The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss - Current Events: Noam Chomsky on Iran

Episode Date: May 23, 2021

Listen to our newest mini-series "Current Events with Noam Chomsky"! In this episode, Lawrence and Noam discuss a variety of issues around Iran, including nuclear weapons, sanctions, and diplomatic relations. **Recorded before violence erupted in Israel and Gaza mid-May 2021** Show your support and access exclusive bonus content at https://www.patreon.com/originspodcast Get full access to Critical Mass at lawrencekrauss.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to the Origins Podcast and the Origins Project Foundation. I'm your host here, Lawrence Krause. And I want to introduce what may be a new continuing series, which is really goes back to one of our first guests and one of our most popular podcast with none other than Noam Chomsky. I asked Noam if we could periodically update our discussion by talking about current events. So here you go, current events with Noam Chomsky. Iran. We've seen

a principle, a new administration, in principle having a very different attitude in practice, not yet necessarily the case, but what do we do? There's as we try and normalize what is clearly an abnormal situation in almost every way when it comes to nuclear weapons, when it comes to sanctions, when it comes to diplomatic relations.

What do we do? No. for the time being the Biden administration has simply taken up Trump's position on Iran's rhetoric is slightly different but if you look at the actual policy it's there's very little daylight between them yeah the facts are it's uncontroversial that the United States pulled out of the agreement, actually in violation of security counsel orders, if anybody cares about such trivialities, and imposed very harsh sanctions on Iran with zero justification, and then says we'll only return to negotiations if Iran initiates. and agrees in advance that we're not going back to the joint agreement, the JCPOA,

but only to a much harsher agreement. That's basically the facts. Biden's continued with them, no change. A little different rhetoric. Yeah, the rhetoric is different. The rhetoric is different. The claimed desire to enter into a nuclear agreement is there, but I don't see the,

carrot for Iran at all. Trump was, Trump was also willing to enter into a nuclear agreement as long as there was a much harsher one. Yeah, much harsher one. And Biden, I said the same. I didn't realize that Biden, I thought they were willing to go back to something close to the, I thought the sticking point was, was that Iran first has to stop doing what they've done in the last year or two. That's part of it. And Iran says, we'll enter an agreement if we don't have to. You look beyond, but we're not going to go back to that agreement. It has to be one which deals with what they call Iran's terrorist activities, its missile programs, and many other things, which had nothing to do with the JCPOA. So it's essentially, let's go back to the harsher agreement, to Trump's willingness to accept a much harsher agreement.

Actually, the discussion of all of this is quite interesting because there is a very, I mean, when Trump says the agreement should be renegotiated, I quite agree. There's a much better agreement. Let's impose an institute a nuclear weapons free zone in the region. That it solved the whole problem with intensive inspections. We know they work. They work during the JCPOA. U.S. intelligence agrees. Atomic energy, everyone agrees.

So what's the problem? Iran strongly in favor of it. Arab states have been in favor of it for 25 years. The entire global south is strongly in favor of it. Europe doesn't raise any objections. Every time it comes up, the United States vetoes it. Obama was the last one. everybody knows the reason, but nobody's allowed to say it.

You're not allowed to inspect Israel's huge nuclear system. In fact, as you know, the United States doesn't even recognize its existence. Yeah. Says we don't know. Of course they know. As soon as you recognize it as existence, U.S. law comes into play. Simington Amendment, others which read literally

and would lawyers can argue but they at least indicate strongly that US aid Israel is illegal under US law not international law On US law

because of Israel's nuclear weapons program and nobody wants to open that door so therefore we have to face potential war with Iran to ensure that there's no inhibition on the huge flow of aid to Israel. If the American people knew about this, they would not be happy about it,

including people who don't like aid for all the wrong reasons across the spectrum. A bunch of Jews, yeah, getting us into a war. Yeah, no, exactly. It would play into a lot of, a lot of, yeah, for different reasons, people would be very upset. Now, I was intrigued in this sense in this regard about why maybe this plays into it, but maybe in the context of what you just said, it's natural. It seemed illogical for me to Israel, for Israel to launch that preemptive attack on, on, on Iran's nuclear weapons or nuclear facilities, because it effectively sort of sabotaged for the time being anyway, any, any ability of, or the hope that this, that there could be

did black discussions towards a nuclear weapons treaty that was the point it was very successful i mean didn't really succeed they hoped they could derail the agreement they hope that iran's reaction would be strong enough so that it would eliminate it would break down the negotiations iran was backed off they were just had a kind of symbolic reaction but but but breaking down the would be, are you arguing, are you suggesting that Israel wants them to break down so that the United States will enter a war with Iran? They don't want to go to war, but they don't want negotiations that would eliminate, you know, that would not be harsh enough. The JCPOA would have ended for a long period, as long as matters, any concern if there is. any about nuclear Iranian nuclear weapons. But ask yourself a prior question. Why is anyone concerned

about Iranian nuclear weapons? I mean, they'd never use a nuclear weapon, if they had one. The country would be vaporized in five minutes. Okay. I could say that about any country, North Korea as well, of course. No, but not really. In this case, they have no defense. They even armed a nuclear weapon up, but on a missile, they probably wiped down. So nobody expects them to use, in fact, including U.S. intelligence. When U.S. intelligence describes the Congress the threat of Iran, what they say is, if they're developing nuclear weapons, which we don't know, it would be part of their deterrent strategy. who doesn't want a deterrent strategy

countries that want to rampage freely in the region there are two of them United States and Israel that's the threat of Iran okay it is true that in fact indeed historically it looks like precisely that case that

I mean that's what bothers me about this whole approach in general is that it's very very logical for countries to want to have a new to develop nuclear weapons because history suggests to us that countries that have nuclear weapons are not invaded and countries that don't have nuclear weapons are invaded and well you see that aside we don't have any indication that Iran's trying to develop nuclear weapons very likely they're trying to develop nuclear capability means you're close to it if you

have to you can turn a screw I mean half the countries in the world have that If you have nuclear energy these days, you're not that far from nuclear weapons. So probably they want to have the option of developing nuclear weapons. If the situation arises, and they would be a deterrent to countries that are attacking them all the time. The U.S. is at war with Iran. The U.S. cyber attack against Iran is what the Pentagon calls in its official documents, war that justifies a military response. So, yeah, we're openly at war with Iran.

We're proud of it. We boast about it. Obama was very proud of it. Israel, of course, is proud of carrying out assassinating Iranian nuclear engineers, destroying facilities and killing people anywhere they want. It's not a secret, you know. And there's no indication that Iran is going beyond an effort, probably to develop nuclear capacity,

but the U.S. and Israel don't want that because they don't want deterrence. They want subordination. And this is not just the Middle East. This is U.S. policy. policy everywhere. I mean, why are we, why have we been viciously attacking Cuba for 60 years? Do we think Cuba's going to invade us? In fact, we know the reason it's official.

You read the documents from the early 60s. State Department says, Castro, the threat of Castro is that he's carrying out successful defiance of U.S. policies going back to the Monroe Doctrine. No good Mafia Don could tolerate that. Well, okay, but let me ask you, it seems to me that Iran, you know, we don't know if they're trying to develop nuclear weapons,

or if they're developing them, but it seems to me that it's in there, that when I look from my vantage point, that they were accelerating efforts to achieve nuclear capability, that it's in their interest to do that precisely to encourage the United States to have some, to enter into some diplomatic treaty that may reduce sanctions.

But is that not the case? There are two versions of what happens. There's the official version and there's a version given by a serious scholarship like Trita Parsi is one of the most distinguished scholars on contemporary Iran has written about it. He argues that the Obama administration finally agreed to negotiations, because they saw that Iran was very quickly developing more advanced centrifuges, getting close

to nuclear weapons. They figure we better try to negotiate now, agreed to negotiate. That's Percy's version. I think it's quite plausible. Then there's 100% of commentary here. Obama's courage and integrity compelled the Iranians to capitulate and agree to negotiations. So as usual, you take your choice. Yeah, no, the former is certainly the case. And I think I've talked to, well, a former colleague of yours and a former, I guess, rest of mine, I mean, Ernie Monies, who was at MIT, who was involved in the negotiations themselves. It was clear that they were acting in a rational way that in order to head off and produce a remarkable diplomatic response, which also would also have, did something

humanitarian, which would also relieve sanctions and allow the Iranian people to not be, to not suffer so much, which is something else we don't talk about so much. That's right. And when the sanctions are murders, and of course, they're, you know, they're made particularly savage by the Trump administration, but kind of that's their hallmark. Let's kick everybody in the face when we can. And it's right in the middle of pandemic. So it's preventing Iran from getting vaccines, from dealing with the pandemic. The idea is to make the population suffer as much as possible. I mean, I don't know. enough to tell you sanctions regimes hit the population. Not the leadership. Yeah, sure. Yeah. And the idea is to foment rebellion from within by making it so miserable that you can,

that they hopefully will, that's the, that's the planet anyway. But now, now given that, given that, I think we should, it's interesting to look at the historical record. So take the case of Nicaragua, very well documented. The first Bush administration, very open, and explicitly informed the Nicaraguan people when the election was coming up in 1990, that either you vote for our candidate or will make life miserable for you, will continue the terrorist war, will continue sanctions, you won't be able to survive. Okay, they voted the way the United States wanted. take a look at the press afterwards.

The United States, New York Times, my favorite, headlines, victory for U.S. fair play. You know, I mean, that's the country we're in. You smash somebody in the face. They capitulate. You talk about how wonderful we are. Look at our victory for fair play. Yeah, we're seeing that everywhere and internally as well as people are censored.

That's the idea in Iran. If they capitulate, it'll be a demonstration of our nobility and our commitment to fair play and justice and the highest ideals.