Watch “The Debate” featuring me vs. pro-Israel mouthpiece Lawrence J. Korb at Press TV.
Press TV has conducted an interview with Dr. Kevin Barrett, Senior Editor at Veterans Today, to discuss the issue of negotiations on Iran’s nuclear energy program. The following is a rough transcription of the interview with Kevin Barrett.
Press TV: Mr. Barrett, are you optimistic that eventually a deal could be reached and what are the main obstacles in your perspective?
Barrett: Well, a deal should be reached. There is no reason not to. In fact, the whole so-called crisis over Iran’s nuclear programs is really a gigantic hoax.
They should really be meeting in Geneva to talk about the countries that actually do have dangerous nuclear weapons and pose a threat to their neighbors. That would start with Israel which is the most aggressive outlaw nation on earth which has more than 400 nuclear weapons stored; that would include the United States, Russia, China, India, Pakistan and the other nuclear countries. Those are the countries that under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty are supposed to be reducing and eliminating their nuclear arsenals.
Iran is the one country on earth that has a ruling from its Supreme Leader that nuclear weapons are haram. They are absolutely forbidden. Therefore, Iran is the last nation on earth that one really needs to worry about developing nuclear weapons. And in fact, Iran is a signatory in good standing of the Non-Proliferation Treaty unlike Israel and this is a big tempest in a teapot. There is no evidence whatsoever that Iran is building any nuclear weapons. So there is no reason not to make this deal because Iran does not want nuclear weapons. All that needs to be arranged is a way to get the western powers to stop harassing Iran under false pretences. And that should be easy.
Both sides can easily agree to something that will assure everyone that Iran is not developing nuclear weapons and it would be nice if it also included some kind of roadmap to getting the genuinely dangerous and aggressive nuclear powers - starting with Israel - to getting rid of their nuclear weapons as well.
So I guess I am optimistic that such a deal will be reached in the short run on Iran but I am not so optimistic that the world’s dangerous nuclear armed powers are going to be willing to do their part in living up to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and reducing and eliminating their nuclear stockpiles.
Press TV: What about that, Mr. Barrett, that as our guest [Lawrence J. Korb] has said, he does not see Israel as being a danger to peace as far as dealing with nuclear weapons?
It still seems that many people and entities point to Iran being a main problem though Iran has shown nothing but basically trying to seek a peaceful nuclear program. Why do we continue to hear that Iran is trying to go after nuclear weapons when it has totally been under IAEA inspections and nothing has ever been said or proven otherwise than what Iran is saying is trying to seek nuclear energy?
Barrett: Well, Mr. Korb is being a bit misleading here arguing that Russia and China are somehow pressuring Iran and its nuclear program.
In fact, all of the pressure behind this attempt to harass Iran about a non-existent nuclear weapons program is coming from one place and that is Tel Aviv.
The fact is that the only reason that John Kerry and the Americans are putting so much pressure on Iran is that they themselves are being pressured by the immensely powerful Zionist lobby here in the United States. The same Zionist lobby that has been at the top of the network of the deep state criminal actors here in the US stealing plutonium from many different sites here in the US and taking it to Israel, possibly being involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy fifty years ago because John F. Kennedy was dedicated to shutting down Israel’s incipient nuclear program.
He was at war with Ben-Gurion over that nuclear program and then he got shot down. We had the Karen Silkwood case when Karen Silkwood was poisoned by Kerr-McGee, a nuclear energy company, because they had stolen fifty pounds of plutonium.
The criminal mafia that is mixed in with the intelligence services here in the US that is tied into Israel stole fifty pounds of plutonium and sent it over to Israel and that is by far from the only time that such a thing has happened.
So we have this criminal mob which is based in Tel Aviv, which controls much of the political process here in the US that is the only significant actor that is putting all this pressure on Iran. It is because it owns the US and the US owns NATO and the US and NATO together are the world’s most powerful force. That is the force behind this hypocritical pressure on Iran.
Press TV: On the one hand, we have Mr. Korb [the other guest of the program] quoting Ayatollah Khamenei and saying as far as how he talks about the Israeli entity that he accepts, but on the other hand, when Ayatollah Khamenei says in absolutely no way would Iran ever go after nuclear weapons, it is forbidden and haram and absolutely not needed. That seems to be overlooked in the international community.
Why is that the case, sir?
Barrett: That is because what Mr. Korb is hiding and what all of other Zionist propagandists are hiding is the fact that the entire Middle East agrees with Ayatollah Khamenei that the regime occupying Jerusalem is absolutely illegitimate. It has never been legitimized from the get-go. There was not the Security Council but a UN resolution that recommended the partition of Palestine in 1948 but that was never ratified by the Security Council.
So there has been a non-stop occupation which many of us will call a genocide and arguably a brutal ethnic cleansing going on in Palestine over this period. And the fact is that virtually the entire Middle East is in agreement that this regime occupying Palestine is illegitimate.
Now Iran wants its independence with its Islamic Revolution of 1979 and it now has a government that is independent enough to say what everyone in the Middle East believes. Now this is what really is behind the harassment. The harassment on Iran has nothing to do with any nuclear weapons. Iran is not building nuclear weapons. Everyone knows that. The CIA has certified that repeatedly.
What is going on is that the Zionists who own the United States, who took it over in a hostile coup d'état by murdering 3,000 Americans and blowing up the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001, are using their lock, their death grip on the United States to get the world to harass Iran under false pretences.
Their problem is not with nuclear weapons. Their problem is that the people like Ayatollah Khamenei and the previous president, Ahmadinejad, are speaking the truth. And that is the same truth that is accepted by virtually everyone in the region which puts the future of the genocidal regime in Tel Aviv in jeopardy. So they are lashing out in any way they can to harass Iran. And that is the bottom line of what this is really all about.
Press TV: Mr. Korb just talked about the previous agreement when Mr. Ahmadinejad got back to Iran, but the reality was basically the American’s response to it immediately with sanctions.
Does the United States really want to see this nuclear fiasco taken care of? Or is this something that is used to continue to mount more pressure on the government of the Islamic Republic?
Barrett: I think Mr. Korb did mischaracterize what happened in 2003 that was an Iranian offer to come to a kind of agreement that amounted to making tremendous concessions and basically giving the Americans what they had asked for. And the Americans would not accept it. So they would not even accept their own terms which was because at that time the US was waging this psychotic ultra-Zionist Likudnik war on terror in the wake of the Mossad’s 9/11 false flag operation. That is the real history of 2003.
But as today, I think that everything has changed. It seems that Saudi Arabia has made an alliance with Israel to try to maintain these two illegitimate and utterly outmoded regimes.
We are living in a post-racist, post-colonialist, post-feudal, and post-monarchical era. You do not have feudal regimes like this ludicrous Wahabi regime in Saudi Arabia anywhere else. And you do not have racist genocidal regimes like the Zionist regime anywhere else. South Africa is gone. And it was not nearly as racist as Israel is.
So these two completely outmoded regimes that are doing unacceptable things in today’s world, Saudi Arabia and Israel, have formed an alliance. They jointly sponsored this brutal Pinochet-style coup d'état in Egypt. So they have taken over Egypt temporarily. Mr. Korb is right.
And this reactionary alliance which is also tied in with the ultra-reactionaries here in the US, the Christian Zionist, the craziest most reactionary Neanderthals you could imagine and the Zionist lobby itself. All this folks has teamed up and are trying to push the Middle East back into the age of Genghis Khan or worse. And the progressive forces in the world are not going to allow it.
And I think they are going to reach some kind of agreement on this bogus nuclear issue with Iran. And I think the world is going to keep moving forward and the Middle East is going to keep moving forward. And these regimes in Israel and Saudi Arabia are going to be left behind.
MAY/HMV