Seymour Hersh on Iranian Radio

Pajamas Media links to the transcript of an interview The New Yorker’s Seymour Hersh gave to the Islamic Republic of Iran radio. Excerpt:

Question: As our supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei has stated in case of any attack upon us we have got the right to retaliate against American interests and bases at any place of our choice. So doesn’t US administration fear about targeting its bases around our country and its establishments or killing its forces and etc?

Answer: You know I can just tell you it should and again as I wrote in the New Yorker magazine we are doing more than targeting Iran where inside your country. There are a lot of aggressive activities by the United States. I think we and the Israelis, I have written this, have contacts with Baluchis and the Iranian Kurds all of whom in some cases are happy with the government or in opposition to the government and we are also setting our troops across the border. So there is a lot of aggression by the United States right now on Iran and what happens next nobody knows. So far, Iran has been very quiet.

Question: Most international analysts believe that the US ultimate goal is to fight against revolutionary Islam and to dominate of the region’s energy and oil. But Mr. Jimmy Carter stated that the overthrow of Saddam did not have anything do with energy and oil. So what is the real goal of the US administration in the Middle East?

Answer: Nobody knows what is in the president mind and Mr. Cheney. We don’t know what they think. He attacked Iraq in 2003 in response to the Sunni Al- Qaeda in America. Why he would attack Iraq have never been clear because Saddam Hussein was secular. He was a Sunni but he did not like Jihadists. So it is unclear to me what Bush was doing. You could argue that the neo-cons want to get rid of any threat. They never liked Saddam. He was a threat to the other countries in the Middle East, to Israel. Perhaps what we are doing is for Israel and oil but I don’t think this president believes that he really thinks his mission is to spread democracy in the Middle East, even though, you could argue that Iran is probably the most democratic country. The elections there certainly indicate people vote what the way they believe but he believes to spreading democracy and right now we are working with some of the most undemocratic countries in the Middle East, you know Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia that do so. It is very strange.

Hersh is going to be slaughtered by conservatives over this and, to a degree, rightfully so, I’d say. He is a journalist not a politicians, so he does not have the responsibility to act in the best interest of the United States of America as such: he has the responsibility to find out what’s going on and share this with the public.

However, voluntarily helping the Mullahs to spread their anti-American propaganda is not exactly necessary either. The Mullahs and Ahmadinejad are probably willing to throw a party for Hersh for insinuating that it might all be part of an American-Israeli conspiracy. Something like their wildest dream coming true: an American journalist implying that Iran is the victim of some Zionist plot.

With the most democratic, Hersh probably means that Iranians are free to vote for whomever they want, as long as it is for moderate extremists or extreme extremists, since all true opposition in Iran is oppressed.

Dialogue is good, but a little bit more critical attitude towards the Iranian regime would have been welcome. As a journalist, Hersh should also have pointed out that the Mullahs aren’t exactly the world’s most sympathetic figures either, and that the international community isn’t happy with Iran’s nuclear program, not just America. If that would have meant that they wouldn’t have interviewed him, so be it. Journalistic integrity requires it.

Also at Pajamas Media itself is this interesting article about Iranian general Asgari who is reported to have defected. The only problem? No one knows for sure, or, at least, those who might know, aren’t talking. Did Asgari defect? Was he kidnapped? And, did he ever arrive in Istanbul in the first place?