What is your reaction regarding these talks and the point that it has reached?
Porter: Well, I think what this present point in the talks represents, is a very interesting throwback, in some ways, to the negotiating strategy that Iran used in the 2003 to 2005 period, which was to bargain, in order to get recognition of its right to enrich as the primary principle involved in return for a temporary suspension of some enrichment activities or all enrichment activities at different times during that period and what I see from the United States side here, is an attempt to spin what the Iranians have proposed.
This is clearly an Iranian framework for an agreement, there has been no ambiguity about that from the beginning of this process and I think that the United States is now spinning this as a freeze of ... , presenting it as a matter of, sort of, preventing Iran from moving forward with its nuclear program and some of the details are being fussed over or are being played down by the United States, I think, primarily the fact that this, as I understand the Iranian proposal, this will allow the Iranians to continue to enrich uranium, but that any enriched uranium will have to be immediately put into a stream that results in its being transformed into fuel rods and thus being unavailable for any higher-level enrichment and I think that that is, again, a throwback from 2002, 2003, 2005 when the Iranians made a similar proposal to the European three foreign ministers, UK, Germany and France, and at that point of course the Europeans were not interested because the United States refused to do it.
But I think what we are seeing here is a very interesting replay, in some ways, of what the Iranians were proposing ten years ago and I think the United States is now interested in this for their own reasons.
moghavemat: We talked about this rejection Gareth Porter and I quite distinctly remember what happened. It was roughly in 2004, especially when George Bush Junior came out and cited Iran as being part of the Axis of Evil; it really was a slap in the face to Iran.
What is there to say that the US want do that if an agreement is reached, which some are saying that it may, going on down the road; why should Iran continue trusting the US? They have said that these sanctions are reversible!
Porter: Just to clarify, I mean what happened in March 2005, was when the Iranians proposed this very interesting concept of, basically, guaranteeing that any enriched Uranium would immediately be transformed into fuel rods and that is when the Europeans were uninterested.
I think that the situation is fundamentally different politically in the United States in the following sense that the Bush administration was really not interested in diplomacy at all. I mean that was simply antithetical to their idea of what they wanted to do on Iran. I mean they were essentially aiming at regime change and they did not want any agreements that would interfere with the policy of keeping the path to regime change open.
So, this obviously, I think, is quite different now in terms of US policy. Regime change no longer appears to be a realistic objective and I think that the Obama administration certainly recognizes that.
So, they are, in fact, motivated to try to get an agreement of some kind if they do not have to give up too much.
At the same time, I must say that I do believe that there will be a problem when we come down to the next phase of the talks when the United States wants to use its leverage in the form of the very strong, very biting sanctions on the Iranian oil export sector to try to get far more of a sort of concessions or anything the Iranians will be interested in giving up, or alternatively the United States will try to get an agreement that will simply not give up entirely the sanctions.
So, I think that is where the bite is going to be. It is really
still the sanctions problem that prevent, if there is something that
prevents agreement, that is going to be that.
moghavemat: Do you agree with that (Stewart Stogel’s comments) Gareth Porter?
Porter: Well, yes I think that that is correct that the main reason that the Obama administration is trying to get some kind of an agreement, is the pressure that the Iranian nuclear program’s progress has placed on the US policy and the US diplomacy.
And I must say that this is a very, very long time strategy that Iran has been using and it goes back to the early [President] Khatami regime when they were first talking about enriching Uranium, when they first had the promise of that capability they viewed that, in large part, as a way of leveraging US diplomacy to get the United States to agree to remove sanctions.
Remember that at that point in 1990’s, the Khatami regime was under the umbrella of former President Rafsanjani, who was, of course, identified with that faction in Iranian politics which wanted to reach accommodation with the West in general and with the United States in particular for economic reasons, primarily because the aim was to integrate Iran’s economy into the global economy.
This was not a popular view outside that circle of leaders in Iran; it is still very controversial in Iran, but that was the idea to a great extent that motivated Iran to push its enrichment program forward and to, basically accumulate negotiation chips. This is something that has been sadly not understood in the West and particularly the United States for many years but this has been an essential aspect of the Iranian nuclear negotiating position and indeed of their nuclear program.
moghavemat: Gareth Porter, we are looking at many who are concluding and have concluded for quite some time that this, really is about politics, it is not so much the nuclear issue, diplomacy, the Wall Street Journal saying diplomacy with Iran looks promising, but the politics remain tricky.
What could be the other reasons that this nuclear program with Iran is something that is not at the heart, but rather on the side and there are other external issues involved.
Are the regional countries perhaps that could be discussed during these meetings? We could talk about Afghanistan or Syria perhaps, maybe you can give us a clear idea here.
Porter:
Porter: Well, yes I think that that is correct that the main reason that the Obama administration is trying to get some kind of an agreement, is the pressure that the Iranian nuclear program’s progress has placed on the US policy and the US diplomacy.
And I must say that this is a very, very long time strategy that Iran has been using and it goes back to the early [President] Khatami regime when they were first talking about enriching Uranium, when they first had the promise of that capability they viewed that, in large part, as a way of leveraging US diplomacy to get the United States to agree to remove sanctions.
Remember that at that point in 1990’s, the Khatami regime was under the umbrella of former President Rafsanjani, who was, of course, identified with that faction in Iranian politics which wanted to reach accommodation with the West in general and with the United States in particular for economic reasons, primarily because the aim was to integrate Iran’s economy into the global economy.
This was not a popular view outside that circle of leaders in Iran; it is still very controversial in Iran, but that was the idea to a great extent that motivated Iran to push its enrichment program forward and to, basically accumulate negotiation chips. This is something that has been sadly not understood in the West and particularly the United States for many years but this has been an essential aspect of the Iranian nuclear negotiating position and indeed of their nuclear program.
moghavemat: Gareth Porter, we are looking at many who are concluding and have concluded for quite some time that this, really is about politics, it is not so much the nuclear issue, diplomacy, the Wall Street Journal saying diplomacy with Iran looks promising, but the politics remain tricky.
What could be the other reasons that this nuclear program with Iran is something that is not at the heart, but rather on the side and there are other external issues involved.
Are the regional countries perhaps that could be discussed during these meetings? We could talk about Afghanistan or Syria perhaps, maybe you can give us a clear idea here.
Porter:
Well, I think that that other country is quite clearly Israel, that has been a political factor in US-Iran policy really for the last 20 years. Ever since the early to mid-1990’s, the United States has been adjusting its Iran policy to, basically coincide more or less with that of Israel. There has been a very conscious effort to align that policy with the Israeli policy both under Labor and Likud governments and that factor is still in play, there is no doubt about that.
I think that it is not necessarily strong enough to prevent an agreement, but it is definitely strong enough to cause problems with the United States’ position when it comes to the sanctions.
Remember that the sanctions are a product of not just the administration, the executive branch of the United States, but primarily of the Congress and the Congress has been, as I have often talked about in the past, Congress has been influenced extremely, heavily by the pro-Israeli lobby’s money that goes into the campaigns of members of the Senate and the House.
So, that is definitely a political factor that hovers over these talks, that has hovered over the US policy for many years, but I would also say that there has been a bureaucratic interest factor for many years, which is that there is a very powerful interest on the part of both the CIA and the military, the Pentagon, in having Iran as an adversary and pointing to what they regard as ... , what they have treated as the nuclear threat, the threat of the Iranian nuclear weapon because it justifies a lot of programs both in the intelligence community and in the Pentagon.
So, that is by no means a small factor in the history of this policy which by the way I have been documenting for a book that is about to be published early next year.
moghavemat: Very well, what is the name of the book?
Porter: It is going to be called: Manufactured Crisis; the untold story of the Iranian nuclear scare.
moghavemat: Gareth Porter, why did you choose that title for your book?
Porter: Well, the title reflects the process that I found in my research going back to, particularly, the 2002, 2003, period and then bringing the analysis forward to the present.
What I found was a very conscious effort by the Bush administration and Israel to create this narrative, if you will, of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons program and that narrative included, of course, at one point from 2004 on, the idea that there was a cache of documents, intelligence documents ... , from a laptop computer in Iran. The computer supposedly belonged to somebody who had been part of this secret program and then was secretly out of the country and brought to a consulate or embassy in Turkey and then fell into the hands of the US government.
What I was able to ascertain fairly early on, was that these documents were really a fabrication by Israel.
If you look carefully, you can see a series of indicators that the material in the documents actually conflicts with the documented facts, dates and so forth.
So, that became the centerpiece of what I called the manufactured crisis. The idea that Iran was secretly working on nuclear weapons and it was continuing to do so, hiding this from Western intelligence. That has been playing out for several years now with the Israelis continuing to plan documents and getting their allies particularly in Europe, the French and the Germans and the UK to carry water for them to make the case that the United States’ intelligence community was wrong in its 2007 estimate, saying that Iran was no longer working on nuclear weapons.
So, that is part of the politics that I think form the process that we have seen over the last few years.
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