NOVANEWS
The following is an approximate transcript of the interview.
Press TV: The Iranian President Mr. Rouhani said that the threats against Iran are “worthless and childish”. And a lot of other officials were saying today the fact that seeing this amount of public participation in the rallies shows that the Iranian people have the same idea, that they’re going to stand against these threats.
Do you think that this is the message that the United States is getting?
Dankof: I think President Rouhani is exactly correct and I’ve been warning people for a long time in the United States that we need to understand something about what happened in that country (Iran) at our behest in 1953, which in fact facilitated what happened 35 years ago in 1979.
And now we’re looking at a situation where I think across the spectrum Iranian may differ with one another politically in many respects, but none of them want an outside Western intervention in their country militarily or otherwise.
I think if the United States and Britain and the P5+1 and the Israelis decide at some point to intervene in Iran’s internal affairs to the extent that they would try to attack that country militarily it would be a great, great tragedy and I think the blowback against the United States and Israel in particular would be absolutely cataclysmic.
Press TV: Well, we are hearing the US administration repeating its stance that all options are still on the table. Why do you think we’re hearing this despite the fact that talks are underway?
Dankof: I think Barack Obama at this point is playing to the Israeli lobby, into the power of the Israeli lobby in both houses of the United States’ Congress. He is also playing into that element in the American media.
He’s talking that line, but I would suspect that the president realizes himself that this would be a catastrophic event were it to occur under his presidency or were it to occur under the policies of a successor of his.
The fact of the matter is that once the United States pulled back from this insane idea of intervening in Syria militarily this is an indication that in many respects those who were pushing for these policies at the behest of Israel had lost an important round in trying to get the American people to sign off on another American military adventure in Iran.
The thing that worries me and I’ve said it before is that Netanyahu is not going to get his way through public means in the United States Congress and through the president of the United States.
I would be worried that there would be an event take place in the United State that in fact would have an Israeli genesis that would be blamed on Iran as a false flag operation to inflame the American public and to revitalize their desire for another war in the Middle East that doesn’t presently exist.
That’s my concern in this whole thing.
