Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 4/22/22 Mitchell Plitnick on Israel, Iran and a Cold War in the Middle East

Episode Date: April 29, 2022

Scott interviews Mitchel Plitnick about Israeli politics and the Iran Nuclear Deal. Plitnick begins by filling us in on the political situation in Israel, where a new coalition government is working to agree upon a budget by the Fall of 2023. If they are unable to do so, the government will fall apart and new elections will take place. Next, they discuss the news about Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch labeling Israel an apartheid state due to their treatment of Palestinians. Plitnick and Scott give their theories for the abrupt change in tone. They then talk about the JCPOA, which is at risk of falling apart thanks to the Biden Administration’s reluctance to remove the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp from the terrorist list Trump placed them on. Scott and Plitnick observe that actually, the destruction of the deal will leave Iran’s nuclear activity unmonitored. Plitnick worries that we are on the road to a Cold War in the Middle East between Israel and Iran.  Discussed on the show: “How the Israeli government shake-up will affect US-relations” (Responsible Statecraft) Manufactured Crises by Gareth Porter Mitchell Plitnick is president of ReThinking Foreign Policy. His writing has appeared in Ha’aretz, the New Republic, the San Francisco Chronicle, and many other outlets, and he has regularly offered commentary in a wide range of radio and television outlets including PBS News Hour and the O’Reilly Factor. Follow him on Twitter @MJPlitnick. 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 and Listen and Think Audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Oh hungry, oh Henry! All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of antire 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 2003, almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton.4. 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, introducing Mitchell Plitnik, president of rethinking foreign policy. He used to be at the Foundation for Middle East Peace, and with Bet Salem and was co-director of Jewish Voice for Peace. and here he is writing at Responsible Statecraft. That's the Quincy Institute for International Responsible Foreign Policy. And yeah, responsiblestakecraft.org is the website there. It's a fancy highfalutin name for Jim Loeb's blog.

Welcome back to the show. How are you doing, Mitchell? I'm doing well. How are you, Scott? I'm doing great. And it really is awesome to see the Loeblog raised up to such prominence. All of my best guys. well, my best liberals anyway, writing at the Quincy Institute there. This is a really important

one. It's all about internal politics inside Israel, a little bit in the weeds, but very interesting for me and very important for the future of all of us, of course, how the Israeli government shakeup will affect U.S. relations. So let's start with that. What shakeup? Well, the big news was that this government, which had a one-seat majority, so 61 seats out of 120, lost that majority when one member of the right-wing Yamina party defected and left the party joined the opposition Likud Party. That has its own ramifications and stuff. But effectively, that means that the ruling government does not have a majority, can't pass any legislation without support from the opposition, which is unlikely to, it's unlikely to get.

It was already, you know, kind of teetering. This coalition is a really hodgepodge patchwork of parties from the Zionist left to a orthodox Muslim sort of Arab party to pretty far right-wing Jewish parties. So it's a real mishmash that doesn't. agree on much. Well, the one thing they agreed on was that they wanted to get rid of Benjamin Netanyahu, who's now the leader of the opposition. So they were already weak. They really couldn't agree on much. So there wasn't much chance to do legislation. Now there's no chance at all. Yeah. So, but now you write, he doesn't have support for his majority, but at the same time, though, the bad guys or his opponent, well, bad guys. Netanyahu and Lukud, they're the bad guys. But

anyway, from his point of view, his opponents, anyway, they don't have the votes to get rid of them yet either, though, correct? They don't, because part of the opposition, which now also controls half the Kness at 60 seats, includes the joint list, which is a coalition of a few progressive Arab parties and the one Jewish Arab Communist Party, Hadash, which is the biggest group in that, biggest party in that coalition. So they're unlikely to support anything that brings Netanyahu back, but they're not in the government. So they're part of the opposition, but they very much are not aligned with the opposition. So in order to bring this no longer majority government down, you need to have a no-confidence vote. That needs to be passed three times

by a majority of members of the Knesset. With the joint list, they're not going to vote in favor of such a thing. So we're in kind of a stalemate situation. All right. Well, I guess that could be worse. What are the chances do you think that the government falls apart and Netanyahu is able to come back? In the short term, not much. The Netanyahu is working on trying to get some other members of Natali Bennett's coalition to defect. That's his hope, but he probably will have an uphill battle doing that. I can't say he can't do it. He's very persuasive. And for some reason, people still trust his promises, even though he's broken promises to everyone who's ever made a deal with. So he's hard at work at that. The real

deadline is going to be in the fall of 2023 when a new budget has to be agreed upon. If the government can't agree on a new budget, then the Knesset will be dissolved and new elections will be called. And the chances of a budget passing without a governmental majority are very, very small. They were already small because of the kinds of disagreements that exist within this government. Now, with not even having a majority, it's almost certain they will not be able to agree on a budget. So that will be the deadline, but that's a year and a half away, more than a year and a half away. And until then, it's very possible that this government will survive, but you never know what sort of crises can come up. And there's definite discomfort.

Most of the discomfort, ironically, is coming from Naftali Bennett's own party. There are other right-wing parties in the coalition, but it's Yamina Bennett's party that are really, you know, that was where the defector came from. another defector very early on, someone who would not agree to the coalition, right at the beginning of this government, also, although he technically stayed with the party, but he would not vote to support the coalition. So you have that. There's more, there's just a general, we don't like sitting with these other parties, including an Arab party and including, you know, the left wing merits party.

That's the most liberal Zionist party. So there, there's a lot of discomfort there. And that's what Netanyahu's trying to kind of pick at and get more people to defect from. And it is possible that he'll be able to bring enough people out of this government for it to fall. Oh, interesting. So, but now the budget impasse thing of which you're talking about there, that's not for another 18 months, you say? It's something like that. I forget the exact date, but I believe it's fall, it's either August or a little later of 2023.

So that's a while later. It's around the same time that the prime minister's office. is supposed to shift from Nuffelli Bennett to Yager Lapid. That was the coalition agreement. I believe that switch happens after the deadline for the budget, in which case, as I had always expected, Lepid will not take over. If it's before, I'm pretty sure the government will collapse at that point because there will be enough opposition from the right to Lepid taking over, even though he's kind

of a center-right figure himself. Man, I wish we could have a government like that in America where the, coalition is broken they don't have a majority but they don't have quite enough for a no confidence thing and the whole thing just kind of is not able to do anything for 18 months could we try that for a little while well you know this sort of parliamentary government i mean is fairly common in europe it's it's uh you know it's not certainly not unique to israel um and um you know we are the we're the outliers this idea that two parties the two of whom i would say i i don't know if you'd agree, but I would say the two parties represent between the two of them,

a very small minority of Americans. Got that, yeah. I register as a Democrat, for example, just because I want to be able to vote in the primaries, but the Democratic Party doesn't represent me. I think that's true of a lot of people. And, you know, a more diverse party system, a multi-party system, I think, would, you know, so that people could have political parties that at least come close to representing their views would be great.

but you know that and that's like i said israel has that and many many other uh western democracies have that we're the ones that are kind of weird about this well i mostly agree with you but i guess what i like is the ineffectual nature of the parliamentary system when they get in a jam like this but anyway uh yes i would like for a party that represents my my point of view to help create that logjam and prevent the government from acting at all but um i guess look look I mean, depending on your point of view, I guess, Netanyahu's return is the worst case scenario or the best one. And I know there are, you know, anti-Zionists who would prefer to just have Netanyahu up there because he's such an ugly face. He represents the Israeli state in its current era essentially perfectly.

And, you know, my boss, Eric Garris at anti-war.com, he would just very much like to see Netanyahu remain the face of Israel because it's so accurate. where this guy Bennett essentially just amounts to a bribe to American progressives to shut the hell up and not be bothered by Israel for a little while when they're the only ones who care mostly in this country you know if anybody's going to care make a difference at all it would be the American left and by getting rid of Netanyahu you basically it's like electing Obama you just kind of gave them a reason to pipe down well in a sense except that Bennett is actually pretty right wing and and his party amina I mean I mean actually means to the right that's what it means um it is definitely a right wing party it used to sure but that's no accounts right

i mean obama was just george w bush but what matter was he was tall dark and handsome and sort of same thing here i mean not exactly but you know what i mean it's kind of the same but i think i think you know yair lapid would be more what you're describing uh bennett himself is pretty damn right wing um at having said that i think you're right in the sense that um that that that bennett is not has thus far not really been giving into his far-right inclinations. He has, if you want to put it this way, faithfully represented the fact that he's part of a coalition that's supposed to be centrist. So he's, and in generally, he's restrained by the fact that, you know, his coalition won't allow him to do anything, whether it's, whether it's pursuing right-wing or left-wing,

you know, policies. The coalition would, you know, one part of the, you know, one part of of the coalition of the other would basically restrain him. So, I mean, you know, I know the thinking about Netanyahu being the face of Israel and having that. I'm not, I don't know that that's necessarily all that helpful. I mean, I feel like, you know, the face of Israel has continued to decline in popularity. You know, it was happening during Netanyahu. It's happened since Netanyahu's been out. I think it's still happening. I think the more and more people realize what's what israel is really doing the nature of the state the apartheid nature of israel um i think as all of that grows and it's continuing to grow i think

it's its public image is continuing to to falter it's being propped up by the fact that um not you know you have these new relationships with a few arab states but also because the united states is just not paying any attention to the palestinians um and focus and and instead of focusing on Israel's campaign against Iran, and as a result, that makes Israel look a little bit better when you're not looking at what they're doing to the Palestinians, and instead looking at Iran, which most Americans do not like. I think that is what we're seeing as kind of mollifying some of the views towards Israel. But I think even since Nazaneda was departure, I think there's still, you know, with all these reports coming out about it being an apartheid, I think Israel's

image is still continuing to get hit, and, you know, and rightly so. And I think it's, it needs to continue. I don't know if Netanyahu coming back would make that big a difference. Yeah. I guess I just think of it like, just because he's so famous and just people are so, have such polarized opinions about him. He just seems to controversialize the issue of Israel in a way in the mind of Americans, the way Bennett does not, you know, for people who care a lot about the issue, then you can see, right, as you mentioned, their HRW and Amnesty coming out and finally calling it apartheid, the two-state solution, illusion is over, and now we're dealing with an apartheid state. That's a big deal. But that's, you know, pretty detailed compared to

just the prime minister of Israel is a mean guy who makes people not like him, which is sort of was the narrative about Netanyahu right like you know Lindsay Graham likes him but nobody else does in the whole country kind of right and then so where Bennett I know you're totally right about you know his character and his policies but just his his face is not that well identified with those policies or those positions right just because people just are not that familiar with him so it's the the temperature is turned down on the controversy right I think there's some truth to that And also, Bennett is not, you know, Bennett has a good relationship with Joe Biden and Netanyahu is very deeply associated with Donald Trump. And so, and, you know, for the most part, Trump supporters are strongly pro-Israel and pro authoritarianism. So you have, you know, so that part of it, I think, is, is, you know, that part of it is true that, that, you know, Bennett's certainly not somebody who appears. to be in that sort of far right, even though his politics are far right, he doesn't appear

to be in that far right sort of milieu. Yeah, so I definitely think that is true. But as I say, I'm not sure it would be making much difference just because I think right now, the thing that makes Israel look really bad is its treatment of Palestinians and nobody's paying attention. And as long as that's happening, that's where it can continue to kind of move forward to the extent that people are paying attention. I mean, the good thing is at least that amnesty, human rights watch, those apartheid accusations made headlines. And that's important. So people at least did hear that and it became a public argument. So that part at least is good.

And the United States was putting in this awkward position of trying to defend something that it knows is indefensible. So the Biden administration was kind of tripping over itself on that and continues to. And I think that's a good thing, too. Yeah, absolutely. In fact, so let's stop and pay some attention to the Palestinians then for a minute, because I think this is important. I mean, you're the former director of Jewish Voice for Peace. That says a lot.

You're, you know, the audience could hear you nodding along there when I was saying, when I mentioned those, or I guess you brought them up first, but yeah, apartheid and human rights watch. What's the big deal? Why would those two massive and very State Department friendly human rights organizations, H.R.W. and Amnesty, come out and call the situation in Israel apartheid. Aren't they the victims of their neighbors who are constantly attacking them and trying to extort land out of them? Like it says on TV. And why would you agree with them? Why would I agree that Israel's an apartheid state? I would agree because Israel's an apartheid. It fits absolutely the definition. definition of an apartheid state. It is just, it's just immensely clear that, you know, when you look at, and again, you know, often the arguments are, well, it's different from South

Africa in this way, and this way, and this way, and there are certainly differences. But apartheid is not defined by South Africa. It is a word that comes from South Africa, but the legal definition is simply, you know, the, the, the treatment of different people and the deprivation deprivation of certain people's rights based on their race or ethnicity or some other immutable characteristic. And I mean, that's very clearly what's happening in Israel. I actually resisted the word apartheid for years in the early part of the century because I felt like everyone was talking about occupation. And if you look at it in terms of occupation, then it's a little bit different from apartheid. But the new way, and I think the correct way,

of looking at it is that, you know, all of the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel are basically one unit all under the control of Israel. And if you look at it that way, there's no question it's a part-time. Palestinians are clearly treated very, very differently than Israeli Jews. And that's true whether you're in, it's true in different ways, but it's still true whether you're in Gaza, whether you're in the West Bank, or whether you're inside of Israel. I mean, that was something that really came up last year when we started seeing all the protests and the uprisings in Israeli cities of Palestinian citizens of Israel. So, yeah, I think that's clear.

I think also, you know, Amnesty and Human Rights Watch have been reporting on Israeli human rights violations all along. That's not new. Look, even the State Department does that. The State Department may not say apartheid, but most of the things that amnesty and Human Rights Watch and other human rights groups, including Israeli ones like Bitzellam, including Palestinian ones like Al Haq. These groups are all saying the same things.

They're all reporting the same issues. And that's been going on for years. And now, Palestinian groups have been using the apartheid framework for pretty much from the beginning. Some Israeli groups, Bissellam, has now also adopted the apartheid framework. And I think it was inevitable then. The Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International would feel like they kind of had to adopt that same framework. And they've made the case. And I think the case is pretty much airtight.

Yeah. Well, you know what it is, man, and I know you know. Most Americans just don't understand about the occupation. Nobody ever puts it, I mean, to me, I like to just make it plain and simple. The Palestinians got whooped and taken and lost back in 1967. You know, it's always confusing, I think, to a normal when people talk about, well, you know, there might be a two-state solution. Because most of the time, it sounds like Palestine is next door to Israel. And they're constantly sending these terrorists to try to extort land out of Israel. Land for peace, land for peace. Oh, geez, why should the poor Israelis have to give up some of their land to these terrorists who are sending terrorists to extort land out of them? They shouldn't have to give in. We should help our brave Israeli partners stand up to those evil terrorists. And people just don't understand that we're not talking about attacks across a border. We're talking about attacks, you know, when they're shooting rockets over the Gaza wall or whatever.

We're talking about attacks from an Indian reservation, essentially. These people have already been beaten since 10 years before I was born, nine. And people just don't know that. You know, it's a longer occupation than the Soviets occupied Eastern Europe. But to Americans, they never break it down in that way. That's why apartheid sounds strange because isn't it just a country of Jews? And so how could it be an apartheid state? Or, okay, there's some minority there.

They're kind of a little bit second-class citizens. But you were just talking about how they have seats in the Knesset, so that doesn't sound that bad. And people just don't understand. We're talking about millions of people living under a foreign military dictatorship, essentially, in the West Bank and Gaza and East Jerusalem. Yeah, it is that. And except that, in a sense, it's not even a foreign one. It's a kind of an internal divided dictatorship because, you know, for Palestinians, Palestinians don't think about this as the story as beginning in 1967.

They think of it as beginning either in 1948 or even earlier when the first Zionist immigrations were happening in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. So, you know, for them, this is all, this is one country that has been divided. So it's already been partitioned. into areas that have a sort of democratic structure, which is inside Israel, an area under siege, which is Gaza, and an area that is under occupation, which is the West Bank. And so there's these different levels or forms that the apartheid and oppression and dispossession are taking, but it's happening to Palestinians all throughout that land. And I think this is also what

what Americans don't understand. I think it's that. And also, when we talk about, you know, the Palestinian attacks, you know, what we, what is often lost on Americans, and I think I'd say this is lost on, you know, the overwhelming majority of Americans, including many who support, you know, some sort of peace, whether it's two-state solution or something like that, what's lost is we hear about every, pretty much every Palestinian attack on Israelis. That makes the news, especially if you follow the issue at all, and you read any of the Israeli press or the New York Times. And there's any attack on a settler in the West Bank, you know, even if it's just like rocks thrown at a car or if it's something bigger like a

suicide bomb, obviously it makes the news. And it makes the news in a pretty loud way. Palestinians are getting attacked by settlers and Israeli soldiers literally every day, multiple times a day all throughout the West Bank. They're living under a siege in the Gaza Strip every day. They have to ration out, you know, electricity every day. They have a few hours of electricity every day. They have virtually no potable water in the Gaza Strip. They cannot go in and out. They cannot do business in the Gaza Strip. That happens every single day, but we don't hear about it every single day. It may come up in a new, in a, you know, given CNN report or this news article. We don't hear about it every single day unless you're actually talking to Palestinians

on the ground. And that, I think more than anything else, creates this warped view of the situation for Americans. They just don't have the fact. is they don't have the reality of the day-to-day life of Palestinians and the day-to-day life of Israelis to really get a full and clear picture of what is going on. And therefore, we have this situation where we have this cartoonish image of the evil Arabs who are constantly attacking the poor, helpless Jews. And it's just not the way it is. It's just simply that just turns reality on its head.

Now, so Mitchell, why do you think that, HRW and Amnesty have decided that now is the time to go ahead and call a spade a spade after all this time? I think it was the, I think it was the, I think I finally gave into years of pressure. I think that was part of it. And I think it was also the fact that, you know, and again, I have no, even though I do know folks in both of those organizations, I want to make clear, I have no inside knowledge of this decision. So this is pure speculation on my part. But I think it had to do with the fact that, you know, Palestine as an issue is fading into the background all over the world, not just here. You know, the peace, the so-called peace overtures between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain and Sudan and Morocco, those things, you know, the ongoing, you know, the ongoing sort of open secret of Israel dealing with Saudi Arabia, the long-term peace treaties with Egypt, that, you know, that combined with the fact that the United States is pretty much moved on from this issue.

we really do you know the Biden administration has done almost nothing uh even to address the excesses of the Trump administration let alone to actually address this question uh Europe really doesn't want to hear it anymore you know it's just fading away into the background and I think human rights organizations are saying wait a second you know people are going to forget about this we need to do something dramatic to kind of put this back into into if not the headlines at least the international discussion and I think that was a major reason why they finally said hey let's you know So everyone's screaming apartheid. Let's actually do an investigation and actually try and see if we can build the legal case with evidence that this is apartheid going on.

And that's what they did. And as I said, I think they were very successful in doing it despite the objections of Israel and supporters. Sorry, hang on just one second. Hey, guys, anybody who signs up to listen to this show by way of Patreon will be invited to join the Reddit group. And I'm going to start posting stuff over there more. That's patreon.com slash Scott Horton's show. Thanks. Hey, y'all, Libertasbella.com is where you get Scott Horton's show and Libertarian Institute shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, and stickers and things, including the great top lobstas designs as well. See, that way it says on your shirt, why you're so smart.

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by the great Mike Swanson available now. Well and I mean wasn't it too that Netanyahu had declared he was going to annex the place outright and then he said okay well we're not going to call it that but then you know there was also this quote I always thought this was interesting that

when Palestinians say from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. Zionists say, ah, that's a call for genocide. You want to make it not Israel anymore. You want to make it Palestine. And that means you're going to kill all the Jews and push them into the sea and all these kinds of things. But that's not what they said. They just said

they're going to be freedom for everybody who lives west of the Jordan River. That was all they said. But then, it's interesting though, that Netanyahu himself, you know, King Beebe, they said. I think the longest serving Israeli Prime Minister longer than than Ben-Gurian or Began or any of them, right?

He said that Israel will never relinquish security control of any area west of the Jordan River. From the Jordan River to the sea, Israel will maintain a monopoly on violent power. Forget all this stuff about freedom for all the people there. But yes, it's one state. And you can forget your two-state solution. That illusion is now over. Like that was essentially, he was calling the West's bluff that I don't want to pretend that there's going to be a Palestinian state someday anymore. That's stupid. And so then Amnesty and HRW were like, okay, well, fine. If you're going to stop pretending, then we're going to stop pretending, you know? I mean, I think that's also certainly possible. I think that could well have been part of the thinking. You know, as far as the annexation threat that Netanyahu, that actually was a claim that the United Arab Emirates said, you know, as to why they were. signing the Abraham Accords and opening up relations with Israel, they said, well, this will,

this was, you know, part of the deal was that Israel would take annexation off the table. I actually, and I'm, this is a minority view, but I never believed that Israel was going to annex the occupied territories. I just don't think they were going to do that. I think it would have been way too difficult to maintain the illusion of any sort of democracy. And I think that's very important to Israel. And I don't think the United States would really have tolerated. I mean, Trump might have thought it was okay, but I think even Trump and Jared Kushner were nervous about what that might bring, because they did seem to kind of push back a little bit, like, you know, wait, don't do this yet. I think they were looking at, you know, maybe in a second Trump term,

they might have been okay with it. But there was definitely consternation, even in the Trump administration, about that idea. So I never believed it was going to happen. That being said, you know, I certainly think it's possible that part of this thinking is that, hey, Israel, and this is, look, I mean, this has been stated. I mean, many Israeli and Palestinian and other analysts have said, look, there is, you know, there is a one state reality on the ground. That's what's happening now. This is, you know, whether you think there should be a two-state solution or a one-state solution or whatever, the reality is right now there's one-state on the ground. And that is clear. That's been something that many people have been saying for, again, a long time, that there is one state. It is controlled by Israel. And it had, you know, on a local level, you know, some Palestinians and obviously Hamas and Gaza, the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank has some, some level, varying levels of control. But overall, the entire area is controlled by Israel, which is a clear fact, no matter how much Israel and supporters try to deny it. that they actually don't control Gaza.

It's not true. They do. You can't get in and out of Gaza without Israeli permission. And so, you know, that's been the truth. That's been the reality that they've been dealing with, Netanyahu, and his predecessors work to create that reality. And now they have to live with it. And yes, it could well be that the focus on apartheid is one maybe unanticipated consequence of that. Yeah.

All right. now. You also wrote about, oh, I'm sorry, I already kept you over time. Can I keep you for another minute here? Or you got to go? Yeah, sure. No, I'm going to get. You wrote about the JCPOA. This is the Iran nuclear deal, the Obama nuclear deal that Trump tore up, that just point of stipulating the facts here real quick that we never needed in the first place. They were already in the NPT and were verified to not be making nuclear weapons. But anyway, the question is whether we're going to get back in the deal. And if we don't and keep the sanctions on, whether maybe they'll get out of the NPT, and then we got real trouble. And I don't know, what do you think's going on here?

Well, right now, I mean, this looked like we were actually going to get a deal done. And then this issue of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard being on the foreign terrorist organization list came up. This was a poison pill that was planted by the Trump administration. They put the IRGC on the foreign terrorist organization list, specifically to make sure that a future administration would not be able to get the deal back up. That being said, it's not really a total insurance policy. If the Biden administration had a little backbone, they could easily just, I mean, they can do this.

They're afraid of the political blowback. And the political blowback would be coming not only from Republicans, but also from a sadly large chunk of Democrats. And so they're worried about doing it, even though it would have no practical effect. The IRGC would still be on other list. It would still be considered a terrorist organization. It would still be under sanctioned. Nothing would materially change. And that's what's holding this deal up. And at this point, the Biden administration has said, well, you know, the ball's in Iran's court. And Iran's like, no, you're the ones that can, you know, that that can take, you know, Iran's kind of digging in its heels and saying, you're the ones

to put us on this list. You're the ones that can take us off. We can't do that. Um, basically they're saying Iran should find a way to live with it. And Iran is saying, you're the ones that tore up this deal. We're not making that kind of compromise. One can argue whether Iran should do it anyway. I personally think that this is ridiculous and that the Biden administration needs to just show some backbone for once, but that I'm sure is asking way too much of Joe Biden. So, you know, this is, the situation is going to be, is now looking like we're not going to get back into the deal, which means Iran is not going to be monitored. And I think that was, you know, that was the key thing in the JCPOA.

Iran agreed to an unprecedented level of monitoring that no other country deals with, that no other country would agree to. And let's not forget, it's making this deal with a bunch of nuclear powers while it's, while it's constantly being threatened on a daily basis by a country that is a known nuclear power but doesn't admit it in Israel. So, you know, there's just a lot of, you know, Iran will not be monitored. They will probably enrich a little bit more. And they will probably also feel very threatened and take more aggressive actions because they're going to feel even more threatened than before by the United States and by Israel. And they're going to have a real good.

basis for that threat. And we're going to end, you know, and that is why the Abraham Accords came about so that Israel could work much more freely and openly with the United Arab Emirates and eventually with Saudi Arabia to kind of form a Persian Gulf version of NATO. That's purpose is not to, you know, stand against Russia, but to stand against Iran. And that, now we're talking about a sort of Persian Gulf Cold War. Now we're talking about, you know, that will still see both sides, you know, launching, you know, backing militias that oppose their opponents. And, you know, it's just, it's a recipe not just for sustained conflict, but for greatly escalated conflicts. And it's all very easily avoidable. And we can, we here in the United States can

actually stop this from happening. And we just don't. Yeah. You know, the Democrats, this, you know, they always talk about calculus, calculus. Calculus. But it's all just basic, simple, stupid arithmetic, right? The Democrats are afraid of being called weak. And because they are weak, they're afraid. And so they got to always act off. And they can't, even when, for example, Donald Trump tears up the INF and opens skies treaty. Well, Biden could have just said, well, I like those treaties.

And I think Donald Trump is a really bad guy. And such a fringy, fringe guy for doing such a thing, I'm going to get right back in those treaties. And he didn't. And it helped cause a war. That was one of Putin's demands was get back in the INF, and Biden wouldn't do it. And the same thing here. You call their special operations forces a terrorist group just as some stupid poison pill? Well, I'm going to uncall them that.

If it was you or me, this would be easy. And we tell the Israelis to go to hell if they don't like it. And that'd be the end of that. But hell, even Barack Obama stood up to Benjamin Netanyahu. And he's the same guy who was at the same time curled up at, uh, David Petraeus' feet tripling the Afghan war for nothing. It's not like he was the toughest Democrat ever or anything, but he was the least willing to stand up to the Israelis on this.

And here you have Blinken and Sullivan who helped negotiate the damn thing. Yeah. You know, I mean, Biden's government is the Obama government less Obama. And they could have just walked right back into the deal a year and a half ago, you know? Yeah, that's the big, you know, but the big difference is that it is less Obama, and it's Biden in his place, and Biden is a much weaker leader. He is a much more conservative person. He has, you know, that was why Obama picked him.

He wanted a more conservative face. He wanted a whiter face to appeal to the people who would not vote for him because he's black and that kind of thing. And he got a man, and at this point, you know, Biden is certainly a man past his prime, to put it kindly. And it's just not somebody who's up for any sort of political fights. and, and he's very easily, frankly, very easily cowed, which is an amazing thing to say, you know, about somebody controlling the quote-unquote bully pulpit. It is, you know, and it's a, it is a big, big problem. And, you know, let's face it, there is very much we can do about it. And will Biden eventually find a way to, you know, come to some sort of accommodation with Iran? He can. He can do it today. he can literally do it today there will be political blowback there's no question about it but guess what

if if one of the one of the key points in getting back into the deal is that all the things that people were worried about about the deal that iran would get closer to a nuclear weapon that they would do more you know financing of militia groups they would you know all of that would escalate and well that's all happened since trump tore it up and it would diminish not say it would go away but it would diminish significantly invisibly if we got back in the deal deal. And that would be an electoral political win for Biden. He would show everyone else to be wrong. And that would be a big plus for him. If that, if he's only looking to the political calculus, it would be a short-term setback, but a long-term gain, it would make perfect sense for

him. But even the short-term gains scares him too much. And he just, he just refuses to, you know, to take a step. We're still, you know, he would, I'm sure, argue that he's looking at midterms and things of that nature, but if we got back in this deal today, that would be enough time for the positives to show up before the midterms, and hell, all of this could have been avoided if he had prioritized this from day one. He could have gotten back into this without many of these complications a year ago, but they just didn't. They wanted to, quote unquote, you know, he wanted to do his thing of getting Republicans on board and getting conservatives on board and having this big consent, you know, all of that stuff that was any idiot could have told him

was never going to happen. And of course, never did. And now we're, you know, now we're with a much more hardline Iranian interlocutor as opposed to the previous administration in Iran that really wanted to get back in this deal. This one's more dubious. I mean, it, the whole thing has been botched so badly. It is stunning. And it, and it's all own goals. It's all self, you know, self-inflicted wounds and and dumb ones that are just mind-boggling, frankly. Yeah. Well, and how much of this do you think is because of pressure from the Israelis who insist that they just hate this deal? Yeah, I think it's some of it. I mean, I think at the beginning, there was a sort of an understanding that Biden was going to get back into the deal. And Israel was, you know, Israel, there was a lot of pressure on Israel to not repeat the things that Netanyahu had did in 2015 to Obama.

A lot of people felt like, you know, and I'm talking about Israelis now. A lot of Israelis felt like that was a bad move. A lot of Israelis also, you know, the Israeli security establishment, let's remember, thinks that that is not crazy about the JCPOA, but they all think that getting out of it was a terrible, terrible mistake. And they all, the security establishment is all in favor of getting back in. It's the political side in Israel that doesn't want to do this. So there's a real split in Israel, and there was a real opening a year ago,

where the, where Netanyahu had other things to worry about, his re-election, his legal troubles and all this. And there was a real opening to get back into the deal with less Israel. I mean, there would still have been Israeli opposition, but it would have been much less strong than it is now. And again, they just dawdled and let it go by. They let that opportunity just go away because they were hoping to cobble together some broader coalition that was just never possible.

And so now, you know, Israel is more of a factor, but quite frankly, I mean, the anti-Iran sentiment in Washington goes beyond Israel. It may have started with Israel, but it's grown beyond that. And now it's its own ideology. And it is one of the few things in Washington that is, sadly, bipartisan. Yeah. Well, and the Pentagon loves it, too. Yeah, you know, the Pentagon loves all of this. And as do the arms manufacturers who are making killing and will continue to make a killing off conflict

in the Persian Gulf and conflict in Ukraine. The Kagan's are just arriving at work right now. They had to stop the bank to cash their checks from Northrop Grumman and Lockheed before getting back to their desk to advocate for these policies. Yeah, exactly. And you know, Gareth Porter shows in his book,

Manufactured Crisis, how in tandem, just the Israelis and the Americans at the end of the Cold War 30 years ago, we're like, oh, man, we've got to pick a fight with somebody. You know what? should be the iatola we should just i mean ronald regan was selling the mean scary old iatola comaini missiles just a couple of years after the revolution there so don't come crying to me about the hostage crisis or even the bayroot bombing i mean ronald regan was using the israelis to sell

them tow missiles as their cutouts just a couple of years after that it wasn't until the end of the cold war and they said man we got to pretend that we're afraid that these guys are going to get missiles that can reach North America and that we got to contain them. We got to have a containment policy against somebody. Otherwise, who needs these submarines at all, you know? Yeah, that is true. I mean, this is what we're dealing with now is the result of a continuing but long, long line of really bad foreign policy decisions.

Yeah. And, again, that's bipartisan. Yeah, Trita Parsi has that great quote from the Israeli strategist saying, yeah, see, we decided that we would re-label Iran radical Islam. And that would be new glue for the alliance between the United States and Israel. And that's true. Otherwise, why do we need them? There are Fort Apache out there holding back the hordes of who.

If not the Soviets, it's got to be somebody, right? Exactly. Yeah. All right. Anyway, one less thing. Oh, I was going to say, isn't it right, too, that – and I think this is what Gair is reporting about the early 90s policy shift there shows as well, that. The reason for this is to distract from the Palestinians. Under Rabin, it was to distract from the fact that he was negotiating with him. But for every prime minister since then, it's to distract

from the fact that they never will. And anytime you say Gaza, they say Tehran. There's a lot of truth to that, but it's sort of writ bigger. I think there's the sort of motivating, the key motivating factor in all of Israeli politics on the international. national scale is security, security, security. There has to be a threat. There's a limit to how much you can paint the Palestinians as a threat, right? I mean, they're just too weak to paint as much of a threat. So you try groups like Hezbollah, which is a little bit more of a threat. But again, nothing significant. But Iran is a whole big country with, you know, that has influence throughout the region and has a, you know, a military and an army and an Air Force and has these things. So, you

You pick that. If it's not Iran, it's someone else. Part of it is absolutely to distract from the Palestinian issue and to not only distract, though, but also to justify, why does Israel have to be so militant? Why does it have to be so vigilant? Why does it have to be so violent? Why does it have to take all these steps? Because it's in constant danger of being eradicated, which is simply not true. Israel has not faced a truly, truly legitimate crisis of that nature since at least 1973. So, you know, you're going back half a century now. And yet, it's entire politics. So not only its defense budget, but everything it does, all the business it does, all of the high-tech industry is so tied into its security industry. And all of those partnerships are justified based on

security with the United States and with Europe, so much industry, not just, you know, not just military issues, not just security issues, not even just diplomatic issues, but just dollars and cents business is tied up in that whole security ideology and you need a threat. Right now that threat is Iran and frankly, they couldn't have a better one. I can't imagine who would be a better threat unless maybe something like Russia somehow. But, of course, they want to have good relations with Russia for different reasons. But yeah, so it's partially a distraction from the issue of the Palestinians, but also just partially because Israel needs a scary monster to justify its entire industrial existence, its entire military industrial existence, and all of its behavior, including its treatment of the Palestinians. It really is like twins with Schwarzenegger and DeVito, American Israel.

Yeah. It's got this whole thing perfectly in common here. I'm not saying which one is which either, by the way. I don't want to get in trouble. Listen, I appreciate you so much. Thanks for great journalism. Thanks for your time on the show again, Mitchell. Sure thing.

Thanks for having me, Scott. All right you guys, that is Mitchell Plitnik. You can find him at ResponsibleStatecraft.org. This one is called How the Israeli Government Shakeup will affect U.S. relations the scott horton show anti-war radio can be heard on kpfk 90.7 fm in l a psradyo dot com antiwar dot com scot horton.org and libertarian institute dot org