?
You know, I respect people's gut feelings.
As an analyst, you always have a gut feeling.
But, I'll tell you this, I don't act on what I believe, I act on what I know.
Right, and so your indications are that they really don't, though, you think?
Well, see, I'm somebody that actually, you know, believes that you've got to look at the totality of it.
You can't just go on your own prejudice.
If I acted on my own prejudice about Iran, you know, my prejudice was formed in the 1980s with the bombing of the Beirut barracks.
I had friends who were, you know, participated in Desert One hostage rescue mission.
I had friends who were held hostage in the embassy.
You know, I had friends who were blown up in Beirut.
I have a deep, dark hatred for Iranians based upon what they did to the United States Marine Corps and the United States military and what they've done to our country.
They held Americans hostage for 444 days.
Now, I don't like these people, but as a professional intelligence analyst, I have to step back away from my own prejudices and say, where did the facts take me on this one?
And I always point out, you know, I'm not a Catholic, I'm not a big fan of the Pope, but if the Pope came up to me, put his hand on the Bible, swore an oath to God that something was so, I'd have to take that seriously, because I do respect the fact that the Pope is a religious man who takes his religion seriously.
And he wouldn't lightly put his hand on the Bible and swear something to be so.
I take the religion of the Ayatollah Khamenei seriously.
This is a serious religious figure.
I'm not somebody who dismisses them and says, well, he's an Iranian, he's a cheating Muslim, so and so.
No, it's a serious Islamic scholar who has issued a fatwa that says nuclear weapons are incompatible with Islam and that the Islamic Republic of Iran will never pursue this direction.
You know, I got to take that seriously.
It doesn't mean that I solely base everything, you know, my total assessment on that, but that becomes a major part of factoring in the intent of Iran, because intent becomes a very important thing to think about when you have no evidence, you know, because there is no evidence.
So now you have to say, well, why would I think Iran would do it?
They intend to do it.
What do I base it on?
I can tell you that the overwhelming amount of indicators available point away from Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, you know, more so than they point to Iran, you know, having some long-term intent.
And now let's talk about the peace offers.
There's been various attempts.
Of course, it's been in the news lately about the April 2003 peace offer that Condoleezza Rice is now saying they never even saw or heard of until The Washington Post reported it last summer.
And also, if it's okay, I can just get you to kind of briefly discuss that, but I believe there was also another peace offer that was to internationalize their nuclear program, where they said, let's go ahead and bring in French and German companies and we'll make it an international consortium, and then that way it's all perfectly above board because it's America's allies helping them do it.
The bottom line, again, is that we're talking about, you know, genuine efforts at diplomacy on the part of Iran to resolve a difficult situation.
And to me, this screams intent.
The intent of the Iranians is not to pursue.
If you were going to pursue a nuclear weapons program, why would you agree to these things?
Why would you put them on the table?
Why would you go down this path?
It shows me that there's one side that's serious about resolving this.
There's another side that's not.
Look, the United States isn't about to do anything that legitimizes the Iranian government's position.
To sit down and actually negotiate with the Iranians means that, you know, you respect what they bring to the table.
You create opportunities to avoid conflict, to avoid confrontation.
The sole purpose of the Bush administration's policy objectives vis-à-vis Iran is to create opportunities for conflict and confrontation because the goal is regime change.
This is what the Bush administration wants.
They don't want to negotiate this away.
They don't want to resolve this.
This is not their objective.
If I hear one more time that the president wants, you know, a diplomatic solution, you know, I've said it before, I won't believe this until he puts Condoleezza Rice's butt on an airplane and flies her to Tehran.
You know, when that happens, I'll say, aha, they're serious about negotiation.
James Baker flew to Europe to meet with Tariq Aziz prior to the 1991 Gulf War.
That proved to me that we were serious about, you know, seeking any alternative to war.
The Bush administration's not even close to that, this Bush administration.
They don't want a diplomatic solution.
And, again, if we can revisit this April 2003 peace offer, my understanding is that they offered basically to withhold all support for Hamas and Hezbollah to basically go along with the United States, suspend their enrichment, you know, go along with us when it comes to their nuclear program.
They were prepared to recognize Israel even, I think, to the degree that Malaysia does or something like that.
This was the offer that America turned down, right?
Correct.
I mean, you know, I'm not intimately familiar with the offer.
I don't believe they said that they're going to withdraw support from Hamas or Hezbollah.
I think they'd say that they would, you know, reduce the support and would pressure Hamas and Hezbollah to behave.
Right, right.
They would use their influence to bring Hamas and Hezbollah in line.
The recognition of Israel, it wouldn't be that Iran and Israel are going to suddenly exchange embassies, but it would be the kind of recognition that says Israel exists.
We may not be happy about it, but Israel exists and we're not going to challenge Israel's right to exist.
You know, and then on the nuclear one is to say, look, we'll put it on the table.
You know, if it bothers you, okay, let's talk about it.
So this brings up the question, if they're really willing to compromise about their nuclear program, about Hamas and Hezbollah, about recognition of Israel, why is American policy so intent on regime change then?
Well, because we have ideologues who have, you know, bought into a singular direction of travel for the United States.
When you're the sole remaining superpower, believe me, I've been in Washington, D.C., and I've seen this many, many times.
You know, we're America.
We're the world's sole remaining superpower.
We don't negotiate.
We don't treat others as equals.
It's our way or the highway.
And that's just the way it is.
When a policy gets staffed in Washington, D.C., it becomes dogma.
It's unchallengeable by anybody, especially the international community.
You don't let others dictate your terms because that's a sign of weakness.
That old saying, you know, absolute power corrupts absolutely is absolutely true.
The United States is an extremely corrupt global superpower that, again, I talked about Israel with five million people dictating the terms of coexistence with hundreds of million people in the region.
Three hundred million Americans believe we get to dictate the terms of coexistence with billions of people on the earth, that the earth is our playground.
This is what's happening here.
The policies that have been formulated vis-à-vis Iran are very simplistic policies that, you know, are part and parcel of a national security strategy promulgated in September 2002 that divides the world in the spheres of American national interest that we are allowed to, you know, dictate, to impose ourselves economically, politically, militarily, preemptively if necessary, with disregard for international law because, after all, international law is nothing more than contract law that can be renegotiated at our, you know, at our whim.
This is what's going on.
We don't have responsible policy formulators right now.
We have arrogant global hegemonists in power.
And tomorrow's deadline at the United Nations is for what?
Tomorrow's deadline is for Iran to suspend enrichment and to accept the Security Council's demands regarding its nuclear program.
I mean, and Iran's just not going to do it.
And so this is just another step toward the path to war then.
And I guess, as you've said before, George Bush would be disappointed if they did suspend, right?
He wants a war.
George Bush won't let them suspend.
What does suspension mean?
Again, let's say Iran says they suspend.
Just think of the logic now.
We have the IAEA gaining total access with the most technologically advanced, you know, investigation instruments the world has ever seen when it comes to nuclear technology.
And they have gained complete access to all the identified sites.
And they have said there is nothing here to sustain anything other than a peaceful nuclear program.
The Bush administration has come out and said, well, they've buried everything.
They've created this whole alternative universe where a secret nuclear program is under way that's dedicated to military action.
So what if Iran suspends its nuclear program?
Bush administration is going to say, well, you just hit it somewhere else.
This is creating the problem of proving the negative.
So now they're going to tell the Iranians we have to gain additional access.
Iranians might agree to, okay, what do you want to do?
We want to go anywhere, anytime.
Wow.
Do you want to come into the Guardian Council?
Yes.
Do you want to come into the National Security Council?
Yes.
Do you want to go into secret military industrial facilities?
Yes.
And this is at the same time that you have on paper documents to state your policy is regime change?
Go pound sand.
Iran's not going to go for it.
The Bush administration, if Iran today said they will suspend its nuclear program, that will be unacceptable.
The Bush administration will refuse it, will reject it.
They'll just keep making demand on demand on demand until Iran finally refuses something.
That's correct because their intent is not.
Look, Saddam Hussein at the end of the day did everything the international community wanted him to do.
If you reflect on the inspections that transpired between November 2002 and March 2003, those inspectors went into Saddam Hussein's bathroom, bedroom, kitchen, living room, basement.
That's his personal house, by the way, not to mention all the other facilities that are out there.
There was never an obstruction.
Anything they wanted to do, they got.
They found nothing.
They contradicted the CIA's assertions about hidden WMD capability.
And yet at the end of the day, George Bush with a straight face could look the American people in the eye and say, Saddam has refused the last chance to disarm.
There's nothing the Iranians could do to make these ideologues happy.
They have a policy of regime change, not disarmament.
Okay, now let's talk about what some of the incredibly complicated consequences of a war against Iran could be carrying out this simplistic policy, as you call it.
I interviewed Wayne White, a former State Department intelligence official last week, who told me he's seen plans that are not just describing bombing, Natanz and Boucher, and a couple of known nuclear sites, but in fact are for wide-ranging attacks against the entire Iranian military infrastructure, against their subs, their ports, their everything.
Well, of course.
I mean, this dates back to the time of the Clinton administration.
Reflect back on the 72-hour bombing campaign that we witnessed Operation Desert Fox in December 1998.
Ostensibly, it was done because the Iraqi government had refused access to certain sites for U.N. inspectors.
And so the U.S. ordered the inspectors out and then bombed Iraq.
But if one takes a look at the sites that were bombed, a very small percentage of them had anything to do with weapons potential, production capacity, et cetera.
The majority of the sites dealt with Iraq's military, with their national security, with their leadership.
These were decapitation strikes.
Why?
Because the bombing campaign wasn't about disarming Iraq.
It was about creating the conditions so that certain Iraqi generals that the CIA believed they had on their payroll could move into a weakened Baghdad and overthrow Saddam Hussein.
It was a regime change strike.
That same mindset is at play today in Iran.
We've already said, remember what I'm saying, it's not about disarmament.
Disarmament can be negotiated.
They will never trust the Iranian government.
The Iranian government can say and do anything, and we won't trust them.
So ultimately, the only measure of verification is to remove the Iranian government from power and replace it with one we trust.
So even if we go to war ostensibly to get rid of a nuclear capability, we'll never get rid of that, because what are we bombing?
We're bombing the targets we know.
The 12 or so nuclear sites that the IAEA has inspected.
But we've already said that these aren't doing nuclear weapons activity.
The nuclear weapons are taking place at other locations, but we don't know where they are.
So what are we going to bomb?
The great unknown?
No, the only way to get 100 percent certainty is to remove the regime from power.
And so the targets will be targets of decapitation, seeking to eliminate the Iranian leadership, targets of security suppression or neutralization.
We will hit the Revolutionary Guard.
We will hit the police.
We will hit the security services.
We will hit the military.
Targets of destabilization.
We will hit economic targets to create unrest.
The goal is to create the conditions inside Iran that empower the Iranian people to rise up and remove the theocracy from power.
That's the objective here.
That's what the airstrikes are supposed to happen.
But I'll tell you this.
They'll have as much success as Bill Clinton's effort in December 1998 had.
There was no move on Baghdad.
There was never a serious effort to get rid of Saddam Hussein.
It all collapsed.
And the same thing will happen if we bomb Iran, thinking the Iranian people are going to rise up and assist us.
Now, as many times as that idea has been panned, do you think that the neoconservatives and the Bush regime still actually believe that?
That if they bomb Iran, that that will encourage the people to rise up and overthrow their government, creating an America-friendly one in its place?
Absolutely.
I mean, as many times as the notion of Saddam Hussein having some sort of strategic alliance with Osama bin Laden was panned prior to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration simply created the Office of Special Projects with Douglas Fyfe, who fabricated intelligence about this linkage.
And that's what they believed.
It was cherry-picked and sofie, believe me.
It's not Douglas Fyfe that is solely to blame here.
I condemn him all largely.
But the Bush administration, it's not as though they sat down at the restaurant and said, show me all the items on the menu, and I'm going to nibble from them and pick the one I like.
They came in and said, I only want steak.
Don't show me anything other than steak.
And Doug Fyfe's job was to put steak on the table.
The same thing's happening today.
This is an administration that does not want to hear no, doesn't want to hear a negative assessment.
They say, just feed me steak on Iran.
Just give me what I want.
And what they want is a scenario where the Iranian people rise up and topple the theocracy.
They have bought into this.
They have been speaking with certain expatriate groups in Los Angeles and New York City, Iranian expatriates who date back to the time of the Shah, who are telling the Bush administration that the Iranian people are dissatisfied with this government.
They're ready for change and they just need help.
But they're too afraid.
They have this dictatorship, this security mechanism in place that's suppressing them.
And all the Bush administration needs to do is nullify that, neutralize this security mechanism, and the Iranian people will rise up.
This is what they're hearing.
This is what they want to believe.
It fits into their tiny little, you know, world view.
And they refuse to consider anything other than this option.
Okay, well, in the real world, how might Iran fight back against the United States if we do initiate this air campaign?
Well, I always remind people that the Iranians are not stupid.
They're very worldly.
They understand the Middle East better than we do.
They understand Europe better than we do.
And frankly speaking, I think if you took Iranian high school students and had a test on American geography and politics, it might become apparent they understand America better than we do.
They don't want war.
They've been to war.
They've seen war.
They've experienced it.
They've buried hundreds of thousands of people.
It's the last thing they want.
But if we push them in that direction, if we continue to search for enemies and we pick Iran as our enemy, they will wage war.
And it will be a war that is very well thought out.
I always remind people about the cockiness of the Israeli army.
And again, I'm a friend of Israel.
I've worked very close with the IDF.
But, you know, very cocky, especially when it comes to conflict with Arab fighters.
They believe that the Arabs are cowardly, lack technology, and, you know, will fire a few rockets and fire a few shells and then run away before they're captured.
The Israelis got a bloody nose in southern Lebanon this past summer by Hezbollah.
Hezbollah kicked their ass.
Hezbollah did a darn good job.
And I just tell people, Hezbollah were the students, the teachers were the Iranians.
We're getting ready to go up against the masters.
The students kicked the hell out of Israel.
We should keep that in mind as we prepare to take on the masters.
I'm not saying Iran's going to conquer America.
They're going to defend themselves, and they're going to be very, very careful on how they do this.
They're not going to allow themselves to get trapped into a losing engagement.
They know the area.
I would say that if we put an aircraft carrier into the Persian Gulf, that we stand a good chance of losing that aircraft carrier.
I would say that if we put troops on the ground, we stand a good chance of losing those troops.
And people would say, well, three and a half weeks we took Baghdad.
There's nobody can take us on.
Well, you know what?
General Patton made a hell of a run from Normandy to Germany during World War II.
And yet, six years later, the North Koreans kicked the crap out of us in the Korean Peninsula.
If we think for a second that Iran is going to be a repeat of Iraq, we're in for a big wake-up call.
And this is just the military aspect of it.
Having brought in economic, because the Iranians know what makes us tick, oil.
They're going to shut down oil production, not just their own, but the entire Middle East.
No oil is going to be coming out of the Persian Gulf.
And what's that do?
Right now we have the global oil production capacity, excess production capacity runs at about 1.52 percent.
That means we're just barely producing enough oil to feed the global demand, and that demand is increasing.
If you shut down the Iranian oil and the Persian Gulf oil, and God forbid Hugo Chavez in Venezuela stops pumping oil in protest, we're looking at negative 20 to negative 30 percent production capacity.
That means that there is not anywhere near enough oil to feed global demand.
Do you think for a second the Indians and the Chinese and all those other developing economies are going to stop seeking access to oil just because America was dumb enough to commit economic suicide by attacking Iran?
No.
America is now going to have to compete on the global market for a finite resource.
And the price of oil is going to go through the roof.
I've heard people talk about 250, 300, $350 a barrel.
When you get up to that high, it just doesn't matter anymore, because the price of oil is reflecting the price of everything.
And if we start paying that much money for a barrel of oil, we're going to get into a hyperinflation cycle that's uncontrollable.
I just tell Americans, I saw a photograph once of a German in the 1930s during the Weimar Republic when they got hit with hyperinflation taking a wheelbarrow full of money to the bakery to buy a loaf of bread.
And we could be in that kind of situation.
All these Americans that are living on the margin here, I don't know how many, what's the percentage of Americans that are living paycheck by paycheck?
You own a house, you have a mortgage, but if you lost your job, didn't have a paycheck, within two cycles you'd be homeless and on the street?
Well, I'll tell you what, America, get ready for that reality.
Iran's going to kick our butt.
I mean, we may, you know, thump our chest and have the F-15s and the F-18s and go in there and bomb things and blow things up, but at the end of the day, there's still going to be an Iran.
It's still going to function.
And America's going to be hurting.
We don't have much more capacity to suffer the kinds of losses that we're suffering in Iraq.
And I don't mean, you know, human life, I'm one of these people that bleeds for every American that dies, but recognizes the reality of war and says, look, in four years we've only lost 3,200.
We lost 6,000 in a matter of days on the beach at Iwo Jima.
We lost thousands at Omaha.
We lost, you know, Omaha Beach.
We lost, you know, thousands at every battle we fought.
That was real war.
And we're talking about getting ready for a real war with Iran, not this insurgency garbage we're playing with the Iraqis.
Not this tiddling winch.
We're going to play the real game.
We're going up and playing the Super Bowl.
And we may not win.
In your book, Target Iran, Scott Ritter, you bring up the possibility of the use of nuclear weapons if our soldiers are stretched too thin and are left vulnerable to attack by the Iranians, the possibility that America could go ahead and deploy nuclear weapons to protect our soldiers when we pick a fight we can't finish here.
George W. Bush is a man who simply does not know war.
He has surrounded himself with people who don't know war.
Condoleezza Rice does not know war.
Dick Cheney doesn't know war.
None of these people know war.
And so when they strut their stuff and stick out their chest and play the great commander-in-chief, they're playing games here.
This is not, you know, reality-based.
Harry Truman knew war.
When he fought in World War I, he knew war.
He saw war firsthand.
Harry Truman was man enough to take a bloody nose in Korea and not use nuclear weapons.
He told MacArthur to pound sand when MacArthur wanted to drop nuclear weapons to stop the Chinese coming across the border.
You know, he knew that America could regroup and come back and reengage and fight the war down to our terms, maybe not a total victory, but at least something that saved face.
George Bush isn't man enough to do this.
He's going off on an adventure that, I'm telling you, I'm not the only one that, you know, is this prognosticating disaster here.
There are people saying that, you know, we're in for tough times.
And when these tough times emerge, what is George W. Bush going to do?
Is he man enough to say, oops, overextended, got slapped, let's back up, regroup, go back in and try and, you know, see what we can pull out of this fire here?
Or is he going to say, no, no one does this to America.
Even though we picked this fight, no one does this to America.
They sink in an aircraft carrier, they cut off 80,000 troops.
George W. Bush has come up with a couple of things that scare every American, scariest citizen in the world.
First is the notion of a usable nuclear weapon.
You know, no longer are we talking about, you know, nuclear weapons that are deterrent.
We've developed families of nuclear weapons that are designed to be used in conflict, conventional conflict, because the next thing that should scare everybody is the utilization policy for nuclear weapons.
Under the Bush administration, we now acknowledge that America has the right to use nuclear weapons preemptively in a non-nuclear environment.
They've set certain criteria for this, which include scenarios in which significant numbers of American troops are placed in harm's way with no realistic, you know, aspects for conventional help to mitigate against the impending doom.
So we would use nuclear weapons to break the back of those who were threatening these American troops.
I'm telling you right now that if we bomb Iran, we are not going to achieve our objectives.
And Iran will strike back in a way that's going to hurt us in the short term.
And there will be tremendous pressure put on its president to escalate the conflict rapidly to end the conflict, because it's hurting America economically.
This will result in American boots on the ground.
And we don't have enough boots on the ground to dictate the flow of combat on the ground.
The Iranians have 70 million people.
They have hundreds of thousands of troops.
They're fighting on terrain that they know.
They've prepared the traps, and they will trap us.
They will hurt us.
They will threaten us with annihilation.
And George W. Bush is not a big enough man to say, oops, let's back up and regroup.
He could drop a nuclear weapon, and if he drops a nuclear weapon on Iran, just think about that in the Muslim world today.
The infidel just dropped a nuclear weapon on a Muslim nation that didn't threaten anybody, didn't start this fight.
This is a fight started by the Christians, by the infidels.
Musharraf is in a very precarious situation right now in Pakistan.
Why do I pick on Pakistan?
Because they're a Muslim state that happens to have nuclear weapons, 40 to 60 of them.
They have the potential, they have the fissile material for another dozen or two dozen or so weapons.
If Musharraf is overthrown by Islamic fundamentalists who are outraged by the American use of nuclear weapons against Iran, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to put two and two together and figure out that fissile material will find its way in the hands of Islamic fundamentalists who will do everything they can to exact revenge on America.
And that's why I tell people, pick a city.
You want to bomb Iran?
Pick a city.
Not an Iranian city, but an American city.
Because we're going to lose one, at least one.
If we use nuclear weapons against Iran, this game will not stop until an American city is obliterated by a retaliatory nuclear strike.
You better listen to this man, he was right about Iraq.
The book is Target Iran, the truth about the White House's plans for regime change.
The author Scott Ritter, thanks very much for your time, sir.
Thanks for having me.
