Author
Alex Smith
Should America bomb Iran? How about using nuclear weapons? Ex-weapons inspector Scott Ritter, and Seymour Hersh, argue this could still happen, despite election of the Democrats.
In the spring of 2006, the celebrated journalist Seymour Hersh warned the United States was considering using nuclear weapons to wipe out suspected Iranian nuclear processing sites. Now, the tide appears to have turned against the Neo-Con warmongers. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has resigned over failures and scandals in Iraq. The Democrats have regained control of both the House and the Senate.
Yet Hersh is back in the late November issue of the New Yorker magazine, saying an attack on Iran is still possible, perhaps inevitable. Many of the Democrats supported military action against Iran, including Hilary Clinton. Some of the new Democrats are actually hard-liners, despite obvious public distaste for further military adventures.
There is a flurry of diplomatic activity to bring Syria and other former enemies together into a new coalition. Suddenly, Dick Cheney rushed off to see the leaders of Saudi Arabia, the land the provided 19 of the 911 hijackers, and financing for Al-Queda.
Why? Because the Middle East is spinning out of control toward a new axis of power. The Shiite faction of Islam, centered in Iran, seems likely to take over the irate state of Lebanon, following Israel's unilateral war against them. The Shia are already dominant in Iraq, in both the government, military, and para-military. There are restive Shia faction in the oil fields of Saudi Arabia itself.
To defend it's vital oil interests against their own blunders, we may see a new alliance of everyone who hate and fear the Shiites: the United States, Israel, and the embattled Sunnis, welded into a coalition held together only by their common enemy. We may be poised in the last chaos before a war against Iran.
And waiting in the background are two giants: Russia, the largest provider of Iranian arms, and China, the world's fastest growing economy completely dependent on recent hundred billion dollar oil deals with Teheran.
Unbelievably, the public trigger for this attack will be weapons of mass destruction - even though all parties are agreed Iran does not possess them. Nuclear weapons may be used to blow up hardened underground facilities, or to bail out an invasion army that gets bogged down and surrounded, as the troops in Iraq are already.
We've just heard the voices of Scott Ritter, the former weapons inspector who warned us claims of Iraqi weapons were bogus, of President Bush, and from Seymour Hersh. Radio Ecoshock has compiled a series of explanations from Ritter and Hersh, taken from a much longer debate on October 16th, 2006. It was presented by the New York Society for Ethical Culture, and recorded by the New York Sound Posse. You can download the whole debate, 87 minutes long, at www.nysec.org. I'll repeat that web address at the end of the broadcast.
For an introduction to this Middle East mess, please download our earlier broadcast titled: "Four Plots to Nuke Iran" from www.ecoshock.org. Choose Ecoshock Features from the On Demand menu. The whole history of nuclear disarmament, and the future of human cities, may hang reactions to fast-moving developments in the Middle East and Washington. Tune in and be watchful.
Here we go.
In an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times on November 19th, Joshua Muravchik of the American Enterprise Institute is simply titled: "Bomb Iran. Diplomacy is doing nothing to stop the Iranian nuclear threat; a show of force is the only answer." George Bush is calling Iran's President Ahmadinejad a "Hitler" who must be stopped at all costs. He is reported to have told French President Jacques Chirac that, "I do not discount the possibility that Israel will attack Iran, and if it does this-I will understand it."
Senior American officials are now saying Israel will not bomb Iranian nuclear facilities because the number of sites is just too large. The job must fall to America. In Israel itself, strong voices are calling for a nuclear strike as soon as possible. An Arutz Sheva article by Shmuel Ben-Yehoshua, dated November 26th, says the neutron bomb should be used on Iran, to reduce the radioactive fallout that may blow back on Israel. He says "Iran has to be hit hard enough to take the world's breath away."
The principle speaker in our debate today is Scott Ritter, the United Nations Weapons Inspector so outspoken about Iraq's lack of nuclear weapons before the American invasion. He's the author of "Target Iran: The Truth About the White House's Plans for Regime Change." published by Nation Books. He is questioned by Seymour Hersh, the New Yorker magazine columnist and author, who has just published a long article titled "THE NEXT ACT - Is a damaged Administration less likely to attack Iran, or more?" In the New Yorker, November 27th, 2006.
Ritter begins by saying he is sympathetic to the worry all Jews living in Israel must feel these days.
[i-clip 1]
"I will say this. If I were Israeli, I would be doing exactly what they're doing. Alright, they have a legitimate concern here. It's a small country, and if a nuclear device goes off inside that small little country, Israel ceases to exist, as a viable nation state. They can't afford any room for error. There is no margin of error here.
That's why Israel has taken the position, that not only will they not tolerate an Iranian nuclear weapons program. They will not tolerate nuclear technology that is usable in a nuclear weapons program and, in this case, uranium enrichment technology that Iran is permitted to have under Article Four of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Israel says 'No, if Iran can enrich to levels that are usable in a nuclear reactor, that same technology can be used to enrich to levels that are usable in a nuclear device. Therefore the Israeli position is 'not one spinning rotor,' meaning not one centrifuge allowed to operate inside Iran. That's a zero tolerance policy."
[i-clip]
"The standing ovation that [Israeli Prime Minister] Olmert gets. Why would he get this standing ovation? Because the United States of America has been pre-conditioned since 1979, to accept at face value anything negative said about the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Now there's a lot of negative things that can be said about the Islamic Republic of Iran, but unfortunately, by allowing ourselves to create this filter, that says we don't recognize anything positive, only the negative, we create the conditions where we don't question negative data. And therefore, when people say Iran is a threat, we agree. And this has been going on since 1979, so the American public, and indeed the American Congress, is pre-conditioned for war, for confrontation with Iran.
That's why we can have a policy that transitions from dual containment under the Clinton administration, to regime change under the Bush administration without any significant debate taking place whatsoever. And because this condition exists, there will be war with Iran. Unless a little miracle occurs with the Democrats winning Congress, with enough friction to stop the war in the November elections. But even if that occurs, as you pointed out, there is no separation between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party on the issue of Iran.
Everybody sits there and says 'Wait a minute, we're losing the war in Iraq. And there's sixty five percent of the population that's turned against this war, certainly we're not going to go to war with Iran.' Again, I mean to correct the American public here.
Sixty five percent of the American public aren't anti-war. They're just anti-losing. You see, if we were winning the war in Iraq, they'd all be for it. If we had brought democracy, they'd be cheering the President, and it wouldn't matter that we violated international law, it wouldn't matter that we lied about weapons of mass destruction. We'd be winning. God Bless America, ain't we good, USA! USA!
But we're losing. So they're against Iraq. But what happens when you get your butt kicked in one game? You're looking for the next game where you can win. And right now we're looking for Iran for a victory. We're going to go to war with Iran. When? Not in October."
Ritter says that's because there is more work needed to set up allies and bases in the region prior to the attack. More importantly, both Ritter and Hersh agree that Presidents Bush and Cheney do not need the Democratic Congress to make an attack on Iran. They already have the power to act unilaterally.
[i clip marker 4:31]
Ritter:
"I mean everybody is aware that after 911, Congress pretty much gave the Bush administration a blank check to wage war any way they saw fit, so long as it dealt with the global war on terror."
Hersh:
"To be specific, the October 2002 Resolution was not just limited to Iraq..."
Ritter: "It's a global war on terror."
Hersh: "That's right. It gave him a blank check. It's literally correct."
Ritter: "He has to be smart about this. He can wage war, but he needs to ensure that Congress continues to fund the war. So that's why he will go to Congress. He will make the case for Iran, but as I've said, Congress is already pre-programmed to nod their head 'Yes'. And stamp anything he signs."
[i clip 5;14]
Ritter: "The one little glimmer of hope that's out there, because if we can get a Democratic controlled Congress, that is not afraid to exercise it's oversight responsibility, and holds hearings where it brings in military professionals, and liberates them to speak critically of bad policy, which is the duty and responsibility of every general officer. It's a gross dereliction of duty taking place today, in the United States, where our general officers remain mute while they are on active duty. Suddenly, when they retire they get great courage, they can speak out, but you know what, it's too late, too many of your men have died."
Hersh wondered if even when the American population offers no hope of forcing a change of policy, perhaps the Israeli population will demand peaceful means. But he sees no sign yet of a move from the far Right toward the center.
[i clip 00:51:48]
[Question from the floor:] "If the Democrats were to take either the House or the Senate, would they be effective in derailing this freight train?"
Ritter replies:
"We're not getting rid of the Democrats we need to get rid of. I mean, if Hilary Clinton is re-elected, and she will be, she's someone who is in favor of forceful confrontation with Iran. So how is empowering the Democratic Party going to change the policy? The key Democrats, like I said, there is no separation between the key Democrats and the key Republicans on the issue of Iran."
As a former weapons inspector in the International Energy program, Ritter believes inspection programs do work. No one is going to be able to create a secret nuclear weapon while inspectors are active within a country.
[clip 52:49]
"Is verification possible? Absolutely. The Inspection regime that the IAEA is capable of putting together is one the finest the world has ever seen. They've already proven their capability, and their mettle, in confronting Iran. They uncovered a sequence of lies and inconsistencies, and at the end of the day, the science won out. That's why we know as much as we do. So let's give these guys their chance.
Guess what happens during inspections? Nobody dies. That's a good thing. I like inspections, 'cause nobody dies."
The geo-political implications of an attack on Iran are frightening. Seymour Hersh worries that a war against Iran may also necessitate a war against Venezuela as well. Meanwhile, the whole economy could be wrecked when oil from these major producers is suddenly cut off.
Hersh:
[clip 55:28]
"Don't forget Caracas, too, because... just to talk about how dangerous the world is - if we do hit Iran, there's no question that Chavez will pull his oil off the market. And there's a real big question, just to stick another blow, and he sells a couple of million barrlels a day to American companies, under America contracts - it's not clear how we (the Bush Administration) would respond to Caracas doing that.
And so that could be a real mess. You know, we could be looking at another serious, serious overlooked program. We're not going to tolerate him not fulfilling contracts. The odds are high - you mentioned two and a half million barrels off the market - he'll take another two million off, in support."
A question from the floor:
[clip 57:19]
"Do you think that Arabs are so anti-Persian that they won't mind the U.S. attacking Iran, to avoid Iranian hegemony."
Hersh:
"Well you keep on hearing from people in the administration, that, Oh my God, don't worry about it. Secretly and privately the Saudis, and the Egyptians, and the Jordanians are saying 'Bring it on' - as they did in '91. They urged us to go in '91, the first Gulf War One, so you hear repeatedly that inside the Administration they're getting all sorts of positive signs that the Sunni leaders of those countries want to see the Shiite regime in Iran, as you say, the Persian, the non-Arabs, they want to see them diminished."
[clip 1:00:23]
Ritter agrees:
"This is a ray of hope, the silver lining in the cloud, what a Revolutionary Guard guy said. Why don't you Americans realize that we hate Arabs more than we hate the Israeli's. And that we'd rather work with Israel to contain Arab power, than to work with the Arabs to contain Israeli power."
Hersh adds: "It's a long history of that."
Ritter: "Yeah I know. But we don't recognize that. Because of our ignorance, we go 'because they're all Muslim, they're all the same.' They're not all the same."
[clip 1:05:32]
[From the floor]
"How close are we, in your judgment, to using atomic weapons?"
Ritter:
"I'll say this about nuclear weapons. You know I'm not sitting on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I'm not in on the planning. I'll take it at face value that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff successfully eliminated nuclear weapons in the first phase of the operation.
But keep in mind this. That the Bush Administration has built a new generation of nuclear weapons that we call 'usable nukes.' And they have a nuclear posture now, which permits the pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons in a non-nuclear environment, if the Commander in Chief deems U.S. forces to be in significant risk.
If we start bombing Iran, I'm telling you right now, it's not going to work. We're not going to achieve decapitation, regime change, all that. What will happen is the Iranians will responds, and we will feel the pain instantaneously, which will prompt the Bush administration to phase two, which will have to be boots on the ground. And we will put boots on the ground, we will surge a couple of divisions in, probably through Azerbaijan, down the Caspian Sea coast, in an effort to push the regime over. And when they don't push over, we now have 40,000 troops trapped. We have now reached the definition of significant numbers of U.S. troops in harm's way, and there is no reserve to pull them out! There's no more cavalry to come riding to the rescue. And at that point in time, my concern is that we will use nuclear weapons to break the backbone of Iranian resistance, and it may not work.
But what it will do is this: it will unleash the nuclear genie. And so for all those Americans out there tonight who say, 'You know what - taking on Iran is a good thing.' I just told you if we take on Iran, we're gonna use nuclear weapons. And if we use nuclear weapons, the genie ain't going back in the bottle, until an American city is taken out by an Islamic weapon in retaliation. So, tell me, you want to go to war with Iran. Pick your city. Pick your city. Tell me which one you want gone. Seattle? L.A.? Boston? New York? Miami. Pick one. Cause at least one's going.
And that's something we should all think about before we march down this path of insanity that George Bush has us headed on.
[Applause]
And where is China in all this bluster and blunder from the West? America and Israel no longer live in a vacuum of their own design.
[clip 00:11:43]
Scott Ritter:
"We'll let's never forget that China has one of the world's largest developing economies, and they've basically taken a twenty five year economic plan, and married it, welded it, to Iran. By basically signing up to 250 billion dollars worth of energy trades over the next 25 years. So China is a big player. They have a vested interest in keeping Iran functioning, and keeping Iran viable."
[clip 00:12:11]
Considering the many criticisms by top military men, both retired and active, will the American military follow orders, even to dropping nuclear weapons on Iran? Seymour Hersh, who has interviewed so many of them, including the malcontents, says:
"The military will do what the President asks. There's just no question about it. There's just no chance whatsoever ...."
[clip 00:12:19]
[Question from the floor]
"If a U.S. bombing raid were to strike Iranian nuclear facilities, you have already pointed out that this would trigger an exchange, and you've already suggested that in your mind, we are going forward, willy-nilly, but if you could separate from those two observations, could you comment on what the prospective environmental consequences would be of such a strike."
Ritter:
"The Iranian nuclear program is in such infancy that there's not going to be any environmental impact. I mean what are we going to scatter around? Concrete? Some steel? I mean, you know, when they enrich the uranium, they're enriching right now, it's in proto, it's in laboratory scale, bench scale amounts. This isn't a massive effort that's producing massive amounts of enriched material. This is research and development. And so, no, there's not going to be any environmental impact derived from that.
That's the lunacy of this all. We're talking about war - over nothing! There's nothing there to bomb. There's some concrete, there's some steel, there's a couple of centrifuges, there's some spare parts. There's people. Imagine that. When do we stop bombing - when we've killed all the people who know how to do this? Do we target every blueprint? Do we target every computer? What are we targeting? Cause there is no program to target. Nothing.
We'll drop bombs on a few facilities, we'll collapse the buildings, we'll scatter the material. Most of that material will have been moved to another location anyways, and there won't be an environmental impact.
And again, some people will say that's good news. No, Ladies and Gentlemen, that's the bad news. Because it means there's no reason for us to be talking about going to war in the first place."
Seymour Hersh interjects:
"Yeah, but Scott, Curtis LeMay in February of '45, I think that's when, he complained bitterly. He'd been city bombing in Japan. Remember the firebombing in Tokyo, etc., and he complained in February of '45 that he'd been bombing and bombing, and there was nothing left to bomb. And they still fought.
And the other point is that once we do the bombing, we're going to be into it. That we're going to have a country that is absolutely, rigorously, not only wanting revenge, but rigorously fighting us all. And fighting in a lot of places, including back home."
Scott Ritter:
"That'll be the environmental impact. The oil spilling out into the Gulf. The oil spilling out into the ground, and the pollution brought on by the bombing, but I thought that question was about nuclear fall out, there's nothing nuclear to fall out in Iran."
And that's how this dialogue, presented by on October 16th, 2006, by the New York Society for Ethical Culture. Find them at www.nysec.org.
The recording was done by New York Sound Posse at nysoundposse.com, and summarized by Radio Ecoshock. That's the net's only all environment radio station at www.ecoshock.org. The text version of this podcast can be found in our news blog at www.ecoshock.org/podcast.
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