Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 2/27/23 Trita Parsi: Biden Opens the Door to War in the Middle East

Episode Date: March 3, 2023

Scott talks with Trita Parsi who just wrote an article for Responsible Statecraft about the path to a new war breaking out in the Middle East. In the article, Parsi runs through the history of tension between Israel and Iran to demonstrate that, while certainly not being partial to Iran, the American government has often stepped in and pushed back against the worst of Israel’s warmongering. However, that is no longer the case. Parsi and Scott examine what geopolitical dynamics have changed to get us to a point where war could conceivably break out soon.  Discussed on the show: “By caving to Israel, Biden opens the door to war” (Responsible Statecraft) “CIA Chief: Iran Not Resuming Nuclear Weapons Program” (Antiwar.com) Trita Parsi is the Executive Vice President of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and the author of Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran and the Triumph of Diplomacy. Parsi is the recipient of the 2010 Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order. Follow him on Twitter @tparsi. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and The Brand New, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2004. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton dot for you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton's show all right you guys on the line i've got trita parcy he used to be at the national arraini american council and now he's one of the co-founders and principal bosses whatever's title is something like that

over at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. And, of course, their great website, ResponsibleStatecraft.org where he has this very important piece from February the 21st. By caving to Israel, Biden opens the door to war. Eh, I might have thought that this subject was at least dormant for a little while, but no. Welcome back to the show. How you doing, Trita? I'm doing great. Great to hear your voice again, Scott. Good. Very happy to have you back on the show.

And I really like this story because you catch us up on some recent history and explain the proper context, I think, pretty well here about the danger of war with Iran. But I would note to start that there is a piece on anti-war.com today by Jason Ditts, where he is covering the fact that the CIA director, William Burns, has admitted that Iran has not so-called restarted, even though they never really had one in the first place. They have not restarted. They're not resuming their nuclear weapons program, were his words. And Jason Ditz also has a write-up about the big so-called scandal, about the 84% enriched uranium 235. It was actually just a misconfiguration thing as small trace amounts, no reason whatsoever to believe that they're enriching up to weapons grade. And 84% isn't weapons grade anyway. Anyway, so just to put a couple of rumors about Iran's nuclear program to bed, as of today, it is still a latent nuclear deterrent rather than a nuclear weapons program. Isn't that correct? Oh, absolutely. And even if they were to weaponize, which according to Bill Burns would take a couple of weeks, they still do not have, they still have not tested a bomb. They still have not figured out exactly how to put it on missiles, et cetera, et cetera.

So the U.S. assessment is still that there's about two or three years away from that scenario. Now, of course, from the perspective of those who want to see military action, et cetera, there is a tendency to significantly exaggerate these things. I'm not saying that there isn't a truth in it, but an exaggeration is something that makes something that is true much worse than it is. Well, as you just said, the two weeks... This is a long-standing practice on the Israeli side. I mean, I think you and I talked about it before. The joke on the Israeli side since 1992 has been

that Iran is always two to three years away from the bomb. Time passes, but they're always two to three years away from the bomb. Well, even the whole thing about two weeks, too, is just... They do this knowingly and deliberately. They just extrapolate the total amount of enriched uranium in the country at all. And then they say, well, we just think. that they could magically turn that into 90 percent uranium 235 in the space of this amount of time and then that's tantamount one two skip a few yada yada yada yada and then they would turn that weapons grade

uranium into an actual usable functional warhead in a couple of weeks talk about exaggerations it's completely ridiculous well i think bill burns himself did say that it would take them two or so years in that last interview oh i do that oh i thought you said we weeks. It weeks to have the material. Right, right, right. Yeah, the so-called breakout capability. But oftentimes instead in the media is that they focus just on the few weeks or

few days to have the material for the bomb and they treat it as if that is a bomb. Right. And then, you know, get this threat inflation as if Devani is a weeks away from having a bomb. That's not the case. Thankfully, Burr has kind of corrected that. But the media loves a more scary story. And that's the one they've been going with. Yeah. Well, and the Israelis do too. I think they just consider, in it, right, that they just consider even a civilian electricity program to be a nuclear weapons threat. As we agreed at the beginning, it is a latent deterrent, right? The Ayatoll is saying, look, I've mastered the fuel cycle. Don't mess with me, right? Which is a fair reading of it, you know, but you, but not worse than that.

But what you have from the Israeli side is the desire to make sure that there's constantly a conflict between the United States and Iran so that Iran does not become normalized and the U.S. moves on from the Middle East and focuses on other things. So you constantly have to have something there that keeps the tensions alive. And at a moment when actually the JCPA was in play, the U.S. had not pulled out, it was fascinating to see how much of the Israeli rhetoric had shifted away from the nuclear program and towards the missile program. Now suddenly we were hearing that the missile program is an existential threat. Right. You know, at some point it would be slingshots. There's a desire to constantly keep those tensions alive because from the Israeli perspective, that serves their interest.

They don't want to see the United States and Iran resolve their tensions. Forget about becoming friends. That's not going to happen anytime soon. But resolving their attention so that the U.S. would shift this focus away from the Middle East. And then constantly keeping that fire alive keeps America's attention in the Middle East. It keeps America's media focused on the Middle East and makes the public believe that for some reason, this is actually really serving U.S. interest to be really involved. and really beyond the actual war there are. All right, now in the article, you go through the history

and you talk about how W. Bush told Ehud Olmert, no. And how Obama, I didn't even remember this part. I remember that Obama had put a story in NBC News about the assassination of the scientists, but you even cite where he sent Hillary Clinton out there to complain about it, which was really burning the Mossad up to murder all those scientists and demanding a halt to it.

Wow. And then Donald Trump comes in, and you got things to say about Trump telling the Israelis to cool it as well. Is that right? Well, I think in the case of Trump was actually fascinating, he had more of an attitude of like, well, if you guys want to go bomb and go ahead and bomb it. But you're on your own. And, you know, he wasn't indicating that the U.S. would get involved. And I think that kind of called the Israeli love. But there were moments where Trump himself was.

was considering doing it under pressure from Netanyahu. And that was after he had lost the elections. And he thought, or at least Nathaniel, who thought that that created an opening for him to actually bomb Iran based on some theory that that could reverse the elections or, you know, do some things that he wouldn't have to give up power. And it was in those months that Millie and others were working very hard to counter that and make it very clear that that should not be an option. So there's always been efforts, whether it's from the top, whether it's from other parts,

of the U.S. government to push back against Israelis when they wanted to start a war with the design to drag the U.S. into it. Yeah. What we're seeing now is something that has really surprised me. And two instances now, we have the Secretary of State Tony Blinken, as well as the Israeli, the U.S. ambassador to Israel nights, saying things that very clearly need the impression that the U.S. is no longer actively and publicly pushing back against the Israelis

when it comes to taking military action. The first instance is after the Israelis use drones to attack a military facility in Esfahan, asked about it instead of distancing the U.S. from it, perhaps talking about the destabilizing potential of such things, Blinken essentially goes in and provides a defense and a rationale what Israelis do with this. Then you have nights saying in a conversation with the conference of major Jewish organizations that the Israelis are going to have to do whatever they think they need to do and we're going

to support them, which is a very thinly wheeled reference to military action. Compare that to the past in which, for instance, at one point, incidentally, a certain vice president Biden had said something that left the impression that the U.S. was giving a green light to the Israelis to take military action. And Obama himself went out and told CNN, there's absolutely no green light to the Israelis to do this. A very clear statement. And the reason why this is important is because when the Israelis have considered seriously taking military action, at least twice during Netanyahu's trial, one of the key reasons that caused him not to go forward with that attack and cause elements in his own cabinet to oppose it was because of the fear

of the tensions that would be created between the United States and Israel because of the very clear American opposition for Israelis to do this. If we're now taking away that pressure on Israelis and the Israelis think actually it would be okay and the U.S. is going to have Israel's back, that can create a very different scenario inside the Israeli cabinet in which a decision to take military action may actually be approved in a matter that it wasn't in the past precisely because of a fear that this would ruin the relationship between Israel and the United States.

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your insight about, you know, the discrepancy between the narrative about the danger of a nuclear weapons program here versus the reality that you and I have agreed on for all these many years now, well over a decade now, Trita, that they have a civilian program. It's inspected and safeguarded by the IAEA, and they're not diverting uranium to military purposes, but they could probably only would as a result of us attacking them, us and Israel attacking them if we do. And that's what you say in this article here. You want them to make a new. attack him to stop him from making a nuke is what's going to make them get a nuke. But so then what I'm getting at is I wonder about, you know, the real policymaking and the, the Biden government

is basically the same Obama government again, a lot of the same principles here. You know, to what degree is the policy based on what they really know to be true versus the public relations that, oh my God, the ayatollahs, this terrible threat to our friends, the Israelis, and maybe to us and what are we going to do about it? It seems like they can switch back and forth. They could really make the Israelis promises based on the PR that they put on

TV, not based on the actual reality, which is the Ayatollah's not a danger to anyone outside of Persia, or maybe Ukraine. So I think there's been shifting motivations. There's been moments, of course, in which, you know, there's been some legitimate

views and siders and authentic views that this is a threat or that this could unravel some belief of a balance in the region. There's times in which it's very much been about making sure to keep the Israelis at bay or keep them happy. And I think we're now in a moment. I would say that I do see a difference between the Biden administration and the Obama administration.

I don't think the Biden administration from the top, meaning from the president, had the degree of commitment to the JCPLA as Obama did. I'm not saying that he doesn't want to renew it. I'm not saying that he's against it. I'm saying that the degree of commitment to it is very different. It was never a top priority. And an issue like this that is so politically charged for it to be pursued successfully, it really has to be a top priority.

Otherwise, it's not likely going to go through. Instead, we're going to see the kind of mess we're seeing right now. That doesn't mean that the Iranians didn't mess up a lot of the negotiations. I certainly think they did, certainly in the last round. But this was never a president who came in and saw this as his list. legacy. This was Obama's legacy. Right now, I think a key concern is, and by the way, in this administration, this team cares much more about what Israel thinks in the Obama administration. Not that the Obama administration didn't care about it, but they were willing to take a fight

with Israelis if they felt that this was a no-brainer for U.S. interests. The Biden team seems to think that the most important thing for a whole set of reasons is to just avoid a fight with Israelis. And that has also caused a significant absence of political will at key moments when tough decisions needed to be able. Now the situation is even more complex because now it's not just about the Israelis. It's on the one hand because of how the regime is repressing its own people and the protests that we see, but perhaps most importantly because of Bivani and supporting Russia in Ukraine. That has really become a key factor, even more so in Europe than in the United States. In Europe, it has really shifted perspectives on this matter. Because the Europeans

never viewed Iran as a threat. I think they were, you know, deep in their hearts, it would very much agree with you, Scott. It wasn't the nuclear program that was the threat. It was the war about the nuclear program that was the threat. That's what they were trying to prevent. Not that they were okay with Iran getting a nuke, but they had a much more realistic assessment of how far Iran used to work from that point. A war, and now the war in the region led by the United States or Israel would be a complete disaster. That's what they were trying to prevent. Now, with Iran supporting Russia, which some in your view as an existential threat to a European order,

Iran has completely changed in the perspective of the Europeans. Now Iran is actually in support of a major threat. And that has really changed perspectives, political will. Is anyone willing to do, you know, what is the value of the JCPI in that context? It was a no-brainer before because the real threat was the war over the JCPOA or over the nuclear program. Now the real concern priority for the Europeans is what's happening in Ukraine. And then Iran is entering in on the wrong side from the European perspective. And this is also shared by the U.S.

But the distance that the Europeans have moved is greater than the distance of the U.S. side to go. So in that sense, it further reinforces what I said early Iran. Iran is a lesser priority. the JCP is a far, far less supportive. Yeah. Well, I mean, in the good news, they're still in the MPT, and there's still no reason to believe that they're breaking out towards a nuke.

I'd like to believe that, come on, they're not really going to attack unless they break out, and they're not going to break out unless they attack. And so cool, and let's just leave the status quo how it is. It's held so far. And so... True, true. But the thing is the status quo,

and I wrote about this a year and a half ago saying that this is where we would end up, which is like a zombie state. The JCPA is not alive, but nor there is it dead. And the status quo is sufficiently bad for everyone, so no one wants to change it. But is it sustainable. And I doubt that it is sustainable for many more months, particularly if the Israelis are playing in some of the games that they are right now.

And I think we're also going to get to a point in which because of the devastating state of devouring economy, in which the regime itself is mainly responsible for, the absence of sanctions relief is going to make it even more difficult. And the Yvanias right now, if they want the JCPLA, I'm not so sure if they know how to get the U.S. to want it, given all of those other factors that I mentioned. And that could then lead to them escalating a nuclear program to get the attention of the West.

Yeah, boy, it's a tough one because you're right, the Americans, they don't really have too much of an incentive to deal. They would have to lift all these sanctions and start treating the Iranians with respect and lose all that political capital without really getting an actual change on the ground that matters, right? Those additional protocols have already been implemented. They already poured concrete in the Boucher reactor, et cetera. Yeah, but the thing of when I say escalating their nuclear program is to do things that actually reverses this with the calculation from the buying side that this would force the U.S. to get

serious, but actually, you know, breaking out of this current state, in which there's no deal, but also there's no crisis. We know, I was talking about Charles Freeman the other day. He was no fool. And he said, yeah, no, there's a risk that we could get in a forefront war with Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran right now. This is how bad our leadership is, how clumsy and detached they are from the reality of the dangers that they're playing with.

It's just unbelievable. Yeah. It is very scary, I have to say, because there is now serious conversations in D.C. About how war with China would look like, all of these different things that, you know, three years ago or five years ago, you know, would not only be fantasy, it would be kind of ridiculous fantasy. Why would you even talk about that stuff? But here we are. All right. Listen, I know you got to go.

And so I can't ask you all the rest of my great questions I was going to ask you. But I hope we can talk again soon. I appreciate you. Absolutely. My pleasure. Thanks so much, Scott. Hell yeah. All right, you guys. That's the great treat of Parsi. He's over there at the Quincy Institute for International Statecraft. That's responsible statecraft.org. The Scott Horton Show, Anti-War Radio, can be heard on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. APSRadio.com, antiwar.com, Scotthorton.org, and Libertarian Institute.org.