Clinton's
Remarks about Iran, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
This page contains a recording and a transcript of a discussion
between President Clinton and Charlie Rose held at The World Economic Forum in
Davos, Switzerland sometime between January 26 and 30, 2005.
Click here to hear an mp3 file of Clinton speaking about Iran at
Davos (mp3 file, 6mb).
The original video from which this audio file
was made can be found (in streaming RealPlayer or Windows Media formats)
here at the World Economic Forum Web site. [Hat tip:
religion of bacon.] An accurate transcription can be found
here at the EIR site (which is owned by the LaRouche
organization, with which we disavow any connection; be forewarned that other
portions of the EIR site contain or link to offensive material).
[Hat tip:
Kragar (Proud to be Kafir).] Here's a slightly improved transcription, based
primarily on the EIR transcription linked to above (a few words may be missing
here and there, especially in portions of the talk where Clinton repeats himself
or verbally stumbles):
Rose:
(Referring to the Iraqi
elections) Do you have confidence that this government, uh, will, as they
write the constitution, will not be a mirror-image of the Iranian theocracy?
Clinton: Oh yeah. Yeah -- the Shi'ites have been pretty smart
about that. And if you look at the Iranian -- Iran's a whole different kettle of
fish, but it's a sad story that really began in the 1950s when the United States
deposed Mr. Mossadegh, who was an elected parliamentary democrat, and brought
the Shah back in [Rose says "CIA" in the background] and then he was overturned
by the Ayatollah Khomeini, driving us into the arms of one Saddam Hussein. Most
of the terrible things Saddam Hussein did in the 1980s he did with the full,
knowing support of the United States government, because he was in Iran, and
Iran was what it was because we got rid of the parliamentary democracy back in
the '50s; at least, that is my belief.
I know it is not popular for an
American ever to say anything like this, but I think it's true [applause], and I
apologized when President Khatami was elected. I publicly acknowledged that the
United States had actively overthrown Mossadegh and I apologized for it, and I
hope that we could have some rapprochement with Iran. I think basically the
Europeans' initiative to Iran to try to figure out a way to defuse the nuclear
crisis is a good one.
I think President Bush has done, so far, the right
thing by not taking the military option off the table, but not pushing it too
much. I didn't like the story that looked like the military option had been
elevated above a diplomatic option. But Iran is the most perplexing problem ...
we face, for the following reasons: It is the only country in the world with two
governments, and the only country in the world that has now had six elections
since the first election of President Khatami. [It is] the only one with
elections, including the United States, including Israel, including you name it,
where the liberals, or the progressives, have won two-thirds to 70 percent of
the vote in six elections: two for President; two for the parliament, the
Majlis; two for the mayoralities.
In every single election, the guys I
identify with got two-thirds to 70% of the vote. There is no other country in
the world I can say that about, certainly not my own.
Rose: But,
but those are the guys who are in power, and is the power held by another party?
Clinton: Okay, so here's the problem. Under their constitution,
the religious council, headed by the Ayatollah Khamenei has the authority over
intelligence funding, terrorism funding, and has the power to invalidate laws
and scratch candidates from the candidate lists, so the people that represent
the ... 30% to one third, can negate much of this two-thirds to 70%. And the
President is in the middle, getting whipsawed and the people underneath him,
supporting him, get more and more disillusioned.
Now, they still kind of
like the West in general, and America in particular, because we don't represent
what they don't like about the governing of Iran since Ayatollah Khomeini. What
no one can answer is, number one, how would those two-thirds react if some
military action were taken?
Rose: What would you guess?
Clinton: It depends on what it is.... Everybody talks about what
the Israelis did at Osirak in 1981, which I think, in retrospect, was a really
good thing. You know it kept Saddam from developing nuclear power.... It is not
clear to me that that option is available in Iran, and it's not clear to me that
if we did a lot more than that, and a lot of civilians got killed, that you
wouldn't ... lose the two-thirds you've got. And also, you're not fooling with
Iraq. You know one of the reasons -- you can say whatever you want, but one of
the reasons -- we did this, is that this guy didn't have the capacity to hurt
his neighbors and the United States. Iran is more than three times as big. They
have a very sophisticated network....
So ... I still hope there is a
diplomatic solution. It is madness. There is an elected government in Iran
supported by two-thirds of the people that wants a rapprochement with the
West.... And we can't get there. It's crazy.
Rose: If the
Israelis might want to do it, what should the United States say?
Clinton: Well, the question is, first of all, I think we ought
not to do "it," any "it," until we have exhausted all reasonable diplomatic
efforts. Keep in mind, again, this is heresy. The reason you should not want
Iran to have an active nuclear program is not that they might not have a bomb.
India has bombs. Pakistan has bombs.
Rose: Israel has bombs.
Clinton: Yes, but so what happens? Well, you know what my number
one worry between India and Pakistan was? In the beginning, when they started
these bomb-building programs, we knew more about their programs and their
doctrines than they knew about each other. Plus, the Pakistanis -- a lot of
their people in their military intelligence service -- were tight with the
Taliban, and I was worried about the security of the materials.... But
deterrence still works just like it did between us and the Soviet Union. So, if
Iran had a nuclear weapon, the main thing it would do is cast a pall over the
Middle East, but they would have to think a long time before they'd use it
because they would be toast if they used it.
So, what is the real
worry?... If you have ever seen these facilities, the real worry is the same
worry we had with Pakistan: What if the people representing the third in Iran
that had the religious council, decide that fissile material should be smuggled
out of Iran and given to a terrorist group?
We now know this. You can
get on the internet and see this. If you have basically a cookie's worth of
fissile material, and you put it into a traditional bomb, you can amplify the
destructive power by 100-fold, or more; so the reason you don't want Iran to
have an active nuclear program is, given the present state of play, you will
never know whether the materials are secure, or are being transported to
terrorist networks.
Rose: But the question is, and it comes to
the Oval Office and it comes to other places, if they are about to have it, and
they say that by the end of 2005 it may be too late, what do you do if
negotiations haven't worked? I mean, what's the hard call for a President of the
United States?
Clinton: 1981 ... Israel bombed a nuclear reactor
that was ostensibly set up to generate power at a place called Osirak in Iraq.
They took it out, and it served the desired purpose. It delayed Saddam Hussein's
ability to develop nuclear power for a considerable number of years. Now, keep
in mind that I haven't seen any intelligence in four years now. Some people
think I didn't [see] any before then....
Rose: What kind of
intelligence are they talking about?
Clinton: Or they thought I
didn't have the intelligence to understand the intelligence, but anyway, that
was then; this is now. I don't know that there is a target in Iran, which could
be taken out with one or two bombs with almost no civilian casualties, right? I
don't know if that option is available now. It may be, I just don't know. I'm
not saying it is.
Rose: What everybody has said is that it is
much more difficult.
Clinton: It's much more difficult. They are
a much more formidable foe, and I am not entirely convinced that what our
British, German, and French, and other friends are trying to do won't work, and,
you know, there ought to be some sort of mega-deal there.
You know the
religious council in Iran has not entirely shut down democracy, they haven't
totally invalidated everything they have tried to do. I think there is still a
lot of internal back and forth going on there. I personally believe that we
ought to give some final vigorous push to diplomacy to try to deal with this.
Rose: What's the carrot and the stick, though, if you talk about
diplomacy? What do you give them? You say there will be no economic sanctions,
or no kinds of sanctions of any kind, we'll give you an opportunity to
participate, we'll encourage you to participate in global trade....
Clinton: Yes, all of the above, and there are lots of other
details. The British, French, and Germans had a whole deal worked out there, and
then the Iranians didn't stay with it, and they wanted to go back, and, you
know, it was kind of back and forth, but a lot of this involves how you define
national greatness.
Rose: What do you mean?
Clinton: Well, I think every country's image of itself is rather
like a person's image of himself or herself. It is the product of the
accumulated dreams and nightmares of your family. Think about it. I remember I
had a screaming match with Boris Yeltsin one time when he was telling me I
couldn't expand NATO, and finally, I grabbed him, and I said, "Boris, look at
me: All the time we spent together, you really think that I would send American
jets to an airport in Warsaw and use that base to bomb Russia?" I said, "look at
me. Do you believe that?"
He said, "No, I don't, but a lot of old ladies
in Western Russia do." He said, "Look, it's irrational, of course it is; but
it's irrational to you because you live in a big country protected by two
oceans. You were never invaded by Napoleon and Hitler." He said, "Everything we
do is affected by these nightmares."
Similarly, the Chinese, with whom I
worked and was very close, and I got them in the World Trade Organization, they
did things I thought were nuts and self-defeating in fighting political dissent
and stifling debate, and having no dialogue with the Dalai Lama, which I thought
was not just morally wrong, but didn't make sense. You know to crush the Tibetan
culture, I just didn't get it, you know, and I talked to them, they said we do a
lot of things that look crazy to you because our number-one nightmare is
internal disintegration, and you never had internal disintegration in your
country.
So, all I am saying, if [the Iranians'] image of their national
greatness either does, or does not, require them psychologically, and in terms
of where they are going, to have nuclear weapons: If they ever use them, they
would be toast! You know that's why nobody ever used it in the Cold War. But we
don't want them to have [them] because even if they never used it, it would
affect the politics in the Middle East, number one. And number two, the more
people that have these weapons, the more nuclear material you have around, the
more vulnerable it is to pilfering. It is a serious problem. The one thing we
have not done a good job of since 9/11 is that we haven't spent nearly enough
money and done nearly enough work to contain the nuclear, chemical, and
biological substances in the world. So that's where we are, but I don't have an
easy answer.
3/4/2005: Clinton Apologized to Iran?
At the ArabNews (which raises some red flags), Amir Taheri has an almost
unbelievable account of statements by former President Bill Clinton in Davos: Who Should Apologize to Whom? (Thanks to all who emailed.)
Where is the country that Bill Clinton, a former president of the United
States, feels ideologically most at home? Before you answer, here is the
condition that such a country must fulfill: It must hold several consecutive
elections that produce 70 percent majorities for “liberals and
progressives.”
Well, if you thought of one of the Scandinavian countries or, perhaps, New
Zealand or Canada, you are wrong.
Believe it or not, the country Bill Clinton so admires is the Islamic
Republic of Iran.
Here is what Clinton said at a meeting on the margins of the World Economic
Forum in Davos, Switzerland, just a few weeks ago: “Iran today is, in a sense,
the only country where progressive ideas enjoy a vast constituency. It is
there that the ideas that I subscribe to are defended by a majority.”
And here is what Clinton had to say in a recent television interview with
Charlie Rose:
“Iran is the only country in the world that has now had six elections since
the first election of President Khatami (in 1997). (It is) the only one with
elections, including the United States, including Israel, including you name
it, where the liberals, or the progressives, have won two-thirds to 70 percent
of the vote in six elections: Two for president; two for the Parliament, the
Majlis; two for the mayoralties. In every single election, the guys I identify
with got two-thirds to 70 percent of the vote. There is no other country in
the world I can say that about, certainly not my own.”
So, while millions of Iranians, especially the young, look to the United
States as a mode of progress and democracy, a former president of the US looks
to the Islamic Republic as his ideological homeland.
And it gets worse.
According to Taheri, Clinton also said he apologized for “American crimes
against Iran.”
Clinton told his audience in Davos, as well as Charlie Rose, that during
his presidency he had “formally apologized on behalf of the United States” for
what he termed “American crimes against Iran.”
But what were those “crimes”? Clinton summed them thus: “It’s a sad story
that really began in the 1950s when the United States deposed Mr. Mossadegh,
who was an elected parliamentary democrat, and brought the Shah back and then
he was overturned by the Ayatollah Khomeini, driving us into the arms of one
Saddam Hussein. We got rid of the parliamentary democracy {there} back in the
‘50s; at least, that is my belief.”