11/19/08 – Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich – The Scott Horton Show

All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio on Chaos in Austin.
We're streaming live worldwide on the internet at chaosradioaustin.org and at antiwar.com slash radio.
And our next guest today is Soraya Ulrich, and she's from what I think is pronounced CASME, the Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran.
Welcome to the show.
Thank you, Seth.
It's very good to talk to you, and I was hoping I could find out what your opinion and your organization's stance is on the incoming Barack Obama administration, your hopes and fears, and your opinion of Hillary Clinton being apparently named – I don't think it's final yet – for Secretary of State and so forth.
But if it's okay, I'd like to start out with the premise that – and I'm sorry that I think this really bears real explanation, but I really do think it does – that Iran is not a drawing on a map.
Iran is a place, and the people who live there are human beings, and they all have natural rights, and it's wrong to draw bombs on them.
Is that basically the premise that you're operating from at your organization there?
That's absolutely right, Scott.
I'm very grateful that you bring up the fact that we are people, very much so, and we're people like everybody else.
And we try to bring this into focus.
Iran has never broken the law.
Iran is standing up for its basic rights, and it's really acting within the framework of the law.
And when Obama, in fact, got elected, like millions of people around the world, everybody was very, very hopeful that things would change and the U.S. foreign policy would take on a new direction.
Nobody expects America to act in favor of another country.
Everybody wants America to do what's in the interest of America.
And I think America's interest is one that would be doing the right thing, to take the moral high ground again and to be a peaceful nation.
You know, it's interesting, because there's a man who made a very eloquent case along those lines back in the 1990s by the name of Dick Cheney.
And what he said was that he actually, treason of all treasons, just like the Dixie Chicks, he left American shores and went, in fact, to the Middle East, and there complained about the policy of the Clinton administration and its sanctions on Iran.
He was representing Halliburton, which he was the CEO of at the time, and was saying, listen, the Iranians are people.
We're trying to do business with them.
And our government is foolish and wrongheaded and stupid for this policy.
Well, Mr. Cheney is a case of all of his own.
He has, in fact, one doesn't know whether Cheney has influenced Bush at all, but Bush was one of those people that when he was governor of Texas, he actually spoke about renewal energy.
And he was a totally different man in Texas.
I'm not saying that he was a god, but the minute he signed a portfolio mandate in 1999, and he made all sorts of promises, in fact, in regards to the environment, and lo and behold, he becomes the president, and whether Cheney's influence or not, in fact, this is something that Tom Friedman spoke of, and he becomes a totally different man.
Now, it seems that Barack Obama is doing the same thing.
He is, you know, by surrounding himself with all these hawks, and Hillary Clinton being one of them, he is shattering everybody's hopes and expectations of a different America.
And it's mind-boggling.
It's almost, to use a very emotional word, it's painful to watch.
Do you think that's the impression already, kind of overseas, is that, oh, look at him, he's putting Hillary Clinton in there, and he's already saying belligerent things, you know, not just during the campaign, but post-election, he's saying threatening things about Iran's nuclear program.
Is the honeymoon already over in the Middle East, do you think?
I think from what I read from around the globe, I think that's the general impression.
People are, I mean, I think people would probably be, people in policies tend to be a little bit more careful, or more choosy with their words than perhaps people such as myself would be.
But I think they are very disappointed.
Some people are saying he's the new face of war against Iran.
And, in fact, I do not wish to speak for my organization at this point, because we're having a conference call about what he may be doing, but I think I can be very confident in saying that he is going to be very aggressive.
I read the Israeli hardliner's newspaper, I read the Middle East news, and I read Iran news, and certainly everybody is very apprehensive about what he's going to be doing.
Now, I know that Hillary was dead set on putting all the options on the table, and since she was a proponent of the war against Iraq for promotion, supposedly the democratic peace theory, she is going to be going out to, you know, do the same thing about going after Iranians.
And I don't know.
I think they're going to have their hands full, frankly.
It really is interesting that she spent the whole campaign saying that he was naive and foolish for saying we ought to talk with Iran, and then he's going to send her to talk with Iran.
I don't think they want to talk.
I think they want to dictate.
And, frankly, I think Iran is not in a mood to be dictated to.
And I really don't know how these people, and by these people I mean Obama and certainly not Hillary, are in a position to be telling Iran what to do when they themselves, if it's the issue of the nuclear program, which Iran is a civilian, they have not violated the NPT no matter how much they think by repeating the same lie over and over and over it's suddenly going to become the truth.
When America has violated the NPT so many times, Articles 3 and 6, and certainly they're not confined by Article 4, they think that Iran will suddenly be the one who is in breach of the NPT.
They can tell Iran what to do.
It's just not going to happen.
Iran is fed up of being bullied around.
And they're not in a position to tell Iran what to do.
Iran is fed up.
And Iran wants to take a position for once in its years of having went to America's whim under the Shah's regime.
I don't know what Hillary is going to accomplish.
And I think Obama has already shown the world that he's not the man that the world had hoped he would be as the president.
Well, and it all comes down to accepting the clearly false premise that for Iran to have a nuclear program at all is for Iran to have a nuclear weapons program.
And in fact, as you say, citing the Non-Proliferation Treaty and so forth, Iran has a safeguards agreement and their nuclear program is running.
There's uranium being enriched and yet there are IAEA scientists standing there in white lab coats overseeing all of it.
For them to even begin to make a nuclear weapon, they would have to withdraw from the NPT, kick those inspectors out, and basically announce to the world, all right, now we're going to make a nuke, which is an entirely different set of circumstances than we have right now.
Absolutely.
And that is so correct.
And only yesterday I read that South Korea is giving more incentives to North Korea.
And with the Indians who are in fact a prior state and they're not a signatory to the NPT, getting so much help from America and in fact the world, and with them having bombs and with Pakistan getting so much aid, and all over the world you see all the countries, and of course there is Israel, with all the countries that have violated the NPT or they're not signatory to the NPT.
And they're having all these programs, the programs that they've undertaken, and they're getting either monetary aid or they're getting aid, nuclear aid from the countries, the Western countries.
The way the programs are running in Iran is being signaled out simply because they are, I think, within the framework of the NPT.
You've got to understand, you've got to accept the fact that this is only political.
And, I mean, one has to think, why is this going on?
And then you've got to follow the dots and the trail and come to the conclusion that who is running this country, and by this country I mean America.
Well, the war party is.
And that changes and varies back and forth a little bit, but it's always the people who want the most hawkish policies, it seems like, are the ones calling the shots at any given moment, doesn't it?
Well, let me ask you this.
Now, does your organization represent at all or apologize for having an Ayatollah as the supreme leader of that country, and is it democratic enough and that kind of thing?
Our organization doesn't apologize nor, I mean, there's no reason to apologize.
We don't speak for the people of Iran.
What our organization stands for is to prevent war.
We are anti-war, we're anti-sanctions.
Sanctions are a form of warfare.
Now, as far as democracy, it's very interesting because the revolution in Iran is only 30 years old.
I think in this country it's taken 300 years for the revolution to, or, you know, since this country's birth, in fact, and it took, what, about 100 years or so for the women, or some time for women to be able to vote, to go to college.
Democracy takes a long time for it to be institutionalized, and Iran has done so incredibly well.
Now, the problem with Iran is, you know, it is a quasi-democracy.
It's democratic.
A lot of it, there's a lot of misconceptions about Iran.
There are NGOs.
People do vote.
But the problem with Iran is that it's been prevented from doing as well as it can do.
There's so much interference.
America is certainly interfering.
This administration is spending millions and millions of dollars attempting to overturn the regime in Iran, and that makes the regime become suspicious of everybody in Iran who actually wants to do some good.
Now, if the world stayed away from Iran and allowed Iran to continue its natural course, and the path is taken, it would do so much better than it's already doing.
Well, and that's such an important point, I think, and is so often overlooked, because we do hear from time to time not just about support for communist terrorist cults like the Mujahedin al-Khalq, but we hear about support for any sort of dissident inside Iran that the CIA thinks they can throw some money at or something, and it ends up meaning that people who have nothing to do with the American government whatsoever end up being painted as, oh, you're all a bunch of foreign spies trying to undermine our government for any reform that they propose.
That's exactly it, Scott, and in fact, let me tell you one thing, and I'm probably shooting myself in the foot by, in fact, mentioning it on air, but when I was part of the Public Diplomacy Program at UNC Annenberg, part of the program is to, which is very much part of the State Department, although it was not intended to be that way, is they teach Americans how to be stronger.
It's very state-centric, and you basically learn how to affect international audiences through civilians, and you learn how to, a lot of the exercises that are taught are enabling the people who do wish to, I'm not saying everybody did, how to undermine, perhaps even regimes, their exercises, and I know that Iran is probably one of the regimes that is very much in the minds of the State Department to be undermined, and you know, you're supposed to have exchanges and this and that and the other, and Iran is on the top list, but the State Department and this administration is one that needs to be overturned.
Now, let's say, if there's, you know, put yourself in the other regimes or the other person's shoes, if you know that there are people who are coming to this country who want to undermine the government here, how would you react to every state Iranian who's in this country if you think they're going to do harm to your national security?
Or, even if they're Americans who are participating in this, you would put them, they're being Gitmo.
Well, you know, what's interesting, I saw Seymour Hersh one time, after he had done some reporting on covert money for different dissident groups, he said the analogy would be, if you took, you know, some small marginal group that's for restoring the Confederate flag over the Capitol in Kentucky or whatever the hell, that this would be like the Iranians coming in and funding them, as though somehow they can get these southern, you know, people who are probably the most patriotic Americans of all and own guns too, as though they could, as though the Iranians could somehow buy them off and try to get them to overthrow the government in D.C. or something like that, when those, the kind of people who would want to fly the Confederate flag are also the people who would be fighting against any foreign intervention in our country first.
You know, they're the first ones to sign up after September 11th, that kind of thing.
Absolutely.
And so they have no idea what they're even doing.
They're just over there throwing money at causes that they have no idea how to actually affect an outcome that's of any benefit to their actual goals.
They're just, they're only succeeding in marginalizing dissenters in Iran.
That's exactly what they're doing.
I mean, they're actually, yesterday there were a whole bunch of the supporters of the MEK.
Now they say they're supporters, there are a lot of people.
These MEK, they get money from people unknown, although since they get their information that they were given to the IAEA, the false information came from Mossad, as it was reported by Gareth Porter and other experts on Antifa.com itself.
God knows where their money comes from.
But a lot of these supporters that are often paid as they were paid in Paris, outside Washington, D.C., yelling for the people in Iraq not to be thrown out contrary to the wishes of the Iraqi people.
Well, these people in Iraq, they're terrorists in Iraq.
They have to leave the country as is the wishes of the Iraqi government, supposed sovereign Iraqi government.
The supporters in Washington are saying, nay, nay, you should keep them in Iraq.
These people were asked by Cheney to be kept there, and they're being used to go into Iran and sabotage the country and gather intelligence.
And so, because they're also Iranian, native Iranians, the Iranian government is suspicious of anybody who may be in Iran who's not acting in the best interest of Iranians.
Therefore, they have a dilemma.
I'm not excusing everything the Iranian government may be doing.
I would love to see a lot of things very differently.
I myself, I'm a very secular Iranian.
I've never worn a headscarf, let's say, in my life, other than when I've had to be in Iran or when I've gone to the U.N.
But it doesn't mean that a lot of things that they do is wrong either.
They have to protect the country foremost.
And America is not helping.
The West is not helping.
I am truly confident that if the Iranian government or Iran is left alone, it would one day be a very free country.
The people have not changed.
These people, when they did bring down the Shah, when there was a revolution almost 30 years ago, they wanted freedom and they wanted democracy.
And that they can achieve, and it can only be achieved from within if they would only leave them alone.
And it really bothers me that they're not given this job.
And the reason they're not given this job is democracy is not what America wants.
Democracy is something that goes against the interests of the war mongers.
It goes against the interests of those people in power in this country, for the most part, who want to exploit other countries.
And that's the problem we're facing.
And it's not good for the American people.
The American people pay the price.
Look who's paying the price in this country right now.
Certainly not the elite.
Well, and you know, in 1979, I guess it was a reporter asked Jimmy Carter, somehow it came up in public that, yeah, but Jimmy Carter, the Iranian people are only overthrowing the dictator that America installed there in 1953, overthrowing the democrat, the prime minister of the parliament in that country, Mossadegh.
And Jimmy Carter said, well, that's ancient history.
And so I guess if that's true, if 1953 was ancient history in 1979, boy, is it prehistory in 2008, I guess.
Anything that was on TV back when it was black and white doesn't count.
And what's interesting is that this is, to me, the icing on the cake in this story, and I learned this from Robert Dreyfuss's great book, Devil's Game, that in fact the CIA used the Ayatollah Khomeini and his buddies to help overthrow Mossadegh to reinstall the Shah in 1953.
And then that was a little bit of blowback that Khomeini and his crew just finished the job in 1979.
I don't think Khomeini himself was involved.
Certainly there were some religious figures, but not Khomeini, but certainly there were religious factions involved.
But the Shah, he turned out to be a horrible dictator, and it cost him $63,000 to bring the Shah back, which is shameful.
And when he came back, he said, I owe my throne to the Iranian people, this and that, and you owe it to Kermit Roosevelt.
How shameful is that?
It's not ancient history.
I think it would have been forgotten, and I think the Iranian people are very much fond of Americans, because in as much as that is a dark, dark chapter in our history that is very painful, and it hurts that democracy was smashed away from us, by the same token, I think Iranians are very fond of the Americans for their role in the tripartite agreement whereby the Russians would not leave Iran, and they helped get rid of the Russians out of Azerbaijan.
So there's history there.
We do reach out, and there's so many Iranians in America, and there's so many Americans in Iran.
But this history is continuing.
We would like to put it behind, and I'm sure Americans, genuine Americans would like to put it behind, and we would like to look to the future.
But don't let it continue.
Don't attempt to smash away the sovereignty from the Iranian people.
In some ways, the past 28, 30 years of isolation has been very good for Iran, because they have accomplished so much on their own.
The eight years of war, which was the backing of American Western powers, it did so much harm to Iran in that it almost destroyed Iran, but Iran rebuilt itself.
It looked to the future, and it's become so independent and self-sufficient, and it needs to get on, and it needs to become what it used to be.
I'm not saying it has regional ambitions.
I'm not saying it has global ambitions, but it needs to be a very self-sufficient, independent nation, and I just wish that other countries would not try to undermine it.
And I really don't think that's having unrealistic expectations.
Well, I think I agree with you, but I also think that in this interview we're sort of glossing over what is the real point of contention, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to agree with your answer anyway, but we shouldn't let it go unargued.
Is Iran a threat to Israel?
Iran is not a threat to anybody.
Iran does not have nuclear weapons.
Let's assume for a moment that Iran does intend to build nuclear weapons, which is one thing that to me is mind-boggling, because when Ayatollah Khomeini gave the fatwa that Iran should go after Salman Rushdie, the world came down on him.
But when he, Khomeini, the new Ayatollah, has given a fatwa that we do not want nuclear weapons of mass destruction, they're un-Islamic, nobody wants to believe him.
So again, the West is exercising this double standard.
They believe what they want and they exaggerate what they do not want to believe.
Iran does not want weapons of mass destruction.
Iran does not want nuclear weapons.
It's more of a threat to Iran to have them than not to have them.
Assuming for a moment that Iran decides to build a nuclear weapon against all madness, all logic, Iran's nuclear weapons would never stand up to Israel.
Israel has a whole arsenal of them.
Plus the fact that it has America behind it, the world's biggest superpower.
It does not stand to logic.
And besides that, to be honest with you, Israel is more of a cult than Iran.
I mean, Israel has this suicide mentality with their masks and everything else.
And one believes that Iran and Muslims and whatever, they have this suicide mentality.
But if you look at the history of Israel, Israel was founded on terrorism.
And in fact, the Arabs got their suicide.
The Arabs, not Iranians, but Arabs learned terrorism from the Israelis, from the Jews.
And when the Stearns and what have you, they're the ones that, in fact, that's how the British gave way to them and left it to the United Nations to deal with them.
Terrorism does come from the Jews there.
They're the ones who went around killing the Arabs.
So no, I don't think that Iran would ever be a threat.
I mean, because regardless of the misquotations about wiping Israel off the map, there is some pretty harsh rhetoric on both sides.
I mean, obviously you're correct that only one side is armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons.
And that's correct.
And what is very interesting is that Ahmadinejad repeated the words of Khomeini.
At a time when Khomeini came to power, Iran was far more, far more, this was before the war had fully started and destroyed Iran.
Iran was far more powerful.
The Iran-Iraq war, you mean?
The Iran-Iraq war.
Because Ahmadinejad, when his misquoted words of this occupying regime, which has been this regime occupying Jerusalem, will disappear from a page of time, which has been misquoted as wiping Israel off the map.
When Ahmadinejad repeated Khomeini's words, which Khomeini said after the revolution, at that time Iran was far more powerful.
Iran was far more powerful because the Shah had a military that was quite incredible.
One of the biggest, most powerful militaries, certainly in the Middle East, perhaps not quite on par with Israel because it didn't have all the nuclear weapons, but it was working with Israel to build nuclear weapons and nuclear warheads, which had not been destroyed.
And Israel knew this.
Wait, the Iranians were working then with the Israelis on this?
With the Shah.
Oh, right, yeah.
And although Israel knew how powerful Iran was at the time, and it might have been able to do something mischievous after Khomeini said this, they still gave Iran arms.
And it's mind-boggling why they would use this.
Well, and you know, I don't really want to belabor this point anymore because it is, frankly, ridiculous that Iran would be a threat to Israel.
They can't field an army across Iraq and Jordan and into Israel ever, and they don't have submarines and a giant navy.
They have a Coast Guard.
Give me a break.
They're no threat to Israel at all.
So let's change the subject to Jandala.
There's been a few different reports about American support for this terrorist group inside Iran and in alliance with some people, and I forget if it's the Baluchistan region of Pakistan, who at least apparently are attributable, or there are some so-called terrorist attacks attributable to them, the kidnapping and murder of some police officers in Iran and some bombings and things like that.
Can you speak to that?
Do you know about that?
When I was actually in Iran in August, one of these incidents did take place, and I have to tell you, yes, America does support them, and my feeling is in 2004 there was a meeting in Washington, and in fact Maryam Rajavi, who heads the Mojahedin-e-Khalq, the MEK terrorist group, apparently she was present.
And what this plan is, because they're so disappointed in not being able to promote this idea of Iran violating the NPT and its nuclear program, they want to promote the idea of human rights violations by Iran, you know, since we have such high moral standing in the world and we're so innocent when it comes to human rights.
So what they try to do, and this is purely one of my understanding, they're very much into the idea of secession, and Max Booth spoke to this.
When he was in Los Angeles not long ago, and I went to one of his talks, he said that we should use all different Iranian factions to break up Iran, because they're only 51% Persian.
And it's very impossible to get any rhyme or reason out of what he said.
I'm sorry, you said Max Booth, the neoconservative from the Council on Foreign Relations?
Yes.
Yeah, the guy that wrote the case for American empire.
I'm sorry, go ahead, please.
Yes, and plus the fact that I think that once we send all these people into Iran and try to put into the idea of, you know, all this freedom, this certain, you know, factions in Iran into certain people's heads, you always find people who either felt disenfranchised or unhappy.
And I'm not saying that everybody in Iran is necessarily treated equally at every time.
I mean, you might find maybe a Texan here who is not very happy, or maybe a Mormon.
But it's certainly not because the laws are different.
A person may take it very personally, and it may be easier to buy them off.
So these people are sent in, and they're aggravated by the outsiders, and the government cracks down on them.
This will reflect as a show of human rights abuse in the outside world.
And that's the whole intention of it, is to show the Iranian government as a government that is hard on women, is harsh on women, is a human rights violator.
And it's part of this bigger plan to crack down on Iranians as abusers of human rights.
And a whole lot of money has been assigned to this by the Bush government.
And in fact, this is part of what Progressive Policy Institute had in mind, with the people that promoted the Iraq War.
And there are scholars, university professors, neoliberal jurists, who said that international law did not provide immunity from attacks of states engaging in systematic human rights abuses, or weapons of mass destruction.
So, in my personal opinion, this is something that they're so fond of, promoting human rights abuse.
And by sending in the separatists from Pakistan to Zimbabwe, into that area, they want to promote the idea of human rights abuse by the government, so they would have an excuse to garner international support for cracking down on the Iranian government.
And this is separate from the civilian nuclear issue.
Right.
This is another example of how the hardliners sort of feed off each other on both sides, too.
Gareth Porter, who you mentioned earlier, I believe it was him who explained on this show how the policy of the neoconservatives, this whole time through the Bush-Cheney years, and perhaps this is what we have in our future in the Obama administration as well, is the principle that the moderates in Iran are the enemy.
That we need to marginalize the people that the average American might think we ought to be able to get along with, like, say, Khatami or Rafsanjani.
And, you know, maybe it wasn't an accident when George Bush, right before the elections of July 2005, came out and said, you better not elect the right-winger right before the vote, when Ahmadinejad won that election.
Because it makes it easier to so-called, quote-unquote, justify their policy of aggression.
It's so mind-boggling.
It's so mind-boggling.
And the best chance for this government, and it looks like the next government, is to dehumanize the people that they want to attack.
And the way they can do it is, one of the ways, is to send in the likes of the Jandala.
So they can, the natural thing is to crack down on them.
And then you can wag a finger and say, see, these are the brutes.
These are the fundamentalists and the human rights abusers that we need to go after.
Ha, that's exactly what Osama bin Laden did to America.
Provoked us and then said, see, look at them, they're crazy, they're murderers, they're torturers.
Right, right.
And, you know, it's the only way, and unfortunately, they have the media, they have the mainstream media and they hold the public opinion.
And it's a very tough battle to counter it.
Okay, now to wrap up the interview here, could you please tell us about CASME, is that how you say it, the Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran?
Tell us about your group and what you're up to, your future, how people can support and take a look at your stuff?
Well, first of all, please visit our website, www.casme.com.
It was founded by a very, very dedicated mathematician, Edalat, E-D-A-L-A-T, who works at the Imperial College in England, in 2005, and then we brought it here to America.
It's just a group of people with different ideologies, and our aim is to stop another war.
And we really don't believe in sanctions either.
You know, you will read articles, sanctions really are just another alternate to war.
They don't accomplish anything other than hurt innocent people.
And really what they really are is, if you enforce sanctions, it means you believe the other party is guilty.
And what are they really guilty of?
But more importantly, I mean, you saw the case of Saddam Hussein.
500,000 children died, and America knew about this.
Cynthia McKinney was the only brave woman who spoke up and said, this is against the Geneva Conventions.
You're killing innocent people, and nobody even listened to her.
The public didn't know.
And so sanctions are very, very, very wrong.
You're killing people.
It's collective punishment.
It's war.
And so we're very much against sanctions.
We're very much against foreign interference in Iran's affairs.
I think the future of Iran has to be decided by Iranians, not by foreign interference.
This has been done so many times before, and every time it's had very negative repercussions.
I mean, the blowback, it happened in 1953, and in 1973, again, it's just something that, excuse me.
And so the future of Iran has to be decided by Iranians.
And I don't mean the Iranians, the Chalabi-type Iranians who are in America, who want the support of American administrations so they can be kings and queens of the future, the Iranians who are in Iran and who are trying very hard to achieve indigenous-type democracy.
So that's what CASME is all about.
Well, that's a good deal.
And the website, again, you said is casmii.org?
Yes.
And also campaigniran.org goes to the same place, right?
Yes.
Right.
Okay.
Thank you so much for your time today.
This has been very interesting.
Thank you so much.
All right, everybody.
That is Soraya Ulrich from CASME, the Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran.
Again, the website, CASME, C-A-S-M-I-I.org or campaigniran.org.
And what the heck?
I guess we're going to call it quits a little bit early today.
That's it for Anti-War Radio.
We'll see you all tomorrow, 11 to 1 Texas time here on KAOS.