chomsky

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Q: Hi. First, thank you so much for coming. I've learned a lot listening to what you shared with us

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My question is specifically about Iran and the nuclear weapons

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and the discussion that you were having with regard to Iran in the international community

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I definitely understand the idea of a country obtaining a nuclear weapon or developing one themselves out of a form of protection or to be on the same, I guess, international status as other countries who are considered superpowers or on the same level as a superpower because they themselves have nuclear weapons But what do you do when a country is openly trying to develop one or obtain one

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and also openly threatening to wipe out a country and claiming that a country shouldn't exist

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I mean those are two really big issues that we're dealing with and

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I didn't really think you addressed that and I was curious what you had to say.

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Chomsky: That's true. What do you do about countries that already developed nuclear weapons

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outside the framework of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and are daily

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violating resolutions of the Security Council and the International Atomic Energy Agency?

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That's the much more serious problem

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Q: That's a different situation because those countries aren't openly threatening to wipe out another country.

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Chomsky: Nor is Iran.

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Just take a look at the statements. The statements are that they don't think -- they said --

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Actually goes back to Khomeini at the time of

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the Israeli-Iranian alliance and Israel didn't care about it then

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And it keeps being repeated. This statement is that, you know, in the course of time, Israel should no longer exist

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Well, actually I happen to agree with that too.

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In fact, so do a lot of people in Israel, the ones who think there should be a single democratic state.

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That's not calling for wiping anyone out

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In fact, Iran has supported the International consensus on the two-state settlement

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Actually, there are two countries that are not only calling for some nation not to exist but are destroying it

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Namely, the US and Israel

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That's their position with regard to the Palestinians, and they're not just saying it

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[Applause]

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I stress: they're not just saying it, they're doing it day by day

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That's the meaning of the policies that are going on right before our eyes in Gaza and the West Bank

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which we are supporting and paying for.

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So sure, you shouldn't call for the destruction of

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another nation, and you shouldn't implement that

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Actually, the official position of Israel, backed by the United States -

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they've slightly modified it - but back about 20 years ago their official position -

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the coalition government - Labour, Likud - was that "there cannot be," I'm quoting it,

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"an additional Palestinian state between Jordan and Israel."

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In other words, they declared, and the US supported that, there already is a Palestinian state, namely Jordan.

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And the Palestinians object, you know,

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They say, "no, wait a minute, that's not our state," but who cares about them

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We say that's your state and there can't be an additional one

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Well, that goes well beyond calling for the destruction of another country.

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I mean it's - it's analogous to saying that if somebody came along,

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suppose Ahmadinejad said the Jews don't need Israel because they already have New York

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Okay. I mean, you know, we'd call that a revival of Nazism, but that's the official -- has been the official

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US-Israeli position. So there's a lot to be -- Incidentally about Iran,

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nobody in their right mind wants Iran to have nuclear weapons, or anyone else, but it is well --

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-- and it's a horrible regime undoubtedly, though there are worse ones in the region which are our allies --

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But everyone, I'm not referring to Israel, I'm referring to the other Arab state

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In comparison with Saudi Arabia, Iran looks like a civil rights paradise -- but the

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But it's awful. You know no doubt

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And there's a way to deal with it. Like, for example, moving towards a nuclear weapons-free zone

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But among strategic analysts, including Israeli ones, there is no real

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There's no real question about why Iran is moving to nuclear weapons capability,

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which is not the same as having nuclear weapons -

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it's just being at a point where you could have them, like most of the advanced industrial world is in that position

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Japan, Italy all sorts of countries -

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The reason is very simple. Actually, it was described by

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one of Israel's leading

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military analysts, very hawkish

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Martin van Creveld a couple of years ago. After the invasion of Iraq,

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he wrote an article in which he said he doesn't know if Iran is developing nuclear weapons, and he hopes not

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But he says if they're not developing nuclear weapons, they are crazy

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That was his word. If they're not developing, they're crazy. The United States has just announced

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"we're going to attack anybody we feel like and invade you if we can do it with impunity.

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so you better have a deterrent"

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well

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Maybe they're developing a deterrent.

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No serious analyst thinks that they would use nuclear weapons

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if Iran had nuclear weapons and missiles, which nobody sane wants them to have,

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I mean, if they went as far as even loading a missile, the country would be vaporized

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You know instantly, even if there was any suspicion of it.

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Well, you know, the clerics may be hideous people, but they've shown no

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particular inclination for suicide and destruction of everything that they own and everything they value

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The same is true about leaking nuclear weapons to others.

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If there was any suspicion that they were doing that, you can say goodbye to Iran.

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The chances they're using it are probably at the level of an asteroid hitting the earth or something like that

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It's a serious problem. In fact if you look at the Israeli literature, they're pretty straight about it.

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They say that the real threat of an Iranian nuclear weapon is not against Israel, but it's against Zionism

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That is what they're afraid of, is that if the region becomes too dangerous,

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people in Israel are just gonna leave

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people who have the capacity to, more educated, wealthier, and so on

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because they won't want to live in a region with that threat.

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And in fact emigration is a pretty serious problem

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emigration of the educated and the trained,

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educated sectors, so they don't want to face that threat

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But I don't think any serious strategic analyst, at least I've never seen one, who

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thinks that this threat that Iran might use a nuclear weapon

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If they do it, total suicide

chomsky

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