Part 1 of 2
Boobytraps, Bombs & Blowback
Ralph Nader
RalphNaderRadioHour.com
Sep 28, 2024
https://www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/p/b ... d-blowback
Ralph welcomes Middle East expert and executive VP of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, Trita Parsi, to fill us in on the consequences of Israel boobytrapping pagers and walkie-talkies in Lebanon and how those tactics have the potential to blow back on us in the United States. Then we welcome back surgeon and humanitarian, Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, who has worked in Gaza during the Israeli assault, to update us on his efforts to get the Biden Administration to convince Israel to stop the killing.
Trita Parsi is the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and the co-founder and former President of the National Iranian American Council. He is an expert on US-Iranian relations, Iranian foreign policy, and the geopolitics of the Middle East, and has worked for the Swedish Permanent Mission to the UN, where he served in the Security Council, handling the affairs of Afghanistan, Iraq, Tajikistan, and Western Sahara, and in the General Assembly’s Third Committee, addressing human rights in Iran, Afghanistan, Myanmar, and Iraq. He has authored three books on US foreign policy in the Middle East, with a particular focus on Iran and Israel— Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel and the United States, A Single Roll of the Dice – Obama’s Diplomacy with Iran, and Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran and the Triumph of Diplomacy.
We're in a very sad situation in which we have a president who has been sitting on the front lines of American foreign policy for one-fifth of America's history, who thinks that he knows everything best, and clearly doesn't seem to be listening to anyone. And there's plenty of discontent inside the Biden administration itself—and people appear to have just given up and are waiting for the elections—but there's no clear signs yet that there won't necessarily be much of a change even after that.
Trita Parsi: Let's first remember that if any other entity had done this to Israel—or to us—we would not have hesitated for a second. We would have called it an act of terrorism, and we would have called it an act of war.
Dr. Feroze Sidhwa is a trauma and critical care surgeon as well as a Northern California Veterans Affairs general surgeon, and he is Associate Professor of Surgery at the California Northstate University College of Medicine. Dr. Sidhwa served at the European Hospital in Khan Younis in March and April of this year, and he has done prior humanitarian work in Haiti, the West Bank, Ukraine, and Zimbabwe. Dr. Sidhwa and 45 other American doctors and nurses who have served in Gaza recently sent a letter exhorting President Biden, VP Harris, and First Lady Dr. Jill Biden to effect an immediate ceasefire.
It's hard to appreciate, but really literally everything in Gaza that makes a place, a society, has been destroyed. I think of it in three levels— at the very base is agriculture, food production, and housing, at the level above that is healthcare, and at the level above that is things that are for a higher level of society, education, arts, industry, whatever. That top level is gone. Literally every university in Gaza has been obliterated, physically destroyed…The hospital system is almost completely useless right now…the functionality of the hospitals is very little more than a four walled space in which people can walk into and ask for a doctor to put bandages on them. And then even the lowest level…something like 85 or 90 % of the water sanitation and hygiene infrastructure in Gaza has been destroyed.
Dr. Feroze Sidhwa: This is just outrageous. I mean, why are we doing this even to ourselves? Is it worth corrupting the entire executive department of the United States so that we can murder more children? Is that what Americans want? I don't think so.
Dr. Feroze Sidhwa: Let's talk about Lebanon itself, not just Hezbollah. This is war on Lebanon—that has a dysfunctional government, to be sure— but it is a state that the U.S. is allied with in a way, supplying modest weapons to the Lebanese army, and France has had long relations with Lebanon going back to the mandate period. In the U.S., this is a whole new constituency where they're losing relatives and friends.
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Transcript
I'm Tom Morello, and you're listening to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. Welcome to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. My name is Steve Scrovan, along with my co-host David Feldman and the rest of the team. Hello, David. Good morning. And the man of the hour, Ralph Nader. Hello, Ralph. Hello.
Will any of these politicians running for office stand for increasing Social Security benefits? that have been frozen for 40 years and make the rich pay for it by higher Social Security tax on higher income Americans. Don't hold your breath. We have a jam-packed program today. Our first guest will be Trita Parsi,
the Executive Vice President of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and an expert on U.S.-Iranian relationships, Iranian foreign policy, and the geopolitics of the Middle East. Ralph is going to speak to him about the United States role in Israel's relentless aggression, Israel's continued assaults on the Palestinian population in Gaza,
and the new front they've opened up by attacking Lebanon. We look forward to his analysis of the likely repercussions in the region, as well as the risk of blowback in the U.S. Next up, we welcome back Dr. Feroz Sidwa. He's a trauma surgeon and medical school professor who has done extensive humanitarian work abroad. Earlier this year,
he worked at the European Hospital in Khan Yunus, and Dr. Sidwa and 45 other American doctors and nurses who have served in Gaza sent a letter exhorting President Biden, Vice President Harris, and First Lady Dr. Jill Biden to effect an immediate ceasefire. We'll get an update from Dr.
Sidwa on what response these physicians have received from the Biden administration. As always, somewhere in the middle, we'll check in with our ubiquitous corporate crime reporter, Russell Mokhyber. But first, Israel is widening its war on Gaza into Lebanon. What are we going to do about it? David?
Trita Parsi is the Executive Vice President of the Quincy Institute for Responsible
Statecraft and the co-founder and former president of the National Iranian American Council. He is an expert on U.S.-Iranian relations,
Iranian foreign policy, and the geopolitics of the Middle East. Welcome to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour, Trita Parsi.
Thank you so much, David. Great pleasure to be with you all.
Welcome indeed, Trita. I just saw your recent post on the invasion of Lebanon, which is what it really is, air invasion, booby trapping, pagers, two-way radios, and other instruments that were infiltrated. And on September 17th, you said, quote, the more Biden has armed Israel, defended Israel, made excuses for Israel when it has killed Americans,
vetoed resolutions at the UN and accused American critics of Israeli genocide. of being anti-Semitic, the more dismissive of U.S. wishes Israel's become. And like clockwork, after Israel has attacked Lebanon or any other country in the region, Biden will launch an extensive campaign to stop the attacked entities from retaliating,
while doing nothing to truly prevent Israel from escalating in the first place. And on September 23, listeners, he posted, every time Israel escalates and bombs more countries. Biden calls for restraint, yet sends more U.S. troops to the region to protect Israel. Israel can attack, but not be attacked. The media calls this Biden's efforts to stabilize matters.
In reality, he ensures escalation. And finally, on September 22, you said, quote, this isn't just genocide, referring to Gaza. It is a genocide of children. Only way to stop it for the U.S. to stop sending Israel more bombs, end quote. So let's go to the present news. In the last week, over 4,000 Lebanese, most of them civilians,
were injured by booby traps, pagers, two-way radios, solar panels, etc., all coming from the Israeli regime. Several dozen were killed. And after that, did Israel stop? No. It continued bombing something like 1,600 targets throughout Lebanon, and already it has killed hundreds of Lebanese, and many of them women and children.
And one report out of Beirut said it's almost one half of the total casualty toll from when Israel invaded Lebanon in 2006 for a 34-day war. Now, Leon Panetta... as former Director of the CIA, former Secretary of Defense on CBS News Sunday called the Israeli attack of pagers and two-way radios terrorism.
And he did because it's opened up a whole new window of risk across the world, because who doesn't have pagers and two-way radios and computers and iPhones? So people are dreading it. And it's quite interesting. I'd like to hear your voice on this.
He doesn't make a statement like that and say now the whole supply chain around the world is at risk. He doesn't make a statement like that unless the CIA and Pentagon wanted him to make a statement like that. So how do you look at this latest escalation, which is not only geographical but also technological?
Well, first of all, it's a great pleasure to be with you. And I'm fortunate that we're talking under these terrible, terrible circumstances. In regards to Leon Panetta's comments, I think let's first remember that if any other entity had done this to Israel or to us, we would not have hesitated for a second.
We would have called it an act the terrorism, and we would have called it an act of war. And in that sense, I am pleased to see that someone like Panetta, given his establishment credentials, also made that quite clear on TV. And I do tend to agree with you. I don't think he went out on his skis.
I think there is a recognition inside of the American defense establishment that the degree to which Biden has been deferential to Netanyahu and to Israel is beyond anything we have seen in U.S.-Israeli history. And it is ultimately a great danger to the U.S. itself, not only because of the risk of essentially legitimizing these methods that are in
contradiction of international law, and we would call it terrorism if others did it, but also because Biden has shown an unbelievable, shocking degree of tolerance for the escalation risks and the escalation that Israel has engaged in, knowing quite well that it is constantly risking, actually designed to drag the United States into a war,
a war that the United States should not be fighting, has absolutely no interest clear red lines much earlier on and enforced them to prevent itself from constantly being on the verge of getting dragged into yet another war in the Middle East. But Biden has been unbelievably tolerant of what Netanyahu has been doing and
leading him towards this war. And I wouldn't be surprised that there's plenty of folks in the defense establishment that are quite uneasy, if not unhappy about it.
Well, do you foresee in the next few days a ground war with Israeli soldiers? They've been planning all this. This is not something new. They have all kinds of surveillance, all kinds of spies in Lebanon. They have all kinds of total dominance. This media keeps referring to Hezbollah as a powerful force. It's a totally weak force.
They have no air defenses. They just sent 140 missiles into Israel. Fortunately for Israelis, no deaths, six minor injuries. At the same time, the Israelis have complete control over the skies, complete control over surveillance, over the spies, the informants in Lebanon. and an endless supply of weapons.
And it seems like the differential in armed force between Hezbollah and Israel is about what has been between Hamas and the Hamas rockets, which hardly caused any damage, and the Israeli armed forces. Why do you think the media is exaggerating Hezbollah? They've taken tremendous losses. They've been infiltrated. They've been booby-trapped. Their commanders have been killed.
Israel seems to know through their espionage where apartment buildings are in, where they have meetings in South Beirut in order to eliminate them. Why is the media, which, by the way, the Post and Times have not had a single editorial condemning the booby-trapping and the act of terrorism in Lebanon the way Leon Panetta, former Secretary of Defense,
did on CBS? Not a single editorial. Why do you think they're exaggerating what is really a very weak Hezbollah? They don't have many cards to play, and that's been quite clear in the last week and a half.
So I think, on the one hand, you have an exaggeration of Hezbollah's capabilities in order to portray a constant situation in which Israel is in battle, to kind of sustain the image that Israel is the underdog, even though that does not correspond to reality in any way, shape or form.
And it's used to further justify American support for Israel, armaments, et cetera, et cetera. I do think at the same time that there is a difference, of course, between the capabilities of Hamas and Hezbollah. And we saw that in 2006, in which the Israelis did fail with their ground invasion.
And since then, of course, Hezbollah's capabilities have also advanced. But you're quite right. They don't have any air defenses. They don't have any of those things. What they do have, however, which makes them quite different from Hamas, is an ability to actually penetrate Israeli air defenses. Because even though there's not been any reported death,
the Israelis have imposed military censorship on the damage that Hezbollah has inflicted on Israel at military sites. Because it's quite clear at this point that Hezbollah has only targeted Israeli military sites, not targeted any civilian sites. unlike the Israelis who are bombing just everywhere. But the Israelis have put in a military census group on that.
So we don't have an entirely clear image of exactly what has happened. What I think we can see, however, based on the little reporting that has damage to Israeli military installations. But most importantly, both them and the Iranians have shown their ability that they actually can get through Arrow One, Arrow Two, David's Sling, Iron Dome, Patriot.
And those are billions of dollars of investments, frankly, billions of dollars of American taxpayers' money that has been given to Israel that ultimately provides a degree of protection, but is in no way, shape, or form a perfect shield for the Iranians.
It's true that Hezbollah has advanced missiles to use, but their hands are tied. They've used the least advanced missiles, and most of them have been shot down by the Israelis.
They don't want a war. I mean, after 11 months, it's absolutely clear. It was clear in the first month. Hezbollah doesn't want a war with Israel. Iran doesn't want a war with Israel. The Houthis are a bit of a different story. But Israel, from the outset, had plans for invasion of of Lebanon.
The Biden administration claims that they dissuaded the Israeli government from doing so. But the early mobilization that we saw was largely geared towards invading Israel. Right now, they have called out the orders for mobilization of three divisions. This would still take some time before those are ready.
But three divisions is not enough for an actual ground invasion of Lebanon. That's actually the amount of troops they had last time around. And that was an utter failure in 34 days. So if they're planning for a larger ground invasion, we have not yet seen clear signs of the preparation for that.
But as you pointed out quite correctly, this is an air invasion. They're targeting plenty of sites, all the way up to Beirut. Beirut itself. This is all clearly a declaration of war without the actual declaration. Now, there's plenty of rumors flying around right now that there is a potential 21-day cessation of hostilities that is being prepared.
And it may be achieved in the next couple of hours or days, that would obviously be quite welcomed by particularly the civilian population in Lebanon, who has been suffering tremendously. The vast majority of those killed in Lebanon have been civilians. According to the Lebanese health minister, who is now part of Hezbollah,
it is actually all of the casualties so far in the last two days of bombings actually been civilians.
Well, let's talk about Lebanon itself, not just Hezbollah. This is war on Lebanon that has a dysfunctional government, to be sure. But it is a state that the U.S. is allied with, in a way, supplying modest weapons to the weakest Lebanese army. And France has had long relations with Lebanon, going back to the mandate period.
In the U.S., this is a whole new constituency where they're losing relatives and friends, Lebanese Americans. include retired generals, major business figures, major academic figures, major religious officials. Do you think they're mobilizing to put pressure on the Biden administration to stop this? I haven't seen many signs. We're talking with Trita Potosi of the Quincy Institute, executive director.
So we have seen in the last 11 months a tremendous amount of public pressure on the Biden administration to end the war in Gaza, stop sending shipments of weapons, stop protecting Israel and enabling Israel to continue zero responsiveness from the Biden administration to these demands.
And these are demands that are coming from people that are in many ways at the very center of Biden's winning coalition from 2020. And he's been completely disregarding it. So I sense that a lot of folks have just given up on the idea that Biden is going to be responsive to any of these type of pressures.
The question is if pressures on Kamala Harris can have some impact. that she gave a very different message and tone in the way that she spoke to Israel and about Israel. But since then, she has quickly backed off of that. And what happened at the DNC, of course, is well known to everyone,
in which not even a Palestinian American was allowed to speak at the convention. So we're in a very sad situation in which we have a president who has been sitting on the front lines of American foreign policy for one fifth of America's history, who thinks that he knows everything best and clearly doesn't seem to be listening to
the Biden administration itself. And people appear to have just given up and are waiting for the elections. But there's no clear signs yet that there will necessarily be much of a change even after that.
I want to ask you about another aspect of Biden's abdication, and that is he hasn't even demanded from Netanyahu to open Gaza up to U.S. reporters who are banned, along with all foreign reporters and Israeli reporters, from going in as war correspondents. and independently covering what's going on in Gaza.
And this is pretty extraordinary because all Biden has to say to Netanyahu is, you open him up tomorrow, American taxpayers want to know what's going on there. How do you explain this pathetic, pitiless abdication by this weak president of ours in this issue?
It's absolutely shocking, I have to say. It's acting against his own self-interest. complete application, as you put it. But it's not just his application. I would say that it's also the application of much of the democratic establishment that has been going along with this.
Let me interject here. In July, the mainstream corporate press put a full-page ad demanding access to Gaza. We're talking about The Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, AP, BBC, Agent France, all the major professional associations, 76 signatures. So here Biden has to support the entire corporate press. Open up Gaza.
Why are you allowing Netanyahu to block reporters from going into Gaza, which he's done for years, by the way, including Israeli reporters, from freely reporting?
Don't you think it would change the dynamics of what the Israelis could do in Gaza? Absolutely. And this is part of the reason why, of course, the administration doesn't seem to be pressing for it. In fact, it was even reported. I believe it was in Politico.
that prior to the six-day ceasefire that we had last November around Thanksgiving, as you recall, in which there was six days of a ceasefire in Gaza, a lot of the hostages were released during this period, that the Biden administration hesitated about going along with the ceasefire because they were fearing that once there was a ceasefire,
journalists would get into Gaza and they would see the carnage. And seeing the carnage, reporting the carnage would then further fuel opposition amongst Biden's own democratic base to the war. So the administration is well aware of what's going on. They have an interest themselves in hiding it from the American public.
And we saw just the other day, ProPublica had an absolutely stunning piece that revealed that the State Department's own investigations show that clearly the Israelis were preventing foods from coming in and that this violated U.S. law and that this would mean that there would be consequences and the United States needed to prevent further arms sales, et cetera,
because of American law. And then Tony Blinken goes a couple of days later and testifies to the contrary and essentially lies to Congress about what the evidence is and what the conclusion and analysis of the State Department itself has been on this point. So they're as complacent as Netanyahu, and as a result,
have an interest in hiding as much as Netanyahu has.
Let's go to the undercount. Everybody knows there's a vast undercount, and Hamas doesn't want the real count because they don't want to be assailed by their own people for not being able to protect them and provide shelters. Of course, Netanyahu likes an undercount. More and more, it seems there's over 300,000 deaths.
There is absolutely no doubt, I would say, that there is an undercount. Whether it is the Lancet estimation was to about 186,000 was a conservative estimation, but it was up until June. Newer numbers based on the same analysis would put it exactly where you put it, somewhere around 300,000. Let's put that in context.
of what we know happened in Ukraine and how strongly Biden administration reacted to that, very quick to call it war crimes, very quick to call it a genocide, calling out the Russians for shooting and bombing schools and hospitals, finding that to be absolutely unacceptable. But when the Israelis are doing it, it's a completely different story.
In Ukraine, in over two and a half years, about seven hundred children have been killed. None of them should have been killed. This was an illegal invasion. But in Gaza, we're talking about more than 10,000 in 11 months. And the reaction of the Biden administration is diametrically opposed.
There is a reason why the Biden administration more or less has stopped using the word or the term rules-based international order, a term that they absolutely love, the used it consistently and constantly on Ukraine, they have more or less stopped using it since October 7th because the hypocrisy, the double standard is just so blatant.
So they themselves have come to recognize that they're no longer using that term.
Well, the death toll in Gaza now exceeds the combined death toll in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Dresden, which was 240,000 during World War II. Before we get to the biggest issue, as we conclude, which is blowback, which is being assessed now intensively in the CIA, NSA, and Department of Defense. That's their word, blowback against the U.S.
by what we're supporting and destroying over there, whole extended families wiped out. Give our listeners a minute and a half on why Iran fears the U.S., starting with the overthrow of their prime minister.
So the history between the United States and Iran tends to start in the American mind in 1979, when the Iranian students take American hostages from the embassy for 444 days. In the Iranian mind, it starts back in 1953, because that's when the United States overthrew the democratically elected prime minister of Iran. Iran was a
embryonic democracy at the time, gave the Shah all powers, and he ended up actually becoming a much, much more brutal dictator after the coup and reigned for another 25 years. Since then, of course, both countries have a long list of sins against each other. The United States did support Saddam Hussein during the Iraq-Iran war.
It was seen partly as a revenge against what the Iranians had done with the host. But since the mid-1990s, Iran has been under a tremendous amount of sanctions by the United States that has devastated their economy. The United States has bases all around Iran. We've seen the assassination of generals, including Soleimani, etc.
Threats of war with Iran were daily on the news in the United States in the 2000s. Every day there was a debate, should we bomb Iran, should we not bomb Iran? So the Iranians perceived the United States as their number one threat, the fear of invasion, the fear of regime change,
the fear of what happened during the Trump administration, which the Trump administration was deliberately seeking to destabilize the country, and to a certain extent actually succeeded in doing so. And fully backing Israel's sabotage inside Iran. Oh, yeah. The United States was part of the Stuxnet, for instance.
Of course, the Israelis have done a lot of other assassinations and sabotage inside of Iran. The extent to which the U.S. has been involved is perhaps unclear, but certainly the U.S. has not been particularly objecting to it. You have right now Now, a new president in Iran who has brought back the team that negotiated the JCPOA,
the Iran nuclear deal that was negotiated between the U.S. under Obama, Iran, and a couple of other countries, they're sending very clear signals that they want to go back to it. They want the U.S. to go back to it since the U.S. left it, and they're willing to rein negotiated. They're willing to go with a new deal.
It doesn't have to be the exact same deal as before. Clear signals of wanting talks. We are not seeing any reciprocity right now, of course, because of the elections. But it's also unclear to me as to whether a Harris administration or certainly a Trump administration would actually pick up on the opportunity that exists to be
able to reduce tensions with Iran.
Let's go back to blowback now, which is the fear by the defense establishment in the U.S. that the war is going to come to the U.S. in terms of retaliation, like 9-11 or worse. What's the Quincy Institute knowledge about all that?
Well, the degree to which Biden's support for Israel's slaughter in Gaza has angered people in the Middle East and beyond, isolated the United States on being comprehended in the U.S. right now. And I fear that we will see blowback. We will see attacks. We will see other measures against the United States.
And it will very much be because of what has happened in Gaza, particularly when the full picture of the human suffering in Gaza comes out. This is part of the reason I am so stunned care about Palestinian lives. And I do believe that he doesn't really seem to care about that at all.
He doesn't seem to have the capacity to have empathy for the Palestinians. He shouldn't, nevertheless, care about American lives. And I think what he's doing in Gaza and increasingly in Lebanon is also putting the United States in danger.
We've been speaking with Prita Parasi, the executive director of the Quincy Institute in Washington, D.C. Before we conclude, Prita, is there anything else you'd like to say that we haven't asked you about?
No, I think this was a great conversation. I just reemphasized the last point. I think the most important point from the American perspective is to make sure that we don't get dragged into another war, unnecessary war in the Middle East. That certainly does not serve our interests.
And I fear that the approach that the Biden administration has pursued is one that is putting us constantly on the verge of getting dragged in. And we're getting in an even more dangerous situation right now. And for that reason alone, this absolutely has to be stopped. Do you see things as bad or worse under a Trump regime?
It's a tough question, but I would have to say this. I don't think Trump would have any empathy whatsoever with the Palestinians. I don't see him necessarily having it with a lot of other Americans. I do think he would have taken the escalation risk more seriously because he does
seem to be very disinclined to get dragged into wars that doesn't serve his personal interests, and this one I don't think does. So this, I think, is a very crucial difference between the two of them. But in many other ways, he could have also been worse.
And how can people get more information from the Quincy Institute? Can you give us the website slowly?
Yes, it's Quincy Institute. The website is q-u-i-n-c-y-i-n-s-t, short for institute, dot org.
Thank you very much, Trita Parsi, Executive Director of the Quincy Institute in Washington, D.C. To be continued. Thank you so much. We've been speaking with Trita Parsi. We will link to his work at ralphnaderradiohour.com. Up next, we welcome back Dr. Feroz Sidwa.