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Language: en
If we want to avoid wars, we have to
have serious deterrence because our
enemies need to understand we will use
selective, focused, overwhelming
military power when we are facing
threats like an Iranian nuclear weapon.
I'm not seeing the peace through
strength. I'm saying permanent
militarism and permanent war through
strength. Do you ever ever hold our
adversaries responsible or do you just
don't think we have any adversaries? The
easiest kind of nuke to make out of
uranium is a simple gun type nuke. Are
you saying that Mossad fabricated it?
That's what you're claiming. Here's the
offer. Take it or leave it. Zero
enrichment. Full dismantlement. The
Iranians told the IAEA, "You can inspect
any five out of 10 facilities here. Cart
Blanch, go ahead." And they did and
found nothing. Experts in in Iran's
nuclear program, including David
Albbright, who actually saw the archive,
went in there, wrote a whole book on it,
and there's a lot of detail about how
Iran had an active nuclear weapons
program called the Mad to build five
nuclear weapons. I have to refute
virtually everything he just said, which
is completely false. I mean, really
everything. There was There was not one
thing I said that was true. Just one
thing. I mean, Iran is a nation over
there somewhere. You got that part
right. 22 years of working on Iran, and
I got that right. But do you know the
population of 92 million? Okay, give me
a pound, dude. There we go. Agreement.
The following is a debate between Scott
Horton and Mark Dubowitz on the topic of
Iran and Israel.
Scott Horton is author and editorial
director of anti-war.com, host of the
Scott Horton Show, and for the past
three decades, a staunch critic of US
foreign policy and military
interventionism.
Mark Dubitz is a chief executive of the
Foundation for Defense of Democracies,
host of the Iran Breakdown podcast, and
he has been a leading expert on Iran and
its nuclear program for over 20 years.
This is the Lex Freedman podcast. To
support it, please check out our
sponsors in the description and consider
subscribing to this channel. If you do,
I promise to work extremely hard to
always bring you nuanced, long- form
conversations with a very wide range of
interesting people from all walks of
life. And now, dear friends, here's
Scott Horton and Mark Dubitz.
Gentlemen. All right. It's great to have
you here. Uh let's try to have a nuanced
discussion slashdebate and uh maybe even
steel man opposing perspectives as much
as possible. All right. As it stands
now, there's a barely stable ceasefire
between Iran and Israel. Let's uh maybe
rewind a little bit. Uh can we first lay
out the context for this Iran Israel war
and try to describe the key events that
happened over the past two weeks? maybe
even the uh a bit of the deep roots of
the conflict. Sure. Like first of all,
thanks so much for having me on. Great
to be on with Scott. I know he and I
don't agree on a lot, but I certainly
admire the passion and and the
dedication to stopping wars. So that's
that's something we want to talk about.
So let's talk about how we got to this
war. So, President Trump comes into
office and immediately lays out that his
Iran strategy is maximum pressure on the
regime and he will not allow Iran have a
nuclear weapon and he and he makes that
clear consistently. I think made it very
clear during his first term made a clear
throughout his career and thus beguns
this process with the Iranians which has
kind of multiple tracks but the one that
Trump sees most interested in at the
time is the diplomatic track and he
makes it very clear from the beginning
in a sort of Oval Office remark. He says
the Iranians can either blow up their
nuclear program under US supervision or
someone's going to blow it up for them.
And even though, you know, at the time
we think Netanyahu is really trying to
push the president into a military
campaign, well, I'm sure we'll talk
about that throughout the podcast, the
president authorizes his lead negotiator
and close friend Steve Witkoff to begin
outreach to the Iranians and and thus
begun the Oman round. And it's Oman
round because it's taking place in Oman
with mediation efforts by the Omanis.
There are five rounds of negotiations
with the Iranians. And through the
course of those negotiations, the US
finally puts on the table an offer for
Iran. We'll talk about the details of
that. The Iranians reject that offer and
we're now into the sixth round which is
supposed to take place on a Sunday. Uh
on the Thursday before the Sunday, the
Israelis strike and they go after in a
rather devastating campaign over a
matter of now 12 days. They go over and
go after Iran's nuclear program, the key
nuclear sites. Um, going after weapon
scientists who are responsible for
building Iran's nuclear weapons program,
and also go after top IRGC, Islamic
Revolutionary Guard commanders as well
as top military commanders.
And yet, there's still this one site
that is the most fortified site. It's
called Foraux. It's an enrichment
facility. It's buried under a mountain,
goes about 80 m deep. It's encased in
concrete. It has advanced centrifuges
and highly enriched uranium. The
Israelis can do damage to it, but it's
clear it's going to take the United
States and our military power in order
to severely
degrade this facility. And Trump orders
the United States Air Force to fly B2
bombers and drop 12 massive Ordinance
penetrators, which are these 30,000
pound bombs on Fordo in order to, as he
said, obliterate it more realistically,
to severely degrade it. So that happens.
Um, and then he offers the Iranians, as
he's been offering all the way through,
you have an option. You can go back to
Oman. I told you Oman and you decided to
force me to go to Fordo but now we can
go back for negotiations
and he forces a ceasefire on the
Iranians gets the Israelis to agree and
that's where we are today like we're at
a as you say a tentative ceasefire that
just came into effect and we'll see now
if the Iranians decide to take President
Trump on his repeated offers join him in
Aman for another round of negotiations.
Scott, is there some stuff you want to
add to that? Sure. Well, he started with
uh January, right? Trump's second term
here and the maximum pressure campaign.
Essentially, as should be clear to
everyone now, all these negotiations
were just a pretext for war. Trump and
his entire cabinet must have known that
the Ayatollah is not going to give up
all enrichment. That is their latent
nuclear deterrent. Their posture has
been heavily implied. don't attack us
and we won't make a nuke. While
America's position was if you make a
nuke, if you start to, we'll attack you.
So, it was the perfect standoff. But
what happened was, and you might
remember a few weeks ago, there was some
talk about, well, maybe we could find a
way to compromise on some enrichment.
Maybe they could do a consortium with
the Saudis. Maybe there's some way that
we And then, nope, the pressure came
down. No enrichment. Zero enrichment.
But that's a red line. Everyone knows
that there's and even now uh it's
probably less likely than ever that
they're going to give up enrichment.
Sure, they bombed Porto, but they didn't
destroy every last centrifuge in that
place. And the Iranians are already
announcing that they're already begun
construction on another facility under a
taller mountain buried even deeper. And
you know, they figured out how to enrich
uranium hexaflloride gas, you know, what
20 years ago now. And uh they will
always be able to. And this is the
slippery slope that we're on with these
wars is in fact um I saw our friend here
on TV the other day as he almost pretty
much just implied there saying well now
Trump has to go in. You know we were
told it's just Israel doing it. Don't
worry. But then no Trump has to hit
Fordo or else now they'll break out
toward a nuclear weapon. So, in for a
penny, in for a pound, in for a ton, and
now once we bomb Fordo again and Natans
again and the new facility again, then
it'll be decided that no, as Benjamin
Netanyahu said the other day, you know
what would really solve this problem? If
we just kill the Ayatollah, then
everything will be fine. Then we'll have
a regime change. And then what? Then
we'll have a civil war with bin Laden
again in the catbird seat just like
George Bush put them in Iraq and Barack
Obama put them in Libya and in Syria and
we'll have Azeris and Belooki suicide
bombers and Shiite uh you know
revolutionaries and whoever all vying
for power in the new absolute chaos
stand. If you listen to the
administration and Mr. to do was they're
essentially just implying that like, oh
yeah, mission accomplished. We did it.
Their nuclear program is destroyed. Now
we don't have to worry about that
anymore. But that's not true. Now it
there's every reason to believe and we
don't know for sure. There's every
reason to believe that at least is much
more likely now that the Ayatollah will
change his mind about God changing his
mind and we'll say that actually maybe
we do need a nuclear deterrent. That's
really what it's been for this whole
time is a bluff. We have bullets in one
pocket, revolver in another. Let's not
you and me fight and escalate this
thing. It's the same position, by the
way, as Japan and Germany and Brazil.
Two of the three of those are under
America's nuclear umbrella, I admit. But
still, where they've proven they've
mastered the fuel cycle and they can
make nuclear weapons. But hey, since
nobody's directly threatening them now,
why escalate things and go ahead and
make atom bombs? That has been their
position the whole time because after
all, they could not break out and make a
nuke without everyone in the world
knowing about it. And that's why, Lex,
and I'm sure you can vouch for me on
this, if you've been watching TV over
the past few weeks, you'll hear Marco
Rubio and all the government officials
and all the Warhawks say, "Oh yeah, 60%,
60%. What do you think they need with
that 60%." Implying that, oh yeah, see,
they're racing toward a bomb. But you
see how they always just imply that.
They They won't come right out and say
that cuz it's a ridiculous lie. They've
been they could have enriched up to 90
plus% uranium 235 this whole time. The
reason they were enriching up to 60% was
in reaction to Israeli sabotage. First
of all, assassinating their nuclear
scientists and then their sabotage at
Natans. They started enriching up to 60%
just like they did in the Obama years to
have a bargaining chip to negotiate
away. Under the JCPOA, they shipped out
every bit of their enriched uranium to
France to be turned into fuel rods and
then shipped back into the country to be
used in their reactors. And so, they're
just trying to get us back in that deal.
It is an illusion. It is. And I don't
know exactly what's in this man's mind,
but it's just not true that they're
making nuclear weapons. And it has been
a lie of Benjamin Netanyahu and his lood
party regime and for that matter the
Kadima regime of Ahudmer before him that
this is a threat that has to be
preempted when in fact it never was
anything more than a latent nuclear
deterrent. Maybe a good question to ask
here is what is the goal for the United
States in Iran in relation to the
nuclear
uh Iran's nuclear program? What is the
red line here? Does Iran have this uh
need for a latent nuclear deterrent and
what what is the thing that's acceptable
to the United States and to the rest of
the world? What should be acceptable?
Yeah, L. So, there was a lot to unpack
there. So let's sort of just back up a
little bit. Let's talk about first of
all the regime itself. Islamic Republic
of Iran came into power in 1979. Um it
has been declared a leading state
sponsor of terrorism by multiple
administrations dating back to the
Clinton administration um by Obama, by
Biden, by Trump and it is a regime that
has killed and maimed thousands of
Americans, not not to mention obviously
uh hundreds of thousands of Middle
Easterners. Um it is a regime that has
lied about its nuclear program. It never
actually disclosed its nuclear sites.
All these sites were discovered by um
Iranian opposition groups, by western
intelligence agencies. And the
International Atomic Energy Agency,
which is the UN agency responsible for
preventing proliferation, has come out
again and again over many, many years in
reports, very detailed reports
describing Iran's nuclear weapons
program. Um, there have been multiple
attempts at diplomacy with with Iran.
I'm sure we're going to talk about it.
Scott mentioned the JCPOA, so we should
certainly talk about the JCPOA, which
was the 2015 deal that Barack Obama
reached with Iran. Um, but multiple
attempts to to actually get the Iranians
to negotiate away their nuclear weapons
program. I mean, it's worth mentioning
that if Iran wanted to have civilian
nuclear energy, there are 23 countries
in the world that have it, but they
don't have enrichment and they don't
have reprocessing. uh we we sign these
deals called the gold standard with the
South Koreans, with the Amiradis, with
others and we say if you want civilian
energy, you can have power plants, you
can buy your fuel rods from abroad, but
there's no reason to have enrichment or
plutonium reprocessing because those are
the key capabilities you need to develop
nuclear weapons. Now the five countries
that have those capabilities and don't
have nuclear weapons are Argentina,
Brazil, Holland, Germany, and Japan. And
I think it's the view of many
administrations over many years,
including many European leaders, that
that the Islamic Republic of Iran is
very different from those aforementioned
countries, because that it is been
dedicated to terrorism. It's been
killing Americans and other Westerners
and other Middle Easterners, and it is a
dangerous regime. You don't want to have
that dangerous regime retaining the key
capabilities and needs to develop
nuclear weapons. But I but I want to
kind of get back more to the present
mentioned this was around negotiations
out of Oman. Scott saying that President
Trump had said here's the offer. Take
her to leave it. Zero enrichment full
dismantlement. Well, in fact, that
wasn't the offer that was presented to
the Iranians at Oman. The offer was a
one-page offer and it said you can
temporarily enrich above ground. You've
got to render your below ground
facilities quote nonoperational and then
at some time in the future three four
years as Scott said there'll be a
consortium that'll be built not on
Iranian territory. It'll be a
partnership with the Saudis and the
Amiradis. It'll be under IAEA
supervision and that enrichment facility
will create fuel rods for your nuclear
reactors. So that was the offer
presented to Iran and that offer would
come with significant sanctions relief.
Billions of dollars that would go to the
regime. Obviously the economy there has
been suffering. The regime is has not
had the resources that it's had in the
past to fund its its what I call its
axis of misery, its proxy terror armies
around the world. And it was a good
offer. And I was shocked that Kame
rejected it. Um he did reject it. And I
think he rejected it because I think he
believed that he could continue to do to
President Trump what he had done to
President Obama, which is just continue
to squeeze and squeeze and squeeze the
Americans at the table in order to
ensure that he could keep all these
nuclear facilities, all these nuclear
capabilities so that at a time of his
choosing when President Trump is gone,
he can develop nuclear weapons. Now, it
it is a bit interesting to say that Iran
has no intention to develop nuclear
weapons. and let let's examine the
nuclear program and and ask, does this
sound like a regime that's not
interested in building nuclear weapons?
So, they they built deeply buried
underground enrichment facilities that
they hid from the international
community and they didn't disclose.
They had an active nuclear warhead
program called Ahmad, which ended in
2003 formally when the United States
invaded Iraq. And we know that because
not only has that been detailed by the
IAEA, but actually Mossad in a daring
operation in Thran took out a nuclear
archive and brought it back to the West.
And then the IAEA, the United States and
the intelligence communities went after
this detailed archive went into it and
discovered that this supreme leader
Ayatoll
had an active program to build five
atomic warheads and was a very detailed
program with blueprints and designs all
of which was designed under Ahmad to
build a nuclear weapons program. So
again, it's it's interesting to say that
he doesn't have the intention to build
nuclear weapons when he actually had an
active nuclear weapons program. U and we
can talk about what happened to that
program after 2003 and there's a lot of
interesting details. So when you when
you combine the fact that he has an
active nuclear weapons program, he has
sites that are buried deep underground.
He has weapon scientists who whose who
come out of the Ahmad program and
continued to work on the initial uh
metallergy work and computer modeling
designed to actually begin that process
of building a warhead. And all of this
has been hidden from the international
community. He has spent estimates of a
half a trillion dollars on his nuclear
program uh in direct costs and in
sanctions costs. And one has to ask and
I think it's an interesting question to
compare the UAE and Iran, right? The UAE
signed the gold standard. They said
we'll have no enrichment capability or
reprocessing. They spent about $20
billion on that and it supplies 25% of
their electrical generation. Kame spent
a half a trillion and that program
supplies maybe 3% of their electrical
needs. In fact, they have a reactor that
they b they bought from the Russians
called Bucher. And there that reactor,
it's exactly what you'd want in a
proliferation proof reactor. They buy
fuel rods from the Russians. They use it
and they send the spent fuel back to
Russia so it cannot be reprocessed into
plutonium. So, I just think it's
important for your listeners to
understand just some of the technical
nuclear history here in order to unpack
this question of did Kam want nuclear
weapons? What was his goal here? And
then we can talk about was this the
right operation in order to for the
United States to order the B2 bombers to
strike these facilities in what again
was a limited operation as President
Trump has said and in order to drive the
Iranians back to the negotiating table
and finally do the deal that President
Trump has asked them to do since he came
into office in January. Yeah, that is
one of the fascinating questions whether
this operation midnight hammer increased
or decreased the chance that uh the Iran
will develop a nuclear uh weapon. Before
you ask any more questions, I have to
refute virtually everything he just
said, which is completely false. I mean,
really everything. There was there was
not one thing I said that was true. Just
one thing. I mean, Iran is a nation over
there somewhere. You got that part
right. All right. 22 years of working on
Iran and I got that right. But do you
know the population of Iran? 92 million.
Okay. So, first of all, they were trying
to buy a lightwater reactor from the
Europeans or the Chinese in the 1990s,
and Bill Clinton wouldn't let them. And
put tremendous pressure on China to
prevent them from selling them a
lightwater reactor, a turnkey reactor
that produces waste that's so polluted
with impurities that you can't make
nuclear weapons fuel out of it. By the
way, they never have to this day had a
reprocessing facility for reprocessing
plutonium, even their current plutonium
waste for their he from their heavy
water reactor at Bucher to make weapons
fuel out of that. They have no plutonium
route to the bomb under the JCPOA. Iraq,
not Bucher. There's a difference between
Iraq. Iraq is a Iraq is where they pour
concrete into the reactor and shut it
down. And the reason they poured
concrete under the JCPOA, not they, but
the Obama administration, he's right,
under the JCPOA poured concrete into
Kindria in order to prevent them from
using that reactor to reprocess
plutonium. So there's a distinction
between Iraq and Bucher. Scott's exactly
right. Busher is a reactor, a heavy
water reactor provided by the Russians,
as I described, for the generation of
electricity. It's proliferation proof.
Iraq has is the opposite. It's a heavy
water reactor that was built for a
plutonium pathway to nuclear weapons,
which is exactly why under the JCPOA,
they literally had to pour concrete into
the into the middle of it to prevent it
from reprocessing plutonia. I think
we're going to need uh a scientist to
come in here and split the difference.
Or maybe we need to uh go and look up
some IAEA documents cuz I don't believe
that Iraq ever had a reprocessing
facility for their plutonium waste. And
the deal under the JCPOA, the Russians
would come and get all their plutonium
waste, which the waste comes out all
polluted and not useful. You need the
reprocessing facility to get all of the
impurities to clarify. It could be that
I'm wrong about that, but I don't
believe that they ever had a
reprocessing facility at Iraq that they
could use to remove all those impurities
and then have weapons plutonium fuel as
the North Koreans do. So the Obama
administration was very clear under the
JCPOA, we are going to pour concrete
into the into the Iraq facility as as
Scott acknowledged because we are
concerned that Iraq can be used for
reprocessing plutonium for plutonium
pathway to a nuclear weapon can be used
but we don't know if it was used. Oh, we
know it never was. There never was any
reprocessing of weapons fuel there. But
there was concrete. I'm I'm happy to
there's no indication for your viewers
who are interested and not to plug my
own podcast so I apologize but it is a
very good podcast. I just recently had
David Albbright on my podcast who is
actually a physicist and a weapons
inspector and goes into a lot of detail
about the Iranian nuclear program.
Please listen to the podcast. Iran
breakdown by the way is the name of the
podcast. Yeah. And David's the president
of the Institute for Science and
International Security, by the way,
spent decades on this. And to his
credit, he was one of the deep skeptics
of the Bush administration's rush to war
with Iraq. And that's not true. He
vouched for claims that there were
chemical weapons in Iraq and later said
he was sorry for it. Again, I mentioned
the Bush administration's rush to war
based on their claims that Saddam was
building nuclear weapons. He did debunk
the aluminum tubes, though. He he he
debunked it and he was a deep skeptic
again of the of the Russia war in Iraq.
You know the argument today, Lex, which
I think is the more interesting argument
because there are very few people left
today who don't believe that the
Iranians were building the nuclear
weapons capability that gave them the
option to build nuclear weapons. I
already said that we we can debate we
can debate whether they had decided to
and and we I'm interested to hear
Scott's opinion on this, but the recent
intelligence that has come out that the
Iranian nuclear weapons scientists have
begun preliminary work on building a
warhead came out from where this
intelligence that came out who put that
int Israeli claims not verified by the
US and the Wall Street Journal anywhere
right let's talk about let's talk about
all of my list of reputations of all
your false claims can the Wall Street
Journal did verify this Lawrence Norman
to refute one time. Lawrence Norman
actually wrote a piece. This was during
the Biden administration. Um because the
Biden uh DNI had actually come out and
for the first time in their annual
threat assessment had removed a line
that said Iran is not working currently
working on developing any capabilities
that would put it in a position to to
actually deliver um a nuclear warhead.
And what be what became the Lawrence
Norman piece in the Wall Street Journal
was that there actually was initial work
done on metallurgy and on computer
modeling. And so those actually were
defined terms in section T of the 2015
JCPOA which defined weaponization in
that section. And metallergy and
computer modeling were some of the
initial steps. So that the DNI was very
concerned under Biden that these initial
steps meant that either Kame had given
the green lights or nuclear weapons
scientists in order to get ahead of the
boss so they could be in a position if
he decided to move forward on this were
in a position and their timelines were
therefore expedited. So it's
interesting. I mean, again, you've got
the DNI under Biden, you've got the CIA
director, John Ratcliffe, you've got
Israeli intelligence, you've got the
Wall Street Journal, and you've got the
IAEA asking questions of Iran on its
past weaponization activities. Why are
you denying us? Who's the dog that
didn't bark there? the current director
of national intelligence who issued her
threat assessment, Trump's director of
national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard,
who issued her threat assessment in
February, that repeated the exact same
language that from the national
intelligence estimate of 2007 and that
the CIA and the NIE, the National
Intelligence Council have reaffirmed
repeatedly ever since then, which is
that Supreme Leader has not decided to
pursue nuclear weapons. He has not made
the political decision to pursue nuclear
weapons. She testified uh in fact in in
under oath in front of the Senate in
March. And then according to CNN and the
New York Times, there was a brand new
that uh uh assessment that was uh put
together the week before the attack uh
was launched reaffirming the same thing.
And at least in history, if you read it
in Harets, MSAD agreed with the CIA. I'd
like to just sort of quote CIA director
John Radcliffe because Scott brought
brought up the CIA and the intelligence
community. I think Radcliffe had a good
way of looking at this is and that he
said is, you know, when you're in the 99
yard line as a football team, you have
the intention to score a goal, quote
unquote. And what what he was what he
was actually pointing to is let's not
talk about this debate about whether
Kame had given the order or not given
the order because Kame knows that if he
gives an order, the US and Israeli
intelligence community will pick up on
that order and that will be the trigger
for strikes. What what Rackcliffe is
saying is that Kame had built the
nuclear weapons capability, he's at the
99 yard line and both the CIA and
European leaders, European intelligence
community has said for years that if
Iran has that capability and they're on
the 99 yard line, at that point it's
going to be too late to stop them once
that decision is made to to assemble the
final warhead, which by the way is the
final piece of what you need for a
deliverable nuclear weapon. That's not
true at all. Right. They have to resort
to a crude analogy about football yard
lines because they can't say the truth,
which is that they had zero weapons
grade uranium. They were not producing
it. They were trying to get the United
States back in the deal that they are
still officially within the JCPOA with
the rest of the UN Security Council
wherein they shipped all of their
enriched uranium stockpile out of the
country to France to be transferred to
fuel rods. their insistence was on their
continued ability to enrich uranium. And
so this goes to one of the things that
uh he at least sort of brought up that
deserves addressing. When Trump came
into power in 2017,
he decided on this Israeli influence
maximum pressure campaign and he said
the JCPOA was the worst deal in the
history of any time any two men ever
shook hands and all these kinds of
things in his hyperbolic way, which of
course made it very difficult for him to
figure out a way to stay in the thing or
to to compromise along its lines. Uh but
the fact of the matter is if he had just
played it straight and said, "Listen,
Ayatollah, we don't have to be friends,
but we do have a deal here, which my
predecessor struck with you, but I don't
like these sunset provisions, and I want
to send my guys over there and see if we
can figure out a way to convince you
that we really wish you'd shut down
commto together or this or that or the
other thing." And tried to approach them
in good faith. We talk about yard lines
and things. We had a JCPOA.
Okay. So toward peace, we were past the
50yard line. Donald Trump could have
gone to Tyrron and shook hands with the
Ayatollah. As Dick Cheney complained
that we had cold relations with Iran
back in 1998 when he was the head of
Allebertton and said, "We can do
business with these guys." Um, Donald
Trump could have gone right over there
and done business and instead he gave
into Netanyahu's lies in this ridiculous
hoax that they had uncovered all these
Iranian nuclear documents, which he
pretends is legit, where all they did
was recycle the fake Israeli forged
smoking laptop of 2005, which they lied
and pretended was the laptop of an
Iranian scientist that was smuggled out
of Iran by his wife and had all this
proof of a secret Iranian nuclear
weapons program on it. But every bit of
that was refuted, including the thing
about the warhead, he said, was refuted
by David Albbright and his friend David
Sanger in the New York Times that all
those sketches of the uh warhead for the
missile were wrong because when MSAD
forged the documents, they were making a
good educated guess, but they didn't
know that Iran had completely redesigned
the nose cone of their mid-range
missiles and had an entirely different
nose cone that would require an entirely
different warhead than that described in
the documents. and why would they have
been designing a warhead to fit in a
nose cone that they were abandoning? And
so that was refuted. David Albbright
completely discredited your claims
there, pal. And then uh they later
admitted that it was a CIA laptop. There
was no laptop. And they later admitted
Ali Hinonin admitted uh who was a very
hawkish uh uh one of the not director
but a high level executive at the
international atomic energy agency
admitted that that intelligence was
brought into the stream by the mujaheden
eculk communist terrorist cult that used
to work for the Ayatollah during the
revolution then turned on him and he
turned on them and kicked them out. Then
they went to work for Saddam Hussein
where they helped crush the Shiite and
Kurdish insurrection of 1991 and then
they became America. Donald Rumsfeld's
and Ariel Chiron's sock puppets and
later Ahoud Almer sock puppets when the
United States uh invaded Iraq and took
possession of them. They're now under
American protection in Albania. And
these are the same cooks who just a few
weeks ago, you might remember said,
"Look, new satellite pictures of a whole
new uh nuclear facility in Iran." Isn't
it funny how no one ever brought that up
again? Didn't bomb it. It was nothing.
It was fake. Just like before when they
said, "Hey, look, here's a picture of a
vault door." And behind that is where
the secret nuclear weapons program is.
Except turned out that vault door was a
stock photo from a vault company. It
meant nothing. And they had repeatedly
uh you know made claims that were
totally refuted. Just like I'm about to
refute his claim that they ever were the
ones who revealed for example Natants.
He was implying that Natans and K were
both buried and hidden until revealed I
think you said by dissident groups. That
is the mek sock puppets of the Israelis.
But it was your friend David Albbright,
not the Israeli MSAD through the MEK who
revealed Natant's facility. Ask him,
he'll fist fight you over it. He claims
credit. He was first and said, "This is
a facility." However, they were not in
violation of their safeguards agreement
with the IAEA. They were still 6 months
away from introducing any nuclear
material to that facility. And so when
it was revealed, they weren't in
violation of anything. And uh and then
on comm we had a huge fight about this
at the time. The party line came down in
from all the government officials and
the media that they had just exposed the
facility there. Comm is foro same thing.
Uh when in fact that wasn't true. The IA
the the Iranians had announced to the
IAEA that we have built a new facility
here and we are going to introduce
nuclear material into it within six
months. So here's your official
notification. and then a few days later
they just pretended to expose it when it
was the Iranians themselves who had
admitted to it in in uh going along with
their uh uh obligations under their
safeguards agreement. So it's just
completely wrong. Why do they bury him?
They buried them for protection because
clearly the Israelis have indicated
since the 1990s that they consider any
nuclear program in Iran to be the same
thing as an advanced nuclear weapons
program. You're hearing that today. for
them to have a nuclear facility at all
is is equivalent to them going ahead and
breaking out and making a nuclear
weapon. And so, of course, they know
that they have to have it buried to
protect it from Israel. That doesn't
mean that they are trying to get nukes.
It does mean, as I already said, that
they wanted to prove to the world that
they know how to enrich uranium and that
they have facilities buried deeply
enough where if we attack them, that
would incentivize them to making nukes
and then we would might be unable to
stop them without going all the way
toward a regime change, which they're
bluffing, basically betting that we
won't go that far considering how
gigantic their country is and how
mountainous and populous it is compared
to Iraq next door. Now, here's some more
things that he said that weren't true.
So, he said, "Iran has been killing
Americans all this time." Well, that's
almost always a reference to Beirut
1983, which you can read in the book by
Way of Deception by Victor Ostroski, the
former MSAD officer, that the Israelis
knew that they were building that truck
bomb to bomb the Marines with and
withheld that information from the
United States and said that's what they
get for sticking their big noses in. And
uh that is in the book by way of
deception by Victor Ostroski. And by the
way, the Israelis were friends with them
at with Iran at the time in uh all
through the 1980s. And it was just a
couple of years later when Ronald Reagan
sold Iran missiles and using the
Israelis as cutouts to do so when he
switched sides temporarily in the Iran
Iraq war. And so that's just and that
was in 1983. If Ronald re if Ronald
Reagan can sell a missiles a year or two
years after that, three years after
that, then surely the United States and
the Ayatollah can bury the hatchet from
that. And no one's ever even, I don't
believe, ever really proven that Tyrron
ordered that. It was a Shiite militia
backed by Iran that sort of proto
Hezbala that did that attack that killed
those Marines. Um, and if there's some
responsibility for then damn them, like
if there's direct responsibility for
that, not just their support for the
group, then damn them for that. But
that's still no reason in the world to
say that we can't get along with them
now when that was in the same year
Return of the Jedi came out. Okay. And
then uh the other one, and this is
always referred to, you'll see this on
TV news today. Anyone watching this,
turn on TV news and you'll hear them say
Iran killed 600 Americans in Iraq War
II. But that's a lie. There was a
gigantic propaganda campaign by Dick
Cheney and his co-conspirators David
Petraeus and Michael Gordon of the New
York Times, now at the Wall Street
Journal, where they lied and lied like
the devil for about five six months in
early 2007, that every time a Shiite set
off a roadside bomb, these new improved
copper cord enhanced uh uh they're
called EFPs, explosively formed
penetrators. Now, anytime that happened,
Iran did it, which is what George Bush
called shorthanding it. Yeah. In other
words, just implying the lie. What
they're saying is Iran backed Mktata
also
also who actually they were fighting the
whole war for him. He remains a powerful
kingmaker in that country this day. He
was part of the United Iraqi alliance.
And in fact, as long as we're taking a
long form here, he was the least Iran
tide of the three major factions in the
United Iraqi alliance in Iraq War II.
The other two major factions were Dawa
and the Supreme Islamic Council and they
had been living in Iran for the last 20
years. They're the ones who came and
took over Baghdad. Muttad als Shiite and
close to Iran, but he's also an Iraqi
nationalist and at times he allied with
the Sunnis and tried to in tried to
limit American and Iranian influence in
the country was more of an Arab and an
Iraqi nationalist. And the Americans
decided they hated him the most, not
because he was the most Iran tied, but
because he was willing to tell us and
them to to get the hell out. And America
was betting that if we backed the same
parties that Iran backed in Iraq War,
that they would eventually end up
needing our money and guns more than
they would need their Iranian friends
and co-religionists and sponsors next
door, which of course did not work out.
And America's had minimal influence in
supermajority Shiite Iraq ever since the
end of Iraq War II. And we can get back
later in the show to how Israel helped
lie us into that horrific war as well.
But the fact of the matter is it was not
Iranians setting off those bombs. And it
was not even Iranians making those
bombs. And I show in my book enough
already. I have a solid dozen sources.
Enough already. Thank you. I have a
solid dozen sources including uh Michael
Gordon's own colleague Alyssa Rubin at
the New York Times and many others where
they found these bomb factories in
Shiite Iraq. They were being made by
Shiite Arab Iraqis. And when they David
Petraeus was going to have a big press
conference and they laid out all the
components, all the reporters gathered
around and they started noticing that
the components said made in UAE, made in
Haditha, that is Iraq. In other words,
there was no evidence whatsoever that
these came from Iran. And then they
called off the press conference and
Steven Hadley, George Bush's second
secret uh national security adviser,
admitted that yeah, we didn't have the
evidence that we needed to uh present
that. And I also quote two one Marine
and one highle army intelligence officer
in there uh who were deeply involved in
Iraq war uh reconfirming that that there
was never any evidence that these bombs
were coming across uh from Iran or
especially that then even if they were
that that was at the direction of the
goods force or the Ayatollah. This was
all just a propaganda campaign because
Dick Cheney and David Petraeus were
trying to give George Bush a reason to
hit IRGC bases and start the war in
2007. And this sounds crazy, but there's
like four major confirming sources for
it. Dick Cheny's national security
adviser, David Wormser, who was the
author of the clean break strategy,
which we're going to talk about today.
David Wormser in 2007 was saying, "We
want to work with the Israelis to start
the war with Iran to force George Bush
to do an end run around George Bush and
force him into the war." And that was
reported originally by Steven Clemens in
the Washington note, but it was later
confirmed in the New York Times and by
the Washington Post reporter Barton
Gelman in his book Angler on Dick Cheney
that there was this huge this was the
end that they were going for was they
were trying so hard to force a war in
2007. And it was the commander of
Sentcom, Admiral Fallon, who said over
my dead body, we are not doing this. And
then a few months later, the National
Intelligence Council put out their NIE
saying that there is no nuclear weapons
program at all. And W. Bush complained
in his memoir lect that in in his story,
it's the Saudi king, his royal highness
Abdullah rather than um Ahoud Dolmer,
but he's saying, "I'm sorry, your
highness majesty. I can't attack Iran's
nuclear program cuz my own intelligence
agency says they don't have a military
program. So, how am I supposed to start
a war with him when my own intelligence
agencies say that? This is what Donald
Trump just did. Start it anyway. Had his
man Rubio say, "Well, screw the
intelligence. I don't care what it says.
We can just do this if we want to." So,
first, let me say on the cover of Enough
Already, devastating. Daniel Ellburg,
outstanding. Daniel L. Davis, essential
Ron Paul, you are respected by a very
large number of people. You have decades
of experience in this. Same thing with
Mark, extremely respected by a very
large number of people, experts. There's
a lot of disagreements here. and we're
going to unfortunately leave a lot of
the disagreements on the table for the
uh aforementioned nuclear scientists to
to deconstruct later. So let's not like
try to every single claim does not have
to be perfectly refuted. Let's just
leave it on the table the statements as
they stand and let's try to also find
things we kind of agree on and try I
know this might be difficult but to
steel man the other side that's the
thing I would love to ask you uh maybe
give Mark a chance to speak a little bit
but to to try to for both of you to try
to steal man the other side so people
who are concerned about uh Iran
developing a nuclear program can you
steal man that case and the same the
people I did in my opening statement
quite frankly I I'm I don't carry any
brief for the Ayatollah. I'm a Texan. I
don't give a damn about what some Shiite
theocrat says about nothing. Right? My
interest is the people of this country
and its future and what's true. And so I
don't mind telling you, even though the
Iranians never said, "We're building a
latent nuclear weapons capability."
That's clearly what they're doing is
showing that they can make a nuke, so
don't make me make a nuke. That has been
their position. Their position has not
been, "I'm making a nuke so I can wipe
Israel off the map." Their position has
been, "Look, if you guys don't attack
us, we could just keep this civilian
program the way it is." And again,
there's always the implication that
they're just building up this uranium
stockpile, but no, they're not. That was
in reaction to one, Donald Trump leaving
the deal in 2018. Two, the assassination
in December of 2020 of the Iranian uh
nuclear scientist Far Cazada or however
you say that, and then in April of 21,
the sabotage at Natans. And there's a
Reuters story that says right after they
sabotaged Natans, that's when the
Ayatollah decided let's enrich up to
60%. Which why stop 30% short of 90%
235?
It's because they're not even making a
threat. They're built they're making
like the most laten up threat a
bargaining chip to negotiate away.
They're trying to put pressure on the
United States to come back to the table.
That's not the same as racing to the
bomb. That's why Marco Rubio says never
mind the intelligence cuz the
intelligence says what I just said.
Yeah. Point made. Let's try let's try if
possible to keep it to like a minute and
two of back and forth. except you know
the problem is we're talking about
nuclear stuff which is all very
complicated and most people don't know
much about it which is what the war
party is relying on that people just
hear nuclear afraid and mushroom cloud
and and give the benefit of the doubt to
the hawks and so we got to get into the
details of this stuff details 100% but I
like the tension between two people with
different perspectives exploring those
details and the more we can go back and
forth the better and there's a lot of
disagreement on the table I personally
enjoy learning from the disagreement I
think that was a very long list of
claims that he made though where I felt
like I had to go down the list as much
as I could cuz there was a lot. I think
you addressed like maybe one or two
claims and it took 15 minutes. So that's
what I'm just commenting on. Let's do
one at a time. I like the tension of the
debate of back and forth. That's that's
all. Mark, do you want to do you want to
comment on stuff a little bit here?
Which pick pick whichever topic you want
to go with here. Yeah, there's a lot
there. So um just a couple things I
think that are worth your viewers
knowing because Scott's right. I mean
the nuclear physics is complicated and
it's also important. Um so the Iranians
have assembled about they say about 15
to 17 bombs worth of 60% enriched
uranium. And I think it's always
important for your listeners to
understand what does this all mean
enriched to 3.67% to 20% to 60% and then
to 90% weapons grade uranium like what
what does this actual process mean? Um
first of all obviously enriched uranium
is a key capability to develop a nuclear
weapon. It can also be used for other
purposes, civilian purposes and research
purposes. You can use it to power a
nuclear submarine. So let let's just if
you don't mind if I could just break it
down. That's fascinating. Yes. Yeah.
Just just I think it's again important
just to understand the the sort of
basics before we jump into the the
allegations and claims and counter
claims. So if you're going to enrich to
3.67%
enrich uranium um that's for civilian
nuclear power, right? But when you do
that, you've basically 70% of what you
need to get to weapons grade. Right? So
you you've done all the steps, 70% of
the steps in order to get to weapons
grade uranium. If you enrich to 20%, you
are now at 90% of what you need to get
to weapons grade uranium. Now why would
you need 20%, you may need it for
something like a research reactor,
right? And so medical isotopes. Iran has
correct. Iran has uh a tan research
reactor for medical isotopes. Now you
can by the way you can buy those
isotopes from abroad or you can or you
can produce them at home. If you're
going to enrich to 60%
right then you've done 99% of what you
need to get to weapons grade uranium and
then n% is quote weapons grade uranium.
By the way you can use 60% to actually
deliver a crude nuclear device. Um that
that has been done in the past but you
want to get to quote 90% that's that's
weapons grade uranium as Scott's
defining it. But just again clarify the
these huge stock piles of 60% that Iran
has accumulated right this 1617 bombs
worth of 60% is 99% of what they need
for weapons grade. So I I just wanted to
explain that. Yeah. But when you say
you're saying if you include the mining,
the refining of the ore into yellow
cake, the transformation of that into
uranium hexaflloride gas, the driving of
it in a truck over to the uh centrifuge
and then spinning it. This is where we
get this 90% number from, right? In in
place of 90% enriched uranium or or 80%
enriched uranium, it's 90% of the way on
some chart that includes picking up a
shovel and beginning to mine, right?
Like so again, just to clarify, I I just
think it's important to understand the
definition of terms um to get what once
you have 60% enrich uranium, you've done
99% of all the steps, including some of
the steps that Scott's talking about.
You've done 99% of what you need to have
weapons grade uranium. That's just
meaningless. Why is that meaningless?
Well, as I've already established
numerous times here under the JCPOA,
they shipped out every bit of their
enriched uranium stockpile. The French
turned it into fuel rods and then
shipped it back. That's the deal they're
trying to get the US back into and were
obviously clearly willing to do. And
again, the only reason they were
enriching up to 60% was to put the
pressure on the Americans to go ahead
and get back into the deal. And bad bet.
It gave him an excuse to bomb based on
the idea that people are going to listen
to him. Pretend that somehow that's 99%
of the way to the bomb when you're
including Yeah. driving to the mine and
mining it and converting it to yellow
cake and all these other things. I you
have a deliverable nuclear weapon. So
you need the weapons grade uranium. And
just to repeat, they have multiple bombs
worth of the 60% enriched uranium, which
again is 99% of the steps you need to
take for weapons grade. So they're
they're very close to to weapons grade.
It's that's 1% more that they need to do
to enrich to weapons grade. The second
aspect of a deliverable nuclear weapon
is obviously the delivery vehicle and
those are the missiles. And according to
the DNI and and other credible sources,
Iran has got the largest missile
infantry in the Middle East. um 3,000
missiles before the war began and uh at
least the ballistic missiles 2,000
capable of reaching Israel. So there's
no doubt that Iran has the ability once
they have the weapons grade uranium and
the warhead to fix that to a missile and
deliver that uh certainly to hit Israel,
hit our Gulf neighbors, hit southern
Europe. They also have a active
intercontinental ballistic missile
program, an ICBM program which
ultimately is designed not to hit the
Israelis or the Gulfies, but to hit
deeper into Europe and ultimately to
target the United States. So, so let's
just understand the missile program. I
think it's an important part of it. The
third leg of the stool and and Scott has
already alluded to this and we've had
some debate on this and I think we
should talk about it what it really
means in detail is you've got to develop
a warhead right or a crude nuclear
device. And according to estimates from
both US government sources and uh
nuclear experts, it would take about
four to 6 months for Iran to develop a
crude nuclear device. Right? This is
something that you wouldn't use a
missile to deliver, but you would use a
plane or a ship. uh and it would take
somewhere in the neighborhood of about a
year and a half to deliver or to develop
a warhead. And that's to affix to the
missile. So sort of the three legs of
the