Well, now it seems we’re pimping Iran as the next great danger to the world. Let’s not forget that prior to GWBush Iran was actually moving towards a more open and moderate society and government. However, with the advent of the hyperventilating hate rhetoric emanating from the bush administration the hardliners in Iran have managed to again successfully paint the US as the Great Satan and ramp up Iranian nationalism. It may not be quite the same level as existed under Khomeinei but bush’s words and actions concerning the Iranians since 9/11 have pretty effectively undercut any move towards moderation.

Add to that the crisis of leadership in Israel following Ariel Sharon’s stroke and the issues become even more complicated.

Dori Smith, of Talk Nation Radio, recorded the following interview January 11, 2006.

Talk Nation Radio Political Analysis: U.S. or Israeli Military Strikes against Iran: Diplomacy Versus Insanity

Analysis by: Conn Hallinan, John Isaacs, President of Council for a Livable World, Christopher Hellman, Leonor Tomero.

–Could U.S. be gearing up for a strike against Iran? What about Israel? What difference if any will Sharon’s absence make?

Foreign Policy Analyst Conn Hallinan discusses the impact of Sharon’s illness on Israelis and Palestinians and considers the possibility of U.S. military strikes against Iran. We then hear further analysis of the possibility of a U.S. or Israeli attack on Iran from John Isaacs and Leonor Tomero of the Council for a Livable World and Christopher Hellman of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.

Welcome to Talk Nation Radio, a half hour discussion on politics, human rights and the environment. I’m Dori Smith. Our topics today are Israel without Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the implications of Iran opening the seals on some nuclear power research plants. A January 11, 2006 story by Parisa Hafezi, (see: “World warns Iran of sanctions in nuclear crisis.) reporting initially for Reuters covers some of the initial reactions world wide and in Iran. Hafezi reports that England’s Jack Straw has already used the word, “sanctions”. You can find the Hafezi story on Iran in The Herald a Scottish paper.

We will hear from Conn Hallinan of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and then Christopher Hellman, Leonora Tomero, and John Isaacs will join us to comment about developments in Iran.

I asked Conn Hallinan to talk about political developments in Israel and other parts of the Middle East in the wake of Ariel Sharon’s illness and news that he will be leaving office.

Conn Hallinan: It’s very unclear at this point. Most of the things we’ve read in the newspaper is that this is a sort of blow to the peace process and this is going to set things back. I don’t think that Sharon was ever interested in the peace process. I think that the withdrawal from Gaza was a tactical maneuver that was aimed at essentially getting rid of Gaza which was impossible for the Israeli Government to continue to occupy and to then unilaterally redefine what happened on the West Bank and that meant keep the major settlements, keep all of Jerusalem, put the wall up, and keep the Jordan Valley. I mean that’s what he was doing. So I fail to see that Sharon was interested in peace in any case, and that’s certainly never been his track record, and he’s always been extremely consistent on what it is that he wanted.

What this means on the Palestinian side, what this means on the international side, is just very unclear at this point. The talk is that Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of the Likud, that this will accrue to his benefit. –I tend to doubt that because I think that Netanyahu’s lack of support is not based particularly on security questions but the fact that he implemented a series of neo-liberal economic policies that materially impoverished large numbers of Israelis. The gap between rich and poor in Israel has grown enormously and the most poverty stricken group of 65 year olds in the world, are Israelis, that is in Western developed countries are Israelis.

So I think that there is a turn away by the poorest sections of the Israeli public, which was always the base of the Likud Party. You always had this odd situation where the Labor Party was supported by the employers and the Likud Party was supported by a big bulk of the working class. And it’s just this kind of distorted mirror, and I think that has begun to change. If someone were to ask me what would happen in the March elections I really would not like to predict it except that I think that Labor is going to do better than they would have if Sharon was running and if Sharon was going to be leading the Kadima Party. –I think Labor will do better.

What’s going to happen? It’s just very hard to say. I think things are going to be in turmoil at this point but I think in the long run the Labor Party is going to do better. If the Labor Party does better and Peretz, Amir Peretz who is the leader of the Labor Party; he is someone who has said that he is willing to talk to Palestinians, which Sharon was not. Sharon was simply going to implement what he was going to do; but he is willing to talk to the Palestinians and that’s an enormous step forward. If we could get negotiations going again there may be a possibility.

There is one danger, I would add here. One of the areas in the world that people need to pay very close attention to, and I don’t see people doing it particularly, is Iran. And for a long time, since last summer the Bush Administration has been talking about Iran as the major source of terror and a lot of rhetorical fire directed at Iran. And most of the world has kind of dismissed that as just rhetorical, just talk, because the U.S. is over extended at this point in Iraq, certainly couldn’t afford a war with Iran.

I’m beginning to think a little differently about that. I don’t think the United States would go to war with Iran but I think it’s perfectly possible that the United States could carry out a series of air attacks against key nuclear facilities in Iran. The reason I say that is because it’s not just the rhetoric which is going on now, but for the first time very high level people, head of the CIA, head of the FBI, State Department, Rumsfeld, etc., have been visiting countries in Europe, telling them that there is a possibility that an attack might happen. They’ve had long meetings with the Turks. There seems to be, that is in the European newspapers, Der Spiegel particularly, have picked up a kind of rumor of a quid pro quo with the Turks that the Turks won’t say anything if the U.S. whacks the Iranians and the U.S. will give a green light for the Turks to liquidate sections of the Kurdish Communist Party, what they call the PKK that are in the mountains of Iraq close up to the Turkish border. –Now, I don’t know whether or not these rumors are true but they are all over the European and the international press even though they are not being reflected here.

One of the elements of this is that Benjamin Netanyahu says, he is actually open about this, the quote was quite explicit, he said if he gets elected he intends to strike the Iranians –He intends to bomb Iran. And he intends to eliminate their capacity to build, potential to build nuclear weapons. How the Israelis are going to do that is not clear to me. It’s kind of a bridge too far and the only possibility, and whenever I say this I feel like I’m being a paranoid nut but the only way they could really do it is if they used nuclear weapons. It’ just unimaginable that people would do that but I don’t know. I don’t know how much is unimaginable these days. And so that’s a very great concern for me. So I see the Israeli elections as not only affecting the Palestinian situation, and the situation in the Middle East, but specifically what may or may not happen in Iran; And that, I think that Americans need to be well informed about and need to be deeply concerned about.

Dori Smith: Right now the way the stories are portrayed, it does seem, and I’ve heard this reflected on an NPR report recently, that the attitude is that Israeli’s view the giving back of Gaza to the Palestinians as a mistake on the part of Sharon because of the behavior of the Palestinians. Let’s just touch on that, but also talk about the other events happening in the background where what we are really seeing in the Jordan Valley are new plans to, as you put it, split the West Bank down the middle and then double the number of settlers right?

Conn Hallinan: Right, well I mean I think there is one thing you need to keep in mind and that is that freedom is not the product of behavior. Freedom is an inherent right that people ought to have, regardless of how they behave, and so the idea of giving Gaza back to the Palestinians. It was always the Palestinians’ and the idea that the Israelis are doing the Palestinians a favor is just absolutely ensconced in the culture. Whereupon in 1967 the Israelis invaded Jordan. They took over the West Bank. They took over Gaza. That is they violated international law by not withdrawing and at the time large numbers of Israelis, including some of the founders of Israel said that Israel needed to get out of the West Bank, needed to get out of Gaza, that essentially Israel would be endangered, the soul of Israel would be endangered by continuing to occupy those lands. They kept the lands in violation of international law and so the idea somehow that the Palestinians are supposed to behave well. I mean imagine being occupied for as long as the Palestinians have been occupied. It’s the longest occupation in modern history. We have passed the Japanese occupation of Korea. Occupation generates its own craziness.

Look, I’m Irish. I wrote my PHD dissertation on Irish revolutionary organizations in the countryside in the 18th and 19th century. And I can tell you that for 800 years the Irish were crazy. They never bought the occupation. And it made them a little crazy. I mean there are things that the Irish did that you know I kind of say oh, we did something like that, that was pretty crazy, and I think that’s true in the occupied territories. I mean you have systematically dismantled public life in Gaza and in the West Bank and then when you withdraw from Gaza gee there’s chaos. Well I’m not sure what they thought was going to happen. Of course there is chaos. That’s what happens when you occupy people for a long time. If you recall the Irish went through an ugly civil war after the English withdrew from the South. It was forty years before the Irish got their act together after the English withdrew. I think this is the legacy of colonialism. The idea is once you get out of there you create a level playing field. No you’ve killed the playing field. It takes a lot of ground to level it again.

Dori Smith: Let’s talk a little bit about, again, what’s in your writing, I did notice that you mention, is it Anthony Cordesman? –You were talking about Sharon in terms of Hamas. Talk about that story.

Conn Hallinan: What happened with Hamas was that the Israelis decided that they needed to split the Palestinians. Divide and conquer. Remember the Israelis were trained by the British. The Israelis were occupied themselves by the British and that’s where they got their training and in fact the first governor general of the Trans Jordan once described the Jewish population in the Trans Jordan as his little Protestants. And what he was referring to was the role of the Protestants in Ireland. The Protestants would serve as a way of dividing the society on the basis of religion. So that the British had in mind to use religion, to use language, to use all sorts of ways to divide and conquer. That was standard operating procedure for colonialism.

So the Israelis started off and what they wanted to do was to split the Palestinian movement and so what they did was that they started funneling not only funds in but they wouldn’t arrest Hamas people. (See Common Dreams, July 13, 2002, Conn Hallinan: “Ariel Sharon is obsessed with illusions. He has always fantasized that by combining violence with appointing leaders he can manipulate he will get his way. He was a supporter of the secret Israeli operation that, according to Tony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic Studies, funneled funds to Hamas in the late 1970s as a way to undermine the secular Palestine Liberation Organization. We know how that one turned out.”)

They would arrest Fatah people but they wouldn’t arrest Hamas people and they poured money into establishing Hamas as a way to divide the Palestinian population. It worked very well. –Now look at what they’ve got. Of course, the other way to look at it is that it’s worked perfectly because the Israelis can now say; well we won’t talk to Hamas because they call for the destruction of Israel. And the U.S. won’t talk with Hamas. And the U.S. is pressuring the EU not to talk with Hamas. So essentially what you’ve done is that you’ve created this division which makes it impossible for the world to unite around the questions of the Palestinians, and to keep the Palestinians shooting at one another, divided amongst one another, and then for the Israelis to throw up their hands and say, you see, we have no partner. And this tactic of having no partner, which means essentially then the Israeli’s can do what they want; well we’ll just take whatever unilateral action that we can take. That was the origin of that and the Israelis played an important role in that. Hamas itself came out of the Muslim Brotherhood which started in Egypt in 1925 and was always, for a long time a violent organization, now; you know it claims to be a violent organization. But imagine putting Pat Robertson in power. There are some down sides to that. They’ve got one of those right now in Iran. You know it’s really not a very good thing and not a very good thing for the world but not a good thing for the Iranians.

Dori Smith: Conn Hallinan is a foreign policy analyst at Foreign Policy in Focus. You can read his work online at FPIF.org. He also teaches journalism at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Arms control experts at Washington think tanks see a developing crisis between America and Iran.

“Clearly there is growing sentiment within the UN that some form of sanctions or some form of statement by the Security Council is both necessary and appropriate.” Christopher Hellman

I asked Christopher Hellman, Defense, Budget and Policy Analyst, at the Center for Arms Control and Proliferation, to talk about this latest juncture with Iran.

Christopher Hellman: I think the situation is indeed becoming very critical. The most recent actions by the Iranians are counter to the agreements reached with European representatives from England, France, and Germany, with regard to international oversight of Iran and basically checking up on Iran’s nuclear program. There were reasons for hope on the part of the Europeans; I think the Americans were less sanguine about this, but that progress could be made with Iran in controlling their efforts to develop nuclear technology. And Iran’s announcement today that they want to restart their uranium enrichment program flies in the face of an agreement that the Europeans felt they had with them.

Dori Smith: This news was actually released by the IAEA, the atomic energy authority, and they have in the past argued that Iran was not developing nuclear weapons. Would you say this represents a change in the way they view things?

Christopher Hellman: I haven’t heard anything out of the IAEA specifically but there has been a lot of discussion both within the United Nations, which is the I.A.E.A.’s governing body, and member states, about the path that Iran is taking and I think everybody, both in an outside of the United Nations, are concerned about this. Whether the IAEA is going to change their mind, I don’t know, but there are a sufficient number of people who are willing I think to address this within the U.N. that it’s very possible that it’s going to end up before the Security Council.

Dori Smith: And it’s a changing Security Council. Do you think that will have an impact?

Christopher Hellman: The key players on the Security Council with regard to the Iranian issue are the Russians, who have attempted to be independent brokers between the West and Iran. I think it is going to be important to see how they feel about the latest turn of events, but clearly, there is growing sentiment within the U.N. that some form of sanctions or some form of statement by the Security Council is both necessary and appropriate.

Dori Smith: I’m looking at a paragraph here from this piece by Parisa Hafezi and it says quote: “Even Russia, a long time ally of Iran, appears to have lost patience with Tehran. Europe and the U.S. have been reluctant to push the issue to the Security Council and concerns that any attempt to impose sanctions could be vetoed by China or Russia.”

Christopher Hellman: Exactly, and I mean the Russian position on this has always been an important one because the West has felt that they were able to speak to Iran when the West wasn’t. Whether their frustration has reached a level where they would be willing to support some form of sanctions or some form of statement by the Security Council I haven’t heard yet. But they attempted just as recently as a couple of weeks ago to provide the Iranians with the capability of doing enrichment work in Russia. So that the work would be monitored internationally and that was a compromise position that they had put out and the Iranians rejected that. So it’s understandable that the Russians are growing increasingly frustrated.

Dori Smith: And that enrichment work would be towards nuclear power they say?

Christopher Hellman: The Iranian claim consistently has been that all of their nuclear work is for civilian use only. Whether that’s true or not is a matter of very important debate but their position has been, it’s only for civilian use. And what the Russians were attempting to say to them was, well, come and do it at our house so we can watch you do it and that way we can guarantee that it’s actually going to be used for civilian use only.

Dori Smith: We’ve had some political analysis from Conn Hallinan for this report and he has argued that he is seeing it as increasingly possible that the U.S. might try some form of an attack on Iran. Would you agree with that as a possibility and what kinds of signs would you see that we should look for that might indicate this?

Christopher Hellman: Well I mean the Administration has said that they are not ruling out anything as a possibility. I happen to think that, you know when you talk about the use of military force people automatically assume that some sort of invasion is what the U.S. is contemplating. I don’t think that’s on the table at all. But there are types of military aggression against Iran that require a lot less commitment on our part that the Administration is seriously considering; selective strikes against Iran’s facilities would be one of them. But I think that these are options that are being considered but I don’t think they are being considered as serious options about something that’s going to happen today or tomorrow. But I think that as part of the negotiating process with the Iranians this Administration wants to make it clear that they are not eliminating the possible use of force.

Now as far as the warning signs? I would think you would see the rhetoric of the Administration change fairly dramatically, about, rather than sort of considering all options to a much more specific and direct statement about our willingness to use force and we haven’t seen that.

Dori Smith: Christopher Hellman is with the Center for Arms Control and Proliferation in Washington, D.C. We were also able to reach John Isaacs, President of the Council for a Livable World. His organization has worked on disarmament and prevention issues for more than 40 years. I asked him to comment on the seriousness of Iran’s opening of the nuclear facilities to research.

John Isaacs: This is quite a serious step that Iran is taking. We have been worried for the last couple of years that Iran has been developing, first clandestinely, a nuclear weapons program. They have denied it and at various times Iran, the United States, and other countries have joined in negotiations to try to stop the Iranian program. The diplomacy has been led by three European countries. Great Britain, France and Germany. But Iran is in a very dangerous part of the world. If it develops nuclear weapons other countries in the region including Israel, and including Iraq, and including Saudi Arabia, will be within range of Iran’s nuclear weapons and the possibility of increased violence or massive destruction of human life is increased immensely.

This is particularly true today when Iran is still controlled by a theocracy, a number of religious leaders, and the new president elect of the last couple of months clearly has shown himself to be a, shall we say a wild figure on the international scene. He’s talked about eliminating Israel from the scene. So Iran getting nuclear weapons is kind of like throwing a match into a pool of gasoline. It’s extremely dangerous.

Dori Smith: Talk a little bit about changes in Israel that might actually have affected Iran’s leaders in making this decision.

John Isaacs: I don’t know that changes in Israel have made a difference in Iran’s intentions. Iran has always been in opposition to the Israeli Governments, a variety of leaders over the years, and in fact, there has been some small progress between Israel and Palestine, at least with Israel leaving most of the Gaza strip. But I think regardless of what the situation in Israel is I think the Iranian leaders have an intention and it seems to be a serious drive to develop and then produce nuclear weapons. Fortunately we are several years away from actual production of nuclear weapons in Iran but there is clearly a possibility that the United States might launch some military action against Iran and certainly even more of a possibility that Israel might do so. Again, this is a real possibility that the development of nuclear weapons makes the situation less stable, more volatile, and more likely for massive killings.

Dori Smith: Now in the sense that the U.S. has been, certainly in terms of rhetoric, expressing hostility towards Iran under the Bush Administration, just talk about what real plans if any you know about that could cause this to heighten in terms of an emergency.

John Isaacs: Unfortunately, for the first four years, the Bush Administration, the Bush team, has relied on rhetoric and denunciations of Iran rather than worked with serious diplomacy. You know unfortunately, as bad a situation as it is today in Iran, that situation has only worsened when the United States engages in the diplomacy of insults and telling the Iranians how bad they are. It’s the same kind of policy we’ve used primarily towards North Korea. Ultimately, we have to look for a diplomatic solution. A military solution is not going to be possible. –Way back, more than two decades ago, Israel bombed a nuclear reactor in Iraq and set back its nuclear program. Iran has drawn a lesson from that and I think a number of their nuclear facilities are underground and inaccessible. So the idea that the United States or Israel might launch a conventional strike to try to bomb the nuclear facilities will not destroy what Iran is trying to do. So ultimately, diplomacy is the answer. And the United States may feel better by telling the world what terrible people the Iranian leaders are but that doesn’t accomplish anything. Again, diplomacy is the only answer and it is a difficult answer but it’s the one that has to be pursued with much greater vigor.

Dori Smith: Under the present Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, we do have a little bit of a history there going back to 1998 when Rumsfeld was quite urgently looking into Iran’s development of missiles. Now, if we put together a sort of hypothesis about who could do the diplomacy, are we looking at the Defense Department, the State Department under Condoleeza Rice? What direction would we look in?

John Isaacs: Donald Rumsfeld is the person you least want to have involved in diplomacy. First of all, the Pentagon and Rumsfeld are designed for military action. The diplomatic channel has to be handled by the Secretary of State. Ultimately, the National Security Advisor and the President of the United States. The Pentagon’s way of diplomacy is send in the tanks, and that’s certainly not appropriate here.

The first, actually first course of action, is to put a lot of chips with the European leaders that have been negotiating with Iran. Again, Great Britain, France, and Germany. Their diplomacy can be backed up by Condoleeza Rice and the United States. Rumsfeld, besides being head of the military arm of the United States Government has shown himself too impatient for diplomacy, too interested in insulting other countries, and the least likely person to engage in diplomatic negotiations with Iran. Putting Rumsfeld in charge of negotiations with Iran is like putting Saddam Hussein in charge of human rights. It’s simply a non-starter.

Dori Smith: And what about the chances of Condoleeza Rice to make any headway here?

John Isaacs: Admittedly it could be very difficult. Iran is not an easy negotiating partner. Unfortunately, it’s not like negotiating with an ally like Great Britain. So even pursuing a diplomatic track here to deal with Iran’s nuclear aspirations; the odds are well below 50 percent of success, but again, as Winston Churchill said about Democracy. Diplomacy may be unsuccessful but it’s really the only option out there. A military solution is simply not there except to ratchet up the violence and make the situation worse.

Dori Smith: John Isaacs thanks so much for joining us.

John Isaacs: Sure, delighted to help.

Dori Smith: John Isaacs is the President of the Council for a Livable World

I asked Leonor Tomero in their office what her organization intends to do about the Iran crisis.

Leonor Tomero: We intend to follow these revelations very closely. We intend to educate the media, Congress, and mostly keep Congress apprised of these developments and make sure that it is clear that this is a test for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and for the international community on how they respond to nuclear proliferation. We’ve had the example of North Korea backing out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and reprocessing Plutonium making enough fissile material for about six to nine nuclear weapons.

And so the case of Iran is particularly relevant following this example of how we deal, are we going to let Iran proceed with enriching material and possibly making material for nuclear weapons and what the international community will do now that we have the example of North Korea. I think it is very dangerous to let Iran pursue this course of action.

Dori Smith: Leonor Tomero is in the non-proliferation department, at the Council for a Livable World. You can learn more about what the Council for a Livable World have planned over Iran and other matters by logging on to their web site at CLW.org.

For Talk Nation Radio, I’m Dori Smith.

Visit WHUS.org to listen live Wed. at 5 PM.

Air Quality Audio of this program may be obtained here.

For further developments see this article by: IAN BRUCE, Defence Correspondent January 10 2006. “Israel is updating plans for a pre-emptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities which could be launched as soon as the end of March, according to military and intelligence sources.

The news comes as Germany yesterday warned Tehran’s regime that it would face “consequences” if it removes UN seals from portions of its atomic programme and resumes enrichment of fuel which could be diverted for military use in breach of international agreements.”