Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 12/22/21 Gareth Porter on Iran and Afghanistan

Episode Date: December 26, 2021

Scott celebrates eleven years on the radio by interviewing Gareth Porter about Biden’s first year in office. They discuss the negotiations between the Administration and Iran over a return to the JCPOA. Despite many crossovers with the team that reached an agreement with Iran back in the Obama years, Biden’s people appear set on squeezing more concessions out of the Iranians. But Porter points out that, as he had predicted, the U.S. reluctance to return to the deal led to hardliner victories in Iran’s last elections. But even with a more anti-American regime, Porter sees no evidence they’d actually produce a nuclear bomb. Scott and Porter also talk about Afghanistan and the humanitarian crisis the so-called champions of Afghan freedom seem completely uninterested in helping to relieve. Discussed on the show: “When the Ayatollah Said No to Nukes” (Foreign Policy) “The Civilian Casualty Files” (New York Times)  Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist on the national security state. He is the author of Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare and, with John Kiriakou, The CIA Insider’s Guide to the Iran Crisis. Follow him on Twitter @GarethPorter and listen to Gareth’s previous appearances on the Scott Horton Show. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State and Why The Vietnam War?, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; EasyShip; Free Range Feeder; Thc Hemp Spot; Green Mill Supercritical; Bug-A-Salt; Lorenzotti Coffee and Listen and Think Audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For Pacifica Radio, December the 26th, 2021, I'm Scott Horton. This is Anti-War Radio. All right, y'all, welcome the show. And Mary yesterday was Christmas. This is Anti-War Radio. I'm your host, Scott Horton. I'm the editorial director of anti-war.com and author of the new audiobook,

Enough already. Time to end the war on terrorism. You can find my full interview archive, more than 5,650-something interviews now, going back to 2003 at scotthorton.org. And as I said on the show, a few weeks ago, I'm probably celebrating 11 years here on the radio at KPFK and so happy to bring back to the air

my friend and my very favorite reporter, the great Gareth Porter. Welcome back. How are you doing, sir? I'm fine, Scott. Thanks so much. And happy Christmas, New Year of greetings. And I celebrate your 11 years on the radio as well. Yeah.

I love radio. I'll say that. All right. So listen, Gareth, I wanted to talk about Biden's first year in power here. There's so much to talk to in so little time. but obviously your speciality is Iran, and Biden's positioning on Iran has been so important. Of course, the background being that Obama signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2015 to expand inspections and restrict Iran's nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief,

which they never really got. And then, of course, Donald Trump famously in 2018 at Israeli behest withdrew America from the deal. and the question was, will Biden's people get us back in the deal? And on one hand, you have the fact that Biden's people are Obama's people who signed the deal in the first place. You'd think they'd want to vindicate their own effort previously. But as we discussed before Biden was even sworn in, Jake Sullivan and others on Biden's staff, we're talking about, well, the Iranians are going to have to agree to discuss these other additional measures and all these other things. And so now here we are almost a year later, and we've made essentially no progress, but the talks are ongoing. So that's where I'll leave it for you to pick up, where you think we are with the possible revival or not of Obama's Iran deal and the consequences for our future here.

Well, you're absolutely right to sort of begin the discussion with the point that the president administration inherited a situation where they clearly could have easily made a deal to restore the JCPOA and then try to use some new credit with Iran to negotiate on a range of issues, really, not just on the nuclear deal itself. I mean, clearly they wanted to extend it further and they wanted other changes or they wanted other things that they couldn't get from the existing deal. But having signed it, clearly, you know, the idea of trying to force Iran to agree, to bow down and say, okay, we'll agree that even though you're responsible, the United States is responsible for having the breakdown of this agreement completely, you have all the responsibility,

will bear the cost and start all over again and go back and withdraw all of our actions, were taken, reverse the actions that were taken in response to American violations of the JCPOA, obviously the Iranians were not going to do that. That was silly to expect that they could get away with that. It's hard to believe that they thought they could. And yet, you know, they passed up for many months, every opportunity to reach agreement with Iran. And so it's clear that they were not willing to do it. Now, I think there are two sides to this story. One is that this is part of a broader history of the American negotiators with Iran on the Iran deal, on the nuclear deal, basically feeling that somehow they could get away with twisting the arms

of the Iranians to make further concessions. There is a whole history. There is a whole history. of that, that goes back to the time when the JCPO itself was being negotiated. But even after the signing, there was obviously a period of many months where the Obama administration was hoping that they could use their economic leverage with the Iranians to get more out of Iran. And so in a way, I think, you know, the Biden administration is inheriting that tendency toward trying to exploit what they regarded as their economic leverage on Iran. And as time went by and as the Iranian economy became more, you know, the situation became more difficult in the Iranian economy, that tendency, I think, was exacerbated. But the second side of that picture, I think, also needs to be understood, and that is that the Biden administration has an additional factor here that was not present in the Obama administration, and that is that they were ready to lean far more toward the Israeli interests on this question of Iran and the nuclear deal than the Obama administration ever was. Frankly, I mean, you know, they are much more influenced by Zionist thinking than certainly the Obama administration was.

And from the very top of this administration, you know, this is a, unfortunately, an administration that is that tends toward sort of very close-knit relations with the Israelis and being influenced much more by them than Obama was. So I think that the combination of those two things helps to explain why they let this opportunity fritter away. And now, of course, Iran has a new government, having had a major election of the modulus and producing a new government, which is much more tough on negotiating with the United States than the previous government ever was. I mean, this is something, by the way, as you probably remember, that I predicted was going to happen because of the policy, the hardline policy that the Biden administration was pursuing. It was quite predictable that this would happen because public opinion in Iran was systematically shifting away from support for the JCPOA over the months of seeing the United States refuse to make any concession. refused to effectively bring back the JCPOA, and they began to say, okay, we're finished with JCPOA.

We want a government that's going to be much tougher on the United States, and that's exactly what's happened now. So I don't think that there's much chance that this situation can be reversed, even though the negotiations go on. I'm very doubtful, as you know, I've been doubtful for many months that anything's going to come out of this because of the politics surrounding them on both sides, essentially. Yeah. All right. Now, here's the thing of it. There's a guy you're familiar with, the arms control wonk. And I've always been a Gordon Prather guy myself, but I saw where he said something. I kind of liked it. He said the American foreign policy establishment, they don't seem to believe there's such a thing as consequences, but there is. And in this

case you should have listened to me and my buddies who told you not to withdraw from the deal that this is going to be a bad thing and then we also told you i think this is part of his uh tweet thread here was to not add all these conditions and make it impossible to get back into the deal now that it's essentially too late he's calling it quits on the talks and saying it's definitely not going to happen and he says and then iran is going to make a nuclear weapon and then he says he doesn't say we should invade them or anything. He just says, that's life. Those are the consequences from you guys being so pig-headed in doing this. And my thing is, I really don't think the Ayatollah wants an atom bomb. I think he thinks that they're more trouble than they're worth. And I've always said

that, you know what, if the JCPOA falls apart, I don't care. Because Iran is still within, they still have the non-proliferation treaty. They've never really betrayed any intent to violate it as far as I can tell all the hype to the contrary, notwithstanding, which is a lot. And, you know, I don't know. But then I've been cautioned by quite a few people who are, you know, a lot wiser even than Jeffrey Lewis, who say that, listen, the Ayatollah at some point you push him too far. He is going to withdraw not just from the JCPOA, but he's going to withdraw from the nonproliferation treaty of 1967, too, or 68, and make a nuke.

And then we're going to have a war. So what do you think about that? As you know, I think better than anyone else that I've spoken with about this, I have documented the fact that not having a nuclear weapon or a nuclear weapons program is absolutely essential to the self-regard of the Ayatollah's regime. That is to say, this is at the center of their belief system, that Shia Islam is different from any other religion because the absolute word of the interpreter of Shia religion, of what it means, must make decisions about how Shia principles relate to actual political decision making. And that is what is unique about the Iranian political system, that you have this figure, the supreme leader, since the beginning of the Iranian government, has, in fact, been the one who has made decisions about what Shia Islam demands in terms of governing principles and policies. And from the very beginning of that regime, the principal spokesman for Shia Islam has been saying that Shia Iran, Islamic Iran cannot have weapons of mass destruction.

It's not just nuclear weapons, but chemical weapons and biological weapons are strictly forbidden by Islam. And listen, I'll encourage everybody listening to please go to foreign policy.com. if you have to lift the URL and put it in archive.is to get around the paywall. But read this great article. It's called When the Ayatollah said no to nukes. And it's based on Gareth's great reporting from inside Iran on this. But so here's the thing, though. Saddam Hussein is one thing and the USA is something else.

And if you're the Ayatollah and the Israelis and the Americans especially are that unreasonable and are threatening aggressive war in a way that's a credible threat. I mean, Saddam Hussein could never get more than a few miles inside Iranian territory, right? You'll lob some missile. Well, America could devastate Iran. So maybe they need an atom bomb, and maybe that's an inescapable conclusion that the Americans are putting the Ayatollah in the position of coming to. Well, two points about that.

One is that it's not quite true to say that Saddam Hussein could never get beyond. a few miles into Iran with the use of chemical weapons. The fact is that he was dropping them on Iranian cities at one point later in the war. I mean, earlier in the war, it's true, what you're saying. But later in the war, he was, in fact, using chemical weapons on Iranian cities and with devastating consequences, human consequences for the Iranian populations in those cities. And so that's the first point. The second point is that I would not deny that there are people in the Iranian government and military

who would be perfectly willing to overthrow the past precedents that I've been talking about that the Supreme Leader has cited over and over again that say that Islamic Iran may not possess weapons of mass destruction for them, there can be overriding circumstances. And indeed, as I point out in that article that you referred to, based on the wartime, meaning the Iran-Iraq wartime minister of SEPA, meaning minister of military supply, he told me personally, based on his meeting with the Ayatollah in the Iran-Iraq War early in the 1980s and again in the late-19. He told me that he was informed that there could not be a weapon of mass destruction produced even though at that point the Saddam Hussein regime was dropping chemical weapons on the cities of Iran. Right.

So this guy was extremely surprised because he thought- And that's the mean old Ayatollah too. That's not the new more moderate guy. that was Khomeini he was he was a hardliner in many ways that's true um but but in any case the basic principles were the basic principle is exactly the same and look i'm just testing anyway i think of course you're absolutely right about this and the fact that the israelis and their american partisans have been crying for something on the order of 25 to 30 years i think the first instance of nettingahu saying iran is making a nuke that nima shirazha

from the blog, Why to Sleep in America has, of Netanyahu claiming that Iran is making nukes is in 1991. So 30 years ago, and certainly they really started pushing that line by 95. And it's never been true this whole time, even when America had, you know, 200,000 men in Iraq next door. And, you know, in 2007, when Bush was credibly threatening war, they've made it clear that they don't want nukes. So anyway, I don't want to get too far off onto that red herring. to give you a chance to demonstrate that this still is a bunch of hype. It always has been. One more point along the same lines, which I've often thought about but really haven't written about in the past, is that given the amount of time that's passed, obviously Iran could have

made a nuclear weapon at any time over the last 10, 15, 20 years. I mean, there is no other state historically that has desired nuclear weapon. that was not able to go into a serious program to manufacture or to design nuclear weapons within a matter of a few years. And of course, in every case, the United States was able to find out about it very quickly. So, I mean, this is all by way of saying that the whole idea that Iran has wanted to have nuclear weapons, let alone has decided to go ahead with some sense. secret nuclear weapons program is simply ridiculous on the face of it.

It just doesn't add up. It's not consistent with everything we know about the history. Look here. You and I both know that what you need is some Libertarian Institute things, like shirts and sweatshirts and mugs and stickers to put on the back of your truck, and to give to your friends, too, that say Libertarian Institute on them, so that everyone will know the origins of your oppositional, defiant disorder, and where they can listen to all the best podcasts.

So here's what you do. Go to Libertasbella.com and look at all the great Libertarian Institute stuff they've got going there. Find the ad in the right-hand margin at Libertarian Institute.org. Libertasbella.com. You guys check it out. This is so cool.

The great Mike Swanson's new book is finally out. He's been working on this thing for years. And I admit, I haven't read it yet. I'm going to get to it as soon as I can, but I know you guys are going to want to beat me to it. It's called Why the Vietnam War? nuclear bombs and nation building in Southeast Asia, 1945 through 61. And as he explains on the back here, all of our popular culture and our retellings and our history and our movies are all about the height of the American war there in, say, 1964 through 1974.

But how do we get there? Why is this all Harry Truman's fault? Find out in why the Vietnam War by the great Mike Swans. available now. I mean, the problem is, right, with the narrative, is that Obama didn't really need to do this JCPOI at all. He could have just pounded the table and said, they're within the non-proliferation treaty. So all your hype is just hype, and that's how we know. They have a safeguards agreement, and that's good enough.

In fact, all we really achieved here with, you know, you can embellish a little. But essentially all we did was get an additional protocol to our safeguards agreement is all the JCPOA accomplished, all this hype to reassure us about a civilian nuclear program that always was one. And so now if we lose the JCPOA, we go back to the narrative that they might make nukes, even though they're still in the deal. It was just the MPT. It's just they always pretended before the JCPOA. They just ignored that. They just acted as though Iran was not a member of the NPT or that IAEA inspections,

verifying the non-diversion of their nuclear material were just unimportant or didn't really exist. They were never part of the narrative that, okay, well, we know it's okay for now, but or anything, you know? But you're forgetting one thing. You're forgetting one thing, Scott. You're saying that the Obama administration didn't gain anything from their policy. But in fact, what they were really after, all these officials in the Pentagon, in the State Department, in the C.O. Did I miss anybody in the national security state? They all got nice recognition for their work in tracking down and opposing the Iranian, supposedly

Iranian interest in nuclear weapons. Right. And all they had to do was launch a genocide against the people of Yemen to bribe the Saudis into not crying too much about it. Yeah. So my point here is that the real goodies for the U.S. administration, whether it's a Obama or previous or present ones are really bureaucratic goodies. They did get them.

And of course, the other side of this that we haven't talked about is what has the United States really lost? What they've really lost is that Iran has joined the Chinese and indeed the Russians. And there's a real alignment here that didn't exist before. I mean, Iran never got along with the Russians at all and was very cool toward the Chinese. but now they're part of that block, in effect. Yep. And so this is what the Israelis have gained,

is they have prevented America from bringing Iran into America's order in the Middle East. Let them go east. Just don't let America make friends with them at all costs, right? That's about the size of it, yeah. All right. Now, listen, let's talk about Afghanistan. Let's talk a bit about how Joe Biden did,

after kicking the can down the road a few months, did live up to the Donald Trump, Zalmei Khalil's ideal with the Taliban to withdraw. I never thought I'd see the day they'd hand that Boggram Air Base over to anybody. Only problem is they handed it over to the Afghan National Army who had handed it over to the Taliban within about what, four weeks. So the whole thing looked really bad for withdrawal, Gareth, but I keep objecting that what was it supposed to look like? What do you think? that that is indeed a very interesting question I mean what they expected to be able to accomplish I you know I think the easy answer to that one is that that these people didn't give a serious thought to that question at all I mean it wasn't in their minds okay how would this really work out it was simply that this was an expression of existential angst and sort of worry that the people who

who are so firmly fixed to, dedicated to the well-being of the national security state of the United States, just had to express themselves. I mean, that's the way I interpret it. I can't make any sense out of it otherwise. I mean, you know, I appreciate your focus on that, that a lot of this does have to do. I mean, if you turn on the TV during that time, there's H.R. McMaster, just pounding the table and say, no, we got to stay, we got to stay. it's like, come on, how transparent is that?

He helped lose that war. He was in charge of abolishing corruption under the McChrystal Petraeus surge. Well, how'd he do with that? You know, the president fled with a couple hundred million stolen dollars when he ran away. You know, this was the government that McChrystal, I mean, that McMaster demanded that we stay to prop up and said that this is, that would drawl as equivalent to turning Europe over to him. Hitler. Right. But it's also, of course, the Washington Post, New York Times, and the usual suspects who rallied to support the, or not so much to support, but to criticize Biden and his administration for having not done the right thing, to not end the war in the right way. And so it's really

kind of the mainstream media who I'm really directing my comments toward who showed, you know, where their loyalties really lay. Right. And listen, I think it's really important to point out, too, that as predicted, it was obvious, right, that once this project ended, that this country will be facing a great depression, that essentially we've had a giant economic bubble propped up by this massive infusion of American taxpayer and inflated dollars and the power of certain factions propped up by the American military and CIA in that country and that and including certain businesses, important ones. And that once all that is withdrawn, well, what do you think's going to happen, right? They've faced a total economic calamity where all of their prices have

to be readjusted severely downward and people are sure to go hungry. I mean, I mean, just from the chaos and plus they were dependent on foreign food aid, you know, to a great degree anyway, and all the same people who said, we have to keep killing these Afghans for 20 years because we love them so much and we're here to care for them and protect them all. Now, they don't give a damn, gareth about the people of afghanistan women and children little girls even going hungry you know their favorite little pretended idols they don't care one whit about that now they're on off on some other topic you know we should never again hear the idea that the united states stands for humanitarianism somehow in the world never again i don't want to ever hear that idea put forward by

anybody in the media or or politics. It's a, it's a total lie and it makes one really feel a shame to be an American. That's all I can say. Well, to be specific here, the American government is withholding all of the sovereign Afghan government's funds because, oh, it's the bad guy, Taliban. That was the premise of my statement. Sure, yeah, I didn't set that up. I didn't set that up perfectly there, but that's the point is that not only have we withdrawn all that aid, but we won't even give them their own money. We got new sanctions on them and all of these things, which is just, it's the worst kind of sore loserism with, of course, you know, the most helpless people on the receiving end of, you know, the brunt force of it. But it's unimaginably evil is all I can

say. I can't say anything more about what happened in Afghanistan. Yeah. I guess it sounds corny. Some people get mad at me when I say this, but I think about how, you know, in the future, somebody's going to write the history of this and that this is what we do like the genocide in Yemen that you know we've continued to inflict on these people for seven years and Biden said he was going to end it and he hasn't he's continued to give full support to the Saudis this whole time and including most importantly protection and all the international institutions and so forth and including putting our Navy at their service you know this whole time you you've reminded me that it seems to me that this ending that we're talking about here of United States having

enunciated these human humanitarian concerns about Afghanistan for so long, and then suddenly just throwing them overboard without a thought. This is a trope that it seems to me was set up by essentially 20 years or so, two decades of U.S. warfare in which the American people and their elected officials were unwilling to express or to act on any real humanitarian impulses with regard to those wars. There was never any discussion, serious discussion, in the political system of the human cost of America's wars on Iraqis or on Afghans. This is just the way we've become accustomed to operating, I'm afraid. Yeah.

It really is sick. And by the way, just here to wrap up the very last point, I'll throw in, people really should look at the New York Times. Again, if you need to get around the paywall, just dump the URL in Archive.is. And you can read the New York Times news series on the Army papers, the investigation papers that they got their hands on about civilian deaths in Iraq War III, that is the anti-ISIS war, 2014 through 17, 18, and including, of course, in eastern Syria there. And just one small taste to this. And we're supposed to just not think about it and move on, I don't know. but I can't see how they'll ever get over it.

These officials who are responsible for this have never been held accountable, really, in any serious manner. And so therefore, they just continue to basically just avoid having to take responsibility and they go on their merry way. And that's the situation that we continue to face for the foreseeable future. Nothing's changing. Yeah, great. So, all right, well, listen, since January of 2007, I have relied so heavily on you and all of your great journalism, Gareth, and all of your insight into Iraq War II and Afghanistan and, of course, Syria, and your great debunking Russia Gate all along, of course, and just every last thing you're so good and wrote the book, Manufactured Crisis on Iran's nuclear program and the rest. and so I can't tell you well and I should say I think you know I've interviewed

Gareth everybody more than 300 times far more than any other guest over the years and for very good reason as you can hear because you're the best so thank you Merry Christmas my friend I'm always going to be grateful for your interest in my work and your support

that's been really important for me thanks right on okay everybody that's the great Gareth Porter you can find his archives of everything he writes He's right now at the gray zone, but we also keep all of his archives at anti-war.com as well. And that is Anti-War Radio for this morning. I'm your host, Scott Horton. Find my full interview archive at Scott Horton.org, more than 5,600 of them now.

And you find them all also at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton's show. And I'm here every Sunday morning from 8.30 to 9 on KPFK 90.7 FM in L.A. See you next week. Thank you.