Scott Rickard, a former American intelligence linguist from Orlando, has joined Press TV�s Debate to further discuss the reasons behind the new round of anti-Iran sanctions by the US, breaching the terms of the Geneva deal.
Below is an approximate transcription of the interview.

Press TV:�Scott Rickard just over two weeks ago a decade of dispute was resolved through a first step interim deal between Iran and the world powers, because the world wrongly thought that Iran was after nuclear bomb, no sooner had the ink gone dry here you have the US lawmakers going after new sanctions.

I mean why do not they want to give this a chance?

Rickard:�Well, I think that you have to take a close look on where these sanctions are coming from. These sanctions are coming from the Treasury Department, that is basically David S. Cohen and they are also coming from the Banking Department where they are doing a delay tactic; these delay tactics are coming..., basically they call it a rope-a-dope.

Tim Johnson, the senator out of South Dakota, is basically a rope-a-dope; that means that they are getting in a defensive posture and trying to make Iran make a mistake and in fact what they have done is that they have imposed sanctions and strengthened the sanctions against companies that were working through these sanctions, trying to keep the economy alive.

These are companies that are in partnerships with Malaysia and in partnerships with china and these are companies that do business throughout Singapore and they are not operating illegally, they are just getting around the sanctions, doing the business the way that they need to; in order to sustain the Iranian economy.

So unfortunately Iran has suffered well over 200 to 300 billion dollars in sanctions and the easing, supposedly that is coming out of these talks, is really only around the automobile industry and only around the petrochemical products industry like plastics and things like that.

There is no easing on the banking side, there is no easing on the oil production side. So you are looking at maybe, saving about ten billion dollars over six months, that they say may start in three weeks.

So at the end of the day the Americans and the Western powers are basically, interrupting the talks and because it is only a delay until the next president comes in and they manipulate that administration to continue the criminal economic warfare that has been going on against Iran for well over 70 to 80 years.

Press TV:�Let us go with that Iranian viewpoint, Scott Rickard. Trying to break this down here. US Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman, now what she said about the slapping of new sanctions and this was after being questioned by the Senate Banking Committee, she said that the possibility of imposing new sanctions on Iran for terrorism, the only commitment we have made in this agreement is no new nuclear-related sanctions.

I mean does her comment give the Senate cover to try to impose new sanctions on Iran?

Can you tell us what is she trying to say here?

Rickard:�I do not think that her comments give them any kind of capability of imposing new sanctions. The sanctions that are being prepared are basically being prepared in the event that Iran makes a mistake.

They are in a sort of wait mode and looking for an opening to, basically as Patrick has said, put their foot more heavily, as they already have done, on the other side of the scale.

So they are preparing the next level of sanctions and it is because of the influence on the government, basically, by the petroleum industries that are very powerful in the West and the United States.

It does not take an expert to understand that you have got economic issue in the West. We are suffering dramatically and Iran was doing fantastically, their economy was growing incredibly great and if they were able to produce their energy internally, using solar or using any kind of a nuclear technology, that would be tremendously beneficial to them because it has much more products to sell on the market, whereby they were gaining great economic strength just as Libya was, and look at what they have done to that country.

So it is definitely economics, when you say it is politics, well maybe it is politics but the root of the problem is really economics. The economic industries in the West have fallen by the wayside, when you are talking about the financial communities; I mean they are in complete debt and then countries like Iran and Libya had absolutely no debt and their economies were booming.

So, you know, this has been a longstanding problem with the petroleum industries, the petroleum industries have run the American politics for nearly well over a century now, so it is purely a financial issue and it is purely a geopolitical issue by controlling the resources of other nations.

Press TV:�Scott Rickard you had some reactions to Patrick Basham?

Richard:�Well he had mentioned something about the Israeli intelligence being good. Well, that is actually an incredible overstatement. It is not good it is extremely stilted, it is an extremely biased and it is extremely racist when it comes to a lot of the surrounding countries. This is one of the most racist nations and it is an apartheid state and it really needs to be hard-lined looked at from [by] the American people.
Unfortunately if you talk like I do and say the kind of things and you are this kind of a critical person you will never get elected in this country and by the way it is very clear that anybody who supports the actual deal here, with the Iranians, lifting the sanctions, they are putting their congressional and their senatorial seats in jeopardy.

There will be massive amounts of funds put up against them in the campaigns that come out in 2014 and these people will be put out of office.

There is no doubt that the Israeli lobby and the pro-Israel and Zionist movements are extremely powerful in the United States� government.
You have to look far, you look at Bill Diamond in the state of Florida, he runs one of the biggest swing states for the Republican Party. He is a very powerful man, he is passing around money from guys like Adelson and you do not know what you are looking at if you do not look into the details of the actual power that a lot of these financial banking institutions as well as the petrochemical and the all of the aerospace defense industries have, not only in the United States but throughout the Western allied countries.

Press TV:�Scott Rickard you are shaking your head, if you have a reaction to Patrick Basham?

Richard:�Well, Patrick was over emphasizing the significance of the deal. The deal is not very good. It is a really crappy deal for the Iranians and it is a minor conciliatory give-up for the American side and the Western side and then they are still fighting it and Obama is still heavily arming the Israelis; they just approved another 200 and some odd million, 80 some odd million in aid, today, to Israel.

You know, this is just a small show of face and it is barely a dent in the kinds of things that the Americans are doing to support, what I said earlier, a racist, apartheid regime, just like South Africa and got blessed from Nelson Mandela who had something to do with getting rid of that government that was in South Africa and that is what needs to happen in Israel.

Those are the effects that need to happen in this world to make some change. Outside of that it is just pure rhetoric.

By Press TV

 

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