E-mail a friendRobert Baer
airdate October 16, 2008
Robert Baer is one of the world's foremost authorities on the Middle East. In a 20-year CIA career, he's publicly acknowledged field assignments in India, Lebanon and Kurdish northern Iraq. Baer documented his experiences in the best seller See No Evil—the basis for the acclaimed film, Syriana. He's also presented four documentary series on the origins of suicide bombing. He writes regularly for Time.com and has contributed to various publications, including Vanity Fair. The Devil We Know is Baer's latest book.
Former CIA agent explains why he refers to Iran as the devil in his new book. (2:56)
Full interview. (10:01)
Robert Baer
Tavis: Robert Baer is a former CIA operative turned journalist who's written two previous bestsellers: "Sleeping with the Devil" and "See No Evil." The latter served as the basis for the acclaimed film "Syriana," for which George Clooney earned an Oscar for his portrayal over Robert Baer. His latest book is called "The Devil We Know," dealing with the new Iranian superpower. Robert Baer, nice to have you on the program.
Robert Baer: Great to be here.
Tavis: Good to see you, sir. The title of this book, before I get into the text itself, the title raises for me at least two questions. Fair to call Iran the devil? The devil we know?
Baer: It's the devil because we're at war with Iran for about 15 years. They were responsible for the bombing of the barracks in Beirut, taking hostages, they were a terrorist state. They've evolved since then. They've followed this very clear arc from terrorism to conventional power. So they're a bit of a devil, yeah.
Tavis: Second question, based on the title - the subtitle, specifically: When did Iran become a superpower?
Baer: It became a superpower when it put a couple hundred SOKOR (sp) missiles along the Gulf to take out Saudi Arabia's oil facilities, which are all along the Gulf, take out tanker traffic, take of 17 million barrels of oil a day. This is their potential - I'm not saying they're doing it.
Gasoline in this country goes to $10, $12 a gallon. It can drive us into a depression if we're not heading there already. That's what I mean by superpower. And they're blackmailing us.
Tavis: Blackmailing - explain that for me.
Baer: The world's economy. We can't hit Iran without suffering a major economic setback that would last for 10, 15 years.
Tavis: Does George Bush understand that?
Baer: No. Well, he doesn't understand because he went into Iraq, he opened up Iraq for Iranian influence. He essentially gave Iraq to Iran. It's the greatest folly this country's ever committed, invading Iraq.
Tavis: Does McCain understand that?
Baer: No. Neither of them do.
Tavis: Does Obama understand that?
Baer: He does understand that. He's going to go talk to the Iranians. It's the thing to do - without preconditions. Look, with this sort of power they have in the Persian Gulf, the power over the price of gasoline in this country, we have to talk to these guys without preconditions, ask them what they want.
Now, my contention in this book is that they're rational. Thirty years ago, no - they were crazy revolutionaries. But like any other revolution in the world - the Chinese revolution, the Cuban revolution - they become mature and we arrive at a point we can talk to them.
Tavis: For those who saw their president speak recently at the United Nations or have seen this guy speak just about anytime anywhere, I'm trying to juxtapose what we hear come out of his mouth and your notion that he and they are rational.
Baer: Yeah, that's unfortunate, but he's not really the executive authority in Iran. He is the spokesman for a group of hard-liners. I think undoubtedly he's bipolar, probably crazy. I hope we get him out. He is an obstacle. He's the subject of major criticism in Iran - they're very unhappy about him. But we have to keep in mind that the leadership in Iran doesn't sound like this. Privately they've told the United States they can deal with Israel, that they're willing to negotiate nuclear weapons once we arrive at a means to talk to them.
Tavis: I'm wondering, when you suggest he may be bipolar, I mean to cast no aspersion on you with this question, but when there are people who we disagree with, who behave in ways that we don't agree with, who have policies that we don't agree with, who don't like us for whatever reason, fair to call them bipolar? Maybe they just don't like us. Maybe they see things and the world differently. Would it be fair for another world leader to call George Bush bipolar?
Baer: Well, I can understand why they have. (Laughter) I've called him worse than that, if you want to be frank. But the problem is he's crossed a line by saying that the Holocaust didn't happen. He said that from (unintelligible) and that's just not what happened in history.
The fact that he says he's going to wipe out Israel, off the map - this is going beyond normal political rhetoric. But it doesn't matter. Do we really care what he says? We care what the Iranians do, and they are helping us in Iraq.
Tavis: The only point I'm getting at here is if we start trying to psychoanalyze or do pop psychology and call somebody bipolar and they really do mean this and he's in his right mind - he may be crazy, but he's in his right mind - to dismiss him as bipolar, I wonder where that gets us, is my point.
Baer: It doesn't get us anywhere, but it's - we have to acknowledge the Israeli position, we have to acknowledge the conservatives' position that this guy doesn't sound rational. And that's the way I describe it - he's bipolar, he's irrational, he's a politician - call him what you want.
But he's become the obstacle into talking to Iran, and he's the problem, and I'm trying to dismiss this as a problem.
Tavis: So back to your earlier formulation of the persons who I ask who are running for president if they get it, you said McCain does not, Obama does. You supported his position, or the position that those who have been covering this campaign put on him, which is that he would meet without preconditions. You support that, as you said earlier.
I'm coming back to that because whenever that comes up, or when Obama has said that, he gets roundly criticized by a whole wing of people in this country. What do you make of the criticism of him for saying that he would meet, that he would talk without those preconditions, as you put it?
Baer: Well, the problem is that the conservatives could get away with a policy like this - remember, it was Nixon that flew to China and dealt with Mao Zedong, and we considered Mao Zedong crazy at the time, and this is right after the cultural revolution. He almost brought his country down, China, and yet Kissinger went and then Nixon, and dealt and turned this whole relationship around. That would have been very difficult for a Democratic president to do back then.
It would be easier for McCain to fly to Tehran, deal with the Iranians, come back, and sell that position to the Americans than Obama, because they are going to accuse him of capitulation. But what I can tell you right now is we cannot go to war with Iran. This will look like World War III.
Tavis: So who are these rational folk inside the country who we ought to be talking to?
Baer: Khamenei is the spiritual leader. In fact, he's not really an ayatollah. His education doesn't qualify him as an ayatollah. He's a military commander; he's got a huge following in the Iranian military and the security services. He's very restrained, and we need to get to him and talk to him directly, in secret.
Tavis: So in this secret conversation, and you talk about this in some of the book, obviously, what's the conversation, what's the ask, what's the negotiating principle, what are we saying in this secret meeting?
Baer: You say one is we're in trouble in Iraq, and I don't care - forget the surge. In the long run - it could work if we're there for 30 years; if we maintain the amount of troops we have there. Afghanistan is circling the drain. We need to sit down with the Iranians and say, "Listen, we have common interests in these two countries. We don't want civil war, we don't want (unintelligible) coming into Iraq or into Afghanistan. We need to work together." And they'll listen.
And they're going to say, "What else are you going to give us?" and that's when you get into the whole nuclear issue, telling the Iranians, "You don't want a nuclear bomb now because the Saudis are going to get one next. We're going to have proliferation all through the Gulf and the Israelis will hit you.
And I believe - I've watched this country for 30 years, I've visited a bunch of times, I've been in the Middle East my entire career - that they have gone from a terrorist power to a rational power, much more so than, for instance, Pakistan.
Tavis: And that's based upon what, primarily?
Baer: Good intelligence. I've just been - I've combed through computers looking and watching for signs that the Iranians are maturing, and it took me about four months to write this book, but it took me 30 years to research it.
Tavis: What does it mean - and I want to juxtapose two things - what does it mean, then - and this is the irony of all ironies for me, when I hear you say this - what does it mean, then, that they are growing, that they are maturing, that they have gotten to a place where the leaders - not the folk we see on television, but the folk who have the power, the folk who can make these decisions - so they're growing, they're maturing, and we could sit down with them and have a rational conversation that might prevent World War III.
What does it say that they're going in this direction and it appears with at least the administration we have in office now that we're going in that direction? What does that say about us?
Baer: Well, it's a bad sign because we're not dealing with reality in the Middle East. When we went into Iraq, no one paid attention to Iran. And what happened is a Shi'a group got in - the majority - who are all beholden to Iran, one way or another. And the argument was, well, Arabs never get along with the Persians. That's not true - Lebanon is all Arab and they work directly with Iran.
We went into Iraq with no understanding of the Middle East. The people around Bush - and I know almost all of them - had no conception of what Iran is, what it's capable of, and their interest in Iraq. And once you got rid of Saddam and destroyed his army, it was inevitable that Iran would flow into the vacuum.
Tavis: Let me ask you as a quick exit question whether or not, where this issue is concerned, you are hopeful, and if so, why, and if not, why not?
Baer: I'm hopeful for two reasons. One is we can deal with the Iranians, we can negotiate with them, and two is Olmert, as he's ready to walk out the office, said, "Let's do Resolution 242, give back the West Bank, east Jerusalem," and I see a coincidence of those Israeli-Iranian interest. And if we're smart and we tackle this interest - this whole issue in January, we might get something out of it.
Tavis: He's written a couple of bestsellers and provided a script for one George Clooney to win an Academy Award for playing him in the movie "Syriana." His new book is "The Devil We Know: Dealing with The New Iranian Superpower." His name, of course, Robert Baer. Robert Baer, nice to have you on the program.
Baer: Thanks much.
Tavis: Good to see you.
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