Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 6/15/23 Connor Freeman on the New Israeli Settlements and the Latest on an Iran Deal

Episode Date: June 18, 2023

Connor Freeman joined Antiwar Radio this week to run through some news from the Middle East. They started with the 4,000 new settlements Israel announced would be built in the West Bank. They then took a look at U.S.-Israeli relations under the Biden Administration more broadly before finishing with the latest developments with Iran’s negotiations over its nuclear program.  Discussed on the show: “Tel Aviv to Announce Plans For Thousands of New Settlement Units in West Bank” (Libertarian Institute) “Israeli soldiers won’t face prosecution for death of 80-year-old Palestinian-American” (Mondoweiss) “Netanyahu Threatens No Deal on Iran Will Tie Israel’s Hands” (Libertarian Institute) Connor Freeman is the Assistant Editor of the Libertarian Institute, primarily covering foreign policy. He is a co-host on Conflicts of Interest. His writing has been featured in media outlets such as Antiwar.com and Counterpunch, as well as the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity. You can follow him on Twitter @FreemansMind96 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

For Pacifica Radio, June 15th, 20203, I'm Scott Horton. This is Anti-War Radio. All right, y'all it is Anti-War Radio. I'm your host, Scott Horton. I'm editorial director of anti-war.com, and I'm the editor of the book. hotter than the sun time to abolish nuclear weapons you find my full interview archive almost 6,000 of them now going back 20 years at scothorton.org and at youtube.com slash scott horton show and you're going to want to sign up for the podcast feed at scothorton.org

because i got a big special project that i've been working on lately that's going to hit either tonight or tomorrow i think and you guys are going to want to tune in for that probably so that's at scott horton dot org and our first guest today is connor freeman he is assistant news director at the institute and something like that over at antivore dot com as well welcome back to the show connor how you doing man i'm doing great scott how are you i'm doing real good appreciate you joining us here uh as i said i've been real busy working on this other project and then of course the ukraine book so i really do feel very lucky that i got such a great group of guys to help pick up my slack and keep tabs on every other thing going on in the world over at

anti-war.com and the Institute. And that includes tons of great stuff that you've been writing lately about Israel, their relationship with the Palestinians, with Iran, with China, and of course the United States. So we're going to try to get into some of that today. Can we start with Tel Aviv to announce plans for thousands of new settlement units in the West Bank? Yeah. So this story came out earlier this week in Axios. And so Israel is inform the White House that they're going to be building at least 4,000 new housing units in existing settlements in the West Bank. And so they make a big point about how the Biden administration is concerned because this could undermine the prospects for a two-state solution,

but that's all just sort of boilerplate propaganda. Biden's policies on Israel have been just as extreme and deferential to Netanyahu and to the other prime ministers, you know, Lapid and Naftali Bennett, as Trump was or would have been. So, what we're seeing is an expansion of the settlements. I mean, you know, I think Netanyahu sees this as a political win, especially with the political turmoil resulting from the planned judicial overhaul and the corruption trial that he's facing. I think that's obviously why he's, you know, he bombed Gaza for several days last month

and killed 33 people. They've killed about, you know, the Israeli forces and the settlers have killed at least at this point, something like 119, 120 Palestinians in the West. Bank in East Jerusalem just this year. So here we have them, again, building more facts on the ground in the West Bank. Now, what they're being criticized for from the more hawkish parts of the country, that they're not going forward with this settlement that they were going to build in the West Bank's E1 area, which is located between Jerusalem and what's called the Malala adumim settlement. Apologies for any mispronunciation, but it's very high, it's, you know, it's a highly

sensitive area because if they put that settlement there, it cuts off virtually any remaining contiguity between the northern and southern parts of the West Bank and would erase any even faint possibility of a two-state solution where Palestinians get their own state. But obviously, I don't think that's going to happen anyway. They need equal rights. But we have, it's Bezarrell Smotrich, who's leading this charge, who's the leader of the religious Zionism party. And he says, We have big news for the settlements in the West Bank coming imminently, and he has these sweeping powers through a deal with the defense ministry where he's in charge of, you know, the building of settlements and demolishing Palestinian homes and other construction. Well, you know, I think a lot of us have been lamenting Robert Kennedy Jr.'s conflict with Roger Waters here and his repeated ridiculous statements about this issue, including on the Glenn Greenwald's show the other day, and I can't keep up with them all. But now I'm thinking silver linings, Connor, that this is really going to help to bring this issue to people's attention because, of course, TV news never explains the thing to get people to wonder, why are people complaining about Israel all the time? What's the big deal anyway? And because when you talk about Israelis and Palestinians, it sounds like you're already talking about citizens of two different countries. So people just don't understand that the Palestinians are completely conquered and occupied.

and ruled and have no civil rights or civil liberties under Israeli control whatsoever. And so I like the fact that at least the controversy should be enough to get new people interested in talking about this. Why do we continue to tolerate our government spending almost $4 billion a year subsidizing this essentially Jim Crow apartheid type government there? Yeah, I mean, especially the fact, I mean, I totally agree that this is a great opportunity for people to learn more and frankly for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to learn more. You know, his whole sort of Hasbara tour he's been doing is right on the heels of the IDF shooting a two-year-old boy, Mohamed Tamimi, in the West Bank in the village of Nabi Salah outside Ramallah. They just shot a two-year-old boy in the head. And he died in the hospital a few days

later. They shot his father in the chest. And he said, oh, we mistook them for Palestinians. fighters. This is not an irregular occurrence. This happens every day practically. It's spent this year the rate they're going. They kill a Palestinian every day. And, you know, it's just incredible. One of the headlines on anti-war.com right now is Israeli soldiers won't face prosecution for death of 80-year-old Palestinian American. Yeah. He was bound, gag left in a cold warehouse for hours, face down unresponsive and an autopsy revealed that he died of a heart attack. And this happened. And just, it's like Shereen Abuakley.

It's another American that these are a Rachel Corey and. Ferkandogan, who they killed on the Mabi Mamara. Yeah. And just the fact that, you know, it should be unacceptable for someone running as an anti-establishment candidate who's, you know, supposed to be representing the people, that they would side with the Israelis against the Palestinians, let alone against the American people here. Well, look, and Connor, on this particular case here, bound and gagged and left in a cold warehouse at night, this is how the CIA murdered Goul Rahman, notoriously,

in the salt pit torture dungeon in Afghanistan, in the worst days of the terror war. And this is how the IDF murdered an American. And nobody cares. Nobody's going to do anything about it. Yeah, we have lawmakers in the U.S. and the State Department. and urging them to open an investigation, the Israeli Army says, now we're not going to. It was a grave and unfortunate event resulting from a moral failure and poor decision-making on the part of the soldiers. Hey, guys, Scott here for Leo Hamill find jewelers out of San Diego at jewelry storeSD.com.

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That's Leo Hamill find jewelers out of San Diego. Go to JewelrystoreSD.com to check out their... fine selection, and to find out more. Hey, y'all, you should sign up for my substack. It's Scott Horton's show.substack.com, and if you do that, you'll get the interviews a day before everybody else, but not only that, they'll be free of commercials. How do you like that? Pretty good, huh?

Scotthortonshow.substack.com. Hey, y'all, libertosbella.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. Libertas Bella, from the same great folks who bring you ammo.com for all your ammunition needs too. That's Libertasbella.com. You mentioned Shereen Abu Akla there, Connor. Very briefly, tell us about that. Yeah, well, she was covering, she worked for Al Jazeera for decades, and I believe she used to be called the Voice of Palestine. She was an American,

Christian Palestinian woman who was a journalist. She was covering an Israeli raid in the West Bank occupied village of Janine. And they shot her in the head. I mean, she was wearing a press vest. It's all on video. And the first thing that they tried to do was they claim that she was killed by stray Palestinian gunfire. But it's been concluded now, but through multiple investigations, I believe, including by Bet Salem, that it was the Israelis that did. The Washington Post carried out their own investigation of this killing. And we've had calls from even American congressmen to have an investigation opened into this and that there needs to be some accountability. But there just isn't. I mean, this was shortly after this is when Biden last summer went to Israel

and said that, you know, he makes no apologies whatsoever for the American special relationship with Israel where we subsidized their apartheid army to the tune of nearly $4 billion a year and said that our, you know, our ties are bone deep, you know, ironclad. They love saying that. And so, you know, again, an American Christian woman that they shot in the head to make, you know, to make a point. A journalist. Yeah, journalist. And it's just this is, this is what the Israelis can get away with.

Everybody goes nuts about the Saudis and Jamal Khashoggi. But it's very interesting that the, you know, when it comes to Israel, it's like, you know, they're very, it's you do not hear about that they don't they don't play it up it's not shereen abuakle's life doesn't matter as far as uh the american mainstream media the corporate press and are you know so-called representatives all right so Barack Obama cut this deal with iran in 2015 and says they'll scale back their nuclear program scale back their enrichment in exchange for sanctions relief the JCPOA it was called the joint comprehensive plan of action and then at Netanyahu's behest, Donald Trump tore it up in the spring of 2018 and broke that deal.

Biden came in with Blinken and Sullivan and some of the very people who made the deal in the Obama government, and instead of getting right back in the deal, they didn't. They kept all of Trump's nuclear level sanctions, basically, and hoped that they would squeeze more concessions out of Iran. So tell me, Connor, how's that working out lately? Well, not well. I mean, Biden has expanded the maximum pressure campaign and doubled down. He declared last November, I believe, at a campaign rally for the midterms. Some woman asked him, you know, are you going to return to the JCPOI?

I'm very concerned that you're going to. And he said, no, no, no, the deal is dead. He goes, it's a long story. But, you know, I mean, honestly, what they've done is the Iranians have been building up their 60% enriched uranium for leverage. This was after the Israelis attacked and caused explosions and power outages at their Natanz nuclear facility when the indirect talks in Vienna were announced last April. And then since then, the Israelis carried out a pretty unprecedented assassination campaign, carried out several drone strikes throughout last year, and including some

early this year, in Iran. What's interesting is, now that the Chinese have brokered this normalization deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran, this unprecedented diplomatic feat, there is this new development that's coming in, where even though Netanyahu is threatening war with Iran constantly, he's training the Israeli military for a multi-front war fighting Hezbollah and Syria and Iran all at the same time. We have the head of Centcom participating in these exercises. They're called firm hand. They just concluded he's there participating in different panels and assessments.

But at the same time, there was a story last week that came out in the Middle East eye where sources are telling the outlet that actually Robert Malley, who's been just a horrible, very disappointing excuse for an envoy on Iran, this entire Biden administration, has apparently been holding direct talks on American soil with the Iran's UN ambassador about an interim deal. So they're not going to return to the JCPOA, but what they're the current, my understanding, understanding of the current deal that's being worked on. Both sides are denying it. But what we're seeing in Harrods and Middle East Island and other outlets is that what, and even Netanyahu

has talked about this recently with the Knesset, is that what they're, what's on the table is Iran will be able to export a million barrels of oil per day. And they will, they will recover about the regain access to about $20 billion in frozen assets in South Korea, Iraq, and the international monetary fund and they will also let's i mean there's also there's also going to be some prisoner swaps that's another possibility uh that we're seeing but on the question of the nuclear program here the compromise the americans are willing to agree to now is that the iranians will stop their enrichment at 60 percent 35 it was a great it was a great idea i mean they built up all this leverage they weren't using it for any other purpose other than that the uranium

hexfluor. They used the uranium tetrafluoride at 20% for the Tehran Medical Research Reactor. And that was, they only really started doing that in larger quantities after the Israeli assassination of Mosin Fakhrazade at the end of Trump's term. So now they still can't make a nuclear bomb out of 60% to be clear, but it's just easier for them to enrich that uranium to a higher grade later. So in other words, Scott, they pledged two years ago. They would never exceed over that. That's the pledged upper limit. They will not go beyond 60%. And they haven't. And they've had ample reasons to do so. All right. Well, and listen, they're still officially within the JCPOA.

They haven't left the deal entirely. I don't think they've just stopped abiding by some of its restrictions, but they have not renounced their pledge to not seat nuclear weapons. So we're still at the same place we were in, I don't know, 2009 or so once they, you know, proved that they could complete their fuel cycle. And, well, I guess it was earlier. that. Yeah, I mean, it's articles 26 and 36 of the deal that permit them to walk back their commitments if the other parties to the deal have done so. And obviously, the Americans and the Europeans have, and they're still for well over 50 years, they've been signatories of the non-polliparation treaty. And they just resolved some outstanding inquiries with the International Atomic Energy Agency. And that's one of the things that got Netanyahu really mad was because, you know,

this story that the Israelis said, well, there's these undeclared sites. And they went there. And years ago, the IAEA discovered these trace particles of unprocessed uranium. And so there was all this hype that, ah, this is evidence of a secret nuclear weapons program that used to have. Well, the Iranians have provided full documentation and allowed the inspectors to access these sites. And the Americans and the E3 and, of course, the Israelis were able to apply some pressure, sufficient pressure that the IEA just would refuse to accept Iran's explanations. But all of a sudden, and again, I think it has something to do with these talks between the Americans and the Iranians, that we're hearing about now, they actually agreed with Iran, basically, which everyone already

knew was that when there was a couple of trace particles of uranium enriched to about 83.7% or something like that, that that was just a result of cascade configuration and a byproduct of their current enrichment. You got to wrap this up, but. Yeah, okay. And the undeclared sites, they showed that it was just a former member state of the IEA that had operated a mine in that area back in the sixth. when the Shah controlled Iran.

And so, and the IEA has said that totally makes sense. We have no more questions about that. So there's two undeclared sites left that they have to resolve those two issues. But as ever, the crisis is that Iran proves the negative. Yeah. I'm sorry, we're all out of time. Thank you very much for your time. Everybody, that's Connor Freeman from anti-war.com and the Institute.

Hey, thanks, Scott. And that's it for anti-war radio for today. I'm your host, Scott Horton. I'm here every Thursday from 230 to three on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. See you next week.