Scott Peterson recently published a comprehensive timeline for Iran’s nuclear program that charted not so much the actual progress of Iran’s supposed quest for a weapon, but the west’s, and in particular Israel’s shifting and endless series of revelations and predictions regarding it. Israel’s movable dates for Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon take on the character of the predictions of Nostradamus or those of Christian millennials who announce the date of the Second Coming. Another aspect of the millennialist world view that Israel’s shreying about Iran shares is a profound, almost religious faith in the certainty, not only of the prediction, but that the cause for which these predictions are offered is something close to sacred.
For the past several years, some would go back much farther and even say decades, Israel has orchestrated an ambitious, multi-layered campaign that included diplomatic and intelligence operations along with exploitation of American Jewish pro-Israel “agents of influence” (more on that below) designed to gin up an atmosphere conducive to war. This was the subject of the secret documents I read, provided to me by Shamai Leibowitz, which showed Israeli diplomats ghostwriting anti-Iran op-eds for U.S. newspapers (see below), then Sen. Sam Brownback reporting to Israeli diplomats on an anti-Iran conference he was organizing (here is further evidence of Brownback’s continuing shilling against Iran), a Texas Congressman meeting with a local Jewish donor and Israeli diplomat, to whom the politician reported on Congressional developments that would further isolate Iran, and a senior Senate foreign relations committee staffer being briefed by senior Israel military-intelligence figures eager to warn him about Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program.
Sheera Frenkel provided further background to this campaign in a piece she wrote (along with two otherparts in a series) for McClatchy, in which Israeli leaders admit to the existence of this coordinated effort:
[During a press briefing, Israel’s] Agent 83 fingered with care his model of what a potential Iranian nuclear bomb might look like.
The agent…was showing off the model to a group of foreign reporters…the third such time he had been asked to showcase his expertise in the second half of 2009.
“…I hope it is clear that Iran is working toward building a nuclear bomb,” he told the departing reporters.
Within days, accounts of Agent 83′s story appeared in articles across the U.S. and Europe — Iran had advanced technological understanding of the workings of a nuclear weapon. It was one of dozens of “exclusives” on Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program, the majority of which had originated with Israeli sources.
Such access to Israeli experts for international journalists has been critical to spreading Israel’s view that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program. In recent months, talk of Iran’s nuclear ambitions has fueled the Republican presidential campaign, served as the backdrop for this week’s meeting between President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and earned a pledge from Obama on Sunday that the United States would resort to military means if necessary to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability.
Israeli officials acknowledge that the widespread acceptance in the West that Iran is on the verge of building a nuclear weapon isn’t based just on the findings of Israeli intelligence operatives, but relies in no small part on a steady media campaign that the Israelis have undertaken to persuade the world that Iran is bent on building a nuclear warhead.
“The intelligence was half the battle in convincing the world,” an Israeli Foreign Ministry official told McClatchy…”The other half was Israel’s persistent approach and attitude that this was not something the world could continue to ignore.”
The official had recently returned from a trip to Washington and marveled at how the topic has become a major one in the United States. “U.S. politicians were falling over each other to talk about Iran,” he said. “In some ways, that is a huge success for Israel.”
…Shimon Stein, a former Israeli ambassador to Germany and former head of arms control at the Foreign Ministry, said that Israel slowly developed its outreach and media efforts on Iran over more than two decades.
“We were diplomatically actively pursuing the Iranian issue for decades,” he said. But the Israeli campaign moved into the public sphere five years ago when the Israelis decided they needed public opinion to also drive Iran policy. “Now it is a new ballgame,” Stein said. “Now we added extra resources to mobilize our government and also world opinion.”
…Coordinating media coverage, such as the Agent 83 briefing on the workings of the hypothetical bomb, was critical to that effort. Often such access was timed to take place before critical events.
In the year after U.S. intelligence agencies published a 2007 National Intelligence Estimate that downplayed the Iranian nuclear threat, an unprecedented number of leaks over Iran’s alleged progress on nuclear weapons was released to the press. They culminated in reports published in Israeli newspapers that Iran had secret uranium enrichment facilities. In 2009…Obama, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy revealed a yet-undisclosed facility at Qom.
Israeli officials also said it was no coincidence that a flurry of reports on Israel’s imminent strike on Iran filled the press last fall just ahead of a report from the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Guzansky said the possible Israeli strike leaks to the media were “an important tool” for the government.
“It is psychological warfare. You leak to get the enemy or your friend to think X or Y,” he said.
Frenkel finds Israeli officials who, though they acknowledge this Israeli perception management campaign, deny that its end goal was to attack Iran. Here’s a perfect example of such disingenuousness:
Yoel Guzansky, who headed a department that studies Iran’s nuclear weapons program in the Israeli prime minister’s office from 2005-2009 and is currently a fellow at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies said…
“Israel doesn’t want it to look like it is pushing the West toward a war with Iran. There are those that said Israel pushed the U.S. towards a war with Iraq, which is untrue,” said Guzansky. “Today regarding Iran, Israel is not telling the U.S. to attack. They are saying something more nuanced…
Any Israeli with half a brain in their head (and Guzansky is a undoubtedly a very smart man) who can say this after hearing Bibi Netanyahu’s Aipac speech, is either deluding himself or deeply cynical (or both).
Frenkel points out the invaluable assistance in this campaign played by what I called above, Israeli agents of influence, American Jewish groups like The Israel Project (TIP), which have an interlocking network with the Israeli diplomatic community here, and together pump out the same coordinated message:
As Israeli diplomats were working to convince governments of the Iranian nuclear threat, other organizations, such as the Washington-based Israel Project, were pressing the Israeli position with journalists and others.
Founded in 2002, one of the Israel Project’s earliest goals was to raise awareness on Iran.
“Our work — since the beginning — has been to encourage Iran to make a choice between their nuclear program and the things they want in the world,” said Jennifer Laszlo Mirzrahi, the founder and president of the Israel Project.
The campaign has been successful, she said. “In a year like this year, nobody can get elected without having a strong Iran policy,” she said.
TIP’s Iran “specialist” is Barbara Ledeen, wife of neocon uber-hawk, Michael Ledeen. A further example of that interlocking directorate mentioned above.
When he was privy to secret FBI wiretaps of Israeli diplomats, Leibowitz even told me that the then Israeli deputy chief of mission in Washington, Jeremy Issacharoff, arranged for the Boston Herald to publish an op-ed ghostwritten by embassy staff and published under the name of Jeff Robbins, a partner in the Boston law firm, Mintz Levin. Issacharoff is married to TIP’s global affairs director, Laura Kam. Mintz Levin is the firm of which Cameron Kerry, an Aipac supporter and John Kerry’s brother, has been a managing partner. Robbins in his newspaper and law firm bio touts his human rights credentials. It’s always best to couch attacks on Iran not in terms of promoting Israeli interests, but rather promoting non-partisan values that we all can agree on, like human rights. To be fair, a reporter who wrote about the Leibowitz leaks questioned Robbins about the newspaper op-ed and he denied that it had been ghostwritten. All I can say is that Israeli diplomats quoted on the wiretaps saw it otherwise.
American and Israeli media outlets have been willing participants in Israel’s campaign. They’ve published op-eds and news reports that breathlessly predicted global annihilation at the hands of Iran and advocated a scorched earth military campaign to subdue it. Even so-called liberal media like the New York Times and Haaretz have been victimized though willingly. Remember the Benny Morris op-ed that argued Israel might have to pre-emptively launch a nuclear strike against Iran? Morris, I remind you, is neither an expert in Iranian affairs or Israeli nuclear strategy. Yet that was published thanks to the considered judgement of the New York Times op ed editor. Such collaboration is really shameful and reminds us of the black mark that paper earned for its prominently splashing the “findings” by Judy Miller of Iraqi WMD.
In this sense, American Jewish communal leaders allow themselves to become willing collaborators with Israel in advancing its goals. These Americans don’t see anything wrong with what they’re doing, because they’ve deluded themselves into believing that Israel’s interests are the same as America’s. M.J. Rosenberg and other Israel critics call such people “Israel Firsters.” While I’m sympathetic to the critical impulse behind such a term, it’s slightly off-target. As I’ve just said, these people believe they’re advancing America’s AND Israel’s best interests. But in reality they’re advancing neither’s, since eternal enmity between Iran and the west is in no one’s interest.
The $64,000 question is: has the Israeli campaign worked? Has it achieved whatever Israel’s objectives were and are. To hear this Israeli journalist tell it, they have:
Sever Plocker, a columnist for…Yediot Ahronot, wrote…that the Israeli media campaign had been a success.
“It seems clearly that the Israeli campaign of last fall, through which rumors were spread of an impending Israeli attack on Iran, has achieved its goals,” he wrote. “The Western statesmen grasped at it and used it to impose the ‘crippling’ sanctions on Iran that Prime Minister Netanyahu had already demanded two years ago.”
The judgement as to the success of this campaign depends on its goal. If the goal is neutralizing Iran as a competitive regional threat or nuclear rival to Israel, it clearly has not succeeded (at least not yet). If the goal was, as I’ve written previously, to distract world attention from other festering aspects of the Israeli-Arab conflict, then it has had much more success. Many observers noted that in the speeches at the recent AIPAC conclave there was hardly a mention of the Palestinians, a two-state solution or any related matter. As a sort of pressure valve to release tensions around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Iran threat is highly useful. The Palestinian demand for justice and an independent state pales in the face of the so-called existential threat posed by Iran not just to Israel, but (at least in the Israeli narrative) the entire world.
In the end, Israel’s campaign against Iran is largely manufactured. Yes, Iran is a coercive society whose leaders are hostile to Israel. But no, it does not pose an existential threat to Israel or anyone else. The west has every right to demand safeguards regarding its nuclear program. That’s one of the reasons it’s in the NPT. It has a right to pressure Iran into providing them. But Iran poses no more, and likely much less of a threat to world peace than India, Pakistan or North Korea, each of whom has passed the nuclear threshold in the past two decades. Any talk about Iran as the world’s greatest terrorist state or the mad mullahs’ intent on incinerating half the human race, themes dear to the heart of Bibi Netanyahu and the Israel war hawks, is built on sand and illusion.
Finally, Juan Cole wrote a long blog post outlining the reasons western sanctions against Iran are morally wrong and will not work. In his piece he wrote this about Israel’s propaganda campaign:
We saw…with Iraq and now…with Iran: a weak, ramshackle, ineffectual bogeyman is set up, like Saddam Hussein or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Americans are kept talking about the “threat” emanating from that country. It isn’t a real threat. It is manufactured by the Israeli intelligence agencies and promoted by their cells in the US.
…Israeli agents of influence attempt to keep Americans talking about anything but Israel’s own ongoing crimes against humanity with regard to the Palestinians. They have special success if the US goes into full-sanction, soft war mode against another country on Israel’s behalf. Now, instead of talking about Israeli predations against the Palestinians, we are being led by the nose by AIPAC and its many media allies to obsess about Iran.
Granted this is strong stuff. Israel’s supporters have a right to wince at a few of the terms used. But there can be little doubt that much of the criticism rendered above is warranted by precisely the sort of campaign Frenkel and I documented in this post and her article.
To progressives who still read @jricole you are being conned by a paranoid lunatic. This is spit flecked delusion…
Lake is the prototypical example of the journalistic Israel-Firster. If you read him, it’s sometimes hard to see any division between Israeli and U.S. interests. When he reports on Israel, his sources are invariably Israeli intelligence officials and those peddling a similar line. Which wouldn’t be so bad if much of the information included in his reports weren’t so far-fetched and tendentious as to beggar belief. He’s happy to quote the conclusions of his sources and never demands any facts or proof that underlie the claims (nor does he offer any to his readers). I’ve written before about his flagrantly bogus report on the Eilat terror attack which is a perfect example of what I’m talking about. When it comes to Israeli intelligence sources, if you trust religiously you will be burned consistently (though admittedly not as badly as Joan of Arc). Lake, apparently, doesn’t mind being burned since the cause of advancing Israeli (read, Likud) interests is so dear to his heart.
In a recent Taki’s Magazine piece aptly entitled “The Not-so-Great Dictator,” Kathy Shaidle observes:
As for Baron Cohen: Before the Academy relented and let him to go to the Oscars in dictator drag after all, he put out an unfunny video denouncing the “Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Zionists.” It was supposed to be another example of the comedian’s fearless “guerrilla” humor. No one tells daredevil satirist Sacha Baron Cohen what to do—except maybe Paramount Pictures, whose logo is ever-so-faintly visible in the lower right corner of every frame.
Does this mean—gasp!—that Baron Cohen, Paramount, and the Academy cooked up the whole “controversy” from the beginning to publicize a movie that the star wasn’t “allowed” to publicize?
Why, it almost sounds like a conspiracy.
It reminds me of Jeff Gates’ observation in the must-watch “The Hate Mongers Among Us” about the “controversy” surrounding Michael Moore’s 2004 film on the motives for the war on Iraq:
Fahrenheit 911 was produced by Miramax, a Disney subsidiary. Miramax co-chairman Harvey Weinstein loudly claimed that Disney reneged on its promise to distribute Moore’s film. Disney chief executive Michael Eisner objected—just as loudly.
The high profile sparing between these two Hollywood titans dragged on for months in mainstream media. By the time the film was released, the interest generated by this “dispute” ensured that Moore’s film opened on a record number of screens for a “documentary.”
At virtually no cost, that public relations ploy helped ensure an international audience for a film that discredited not only the U.S. but also the office of the president. In its practical effect, the Moore film helped ensure there was virtually no mention of how key Zionist goals were advanced by this war—in plain sight.
As Michael Caine might say, not a lot of people know that Michael Moore’s agent is Ari Emanuel. Ariel “Ari” Zev Emanuel is the brother of former Israel Defense Forces volunteer Rahm Israel Emanuel and son of Dr. Benjamin M. Emanuel, a former member of the terrorist Irgun organization who famously commented on Obama’s appointment of his son as White House Chief of Staff, “Obviously he’ll influence the president to be pro-Israel. Why wouldn’t he? What is he, an Arab? He’s not going to be mopping floors at the White House.”
The son of an Israeli mother, Sacha Baron Cohen first acted with the Habonim Dror Jewish Labour Zionist youth movement and took part in Machon L’Madrichei Chutz La’Aretz (“Institute for Youth Leaders from Abroad”), an Israeli programme founded by the World Zionist Organization “to train a cadre of Zionist youth leaders who would go back to their home countries and work in the Jewish community to pass on Zionist values and promote immigration to Israel.”
While all the incessant warmongering directed toward Iran at the annual AIPAC policy conference in Washington was grabbing the headlines, the momentum for Western intervention into Syria continued to steadily build. All those neo-con “real men,” it appears, just might prefer to go to Tehran via Damascus.
Taking to the Senate floor on Monday, Arizona Senator John McCain, one of the first supporters of arming the Free Syrian Army, upped the ante by calling for a U.S.-led air campaign against Syrian military targets. McCain deemed such an escalation necessary to establish “humanitarian corridors.”
“The United States should lead an international effort to protect key population centers in Syria, especially in the north, through airstrikes on Assad’s forces,” the intervention-hungry McCain declared.
And as the Washington Postreported in late February, Obama administration officials have made it clear that “additional measures” might still be considered in order to oust Assad. That favored refrain of all options being on the table appears to be in effect in regards to Syria.
Indeed, for according to CNN, the Pentagon has already composed “detailed plans” for military action inside Syria. As the network reported, the Pentagon has especially focused on securing Syrian chemical weapons sites, with one scenario in particular calling “for tens of thousands of troops to potentially be used for guarding the installations.”
Although, according to a December email recently published by Wikileaks from the U.S. global intelligence firm Stratfor (known as a private C.I.A.), special operations forces from the U.S., U.K., France, Jordan, and Turkey are already on the ground in Syria. And as the email states, these forces are actively “training the Free Syrian Army.” Additional measures indeed!
Not wanting to be left behind in any march on Syria, the U.S. corporate media has largely begun to join the ranks of the recently ascendant intervention hawks.
In an editorial on Friday, the New York Times, although ruling out military force, called for providing greater tactical assistance to the Free Syrian Army. As the paper wrote: “The United States and its allies should consider providing the rebels with communications equipment, intelligence and nonlethal training.” Of course, a mission providing such tactical support would ultimately transform into more explicit military involvement.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post also editorialized on Friday for a more credible threat of force against Assad. As the paper wrote:
The Obama administration’s public arguments against the use of force in Syria are simply encouraging a rogue regime to believe it can act with impunity. Until he is faced with a credible threat of force, from the opposition or outsider powers, Mr. Assad’s slaughter will go on.
The Christian Science Monitorhas likewise called for the U.S. to help “forcefully” end Assad’s rule.
Of course, the driving force behind such intense Western interest in Syria is Iran. Let there be no doubt, the ouster of Assad is not driven by some great humanitarian impulse, or “responsibility to protect.” Nor does the bloodletting and slaughter inside the country disturb U.S. elites. After all, the U.S. had no qualms with laying siege to Fallujah. Rather, all the contrived moralizing is being utilized in an attempt to garner support for imposing Syrian “regime change,” which would deal a strategic defeat to Tehran. It’s all nothing more than realpolitik. The Syrian people and their revolution are being cynically recruited as means to imperial ends, and thus would be wise to resist all foreign intervention.
For instance, when the Atlantic’s Jeffery Goldberg stated in a recent interview with President Obama, “But it would seem to me that one way to weaken and further isolate Iran is to remove or help remove Iran’s only Arab ally,” the president responded, “Absolutely.”
Similarly, former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy has argued, “The current standoff in Syria presents a rare chance to rid the world of the Iranian menace to international security and well-being.”
It’s target Iran, albeit on a Syrian battlefield. Therefore, that anti-Iran propaganda machine that is the U.S. media revs up.
Writing in the Washington Post, stenographers Joby Warrick and Liz Sly reported over the weekend that:
U.S. officials say they see Iran’s hand in the increasingly brutal crackdown on opposition strongholds in Syria, including evidence of Iranian military and intelligence support for government troops accused of mass executions and other atrocities in the past week.
The Post’s report was, of course, based solely on three anonymous U.S. officials. And as Warrick and Sly even admit in their piece, “such accounts are generally difficult to verify independently.” Thus they don’t.
On Monday, though, a similar piece of propaganda appeared at CNN. Penned by CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr, it also reports of Iranian infiltration into Syria, although Starr only relies on two anonymous U.S. officials. What hay a seasoned propagandist can make with such limited sources!
Yet amidst this mounting drive for Western intervention into Syria, President Obama spoke on Tuesday in an apparent attempt to tamp down all such notions, going so far as to call military intervention a “mistake.” As the president went on to state, “the notion that the way to solve every one of these problems is to deploy our military, that hasn’t been true in the past and it won’t be true now.”
Such reassurances aside, actions do, as the president himself implored in his AIPAC speech over the weekend, speak louder than words. And so while the president publicly posits that military intervention would be a mistake, his military readies for intervention into Syria, while continuing its larger ongoing build-up in the region.
The march towards Syria with eyes cast towards Iran continues on. For as Albeit Einstein once remarked, “You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.”
Ben Schreiner is a freelance writer living in Salem, Oregon. He may be reached at: bnschreiner@gmail.com.
Video: Classic war propaganda – complete with staged-gunfire off camera and the intrepid actor “Danny” relaxed and joking before getting into character to give a hysterical “casualty report” to his co-star, CNN’s Anderson Cooper – just one of many he regularly gives to Western media networks.
There are several things missing from the march to war that we are seeing playing out at AIPAC this week. First is the complete absence of any casus belli. Media and political rhetoric aside, Iran has threatened neither Israel nor the United States and the intelligence agencies of both countries agree that Tehran has not made the decision to construct a nuclear weapon (if it indeed has the ability and resources to do so). Second is the “security threat” to the United States coming from Iran, cited by President Obama. What exactly is it and how does Iran, a backward country with an ailing economy and a military unable to project its power beyond its own borders threaten the US? How can it possibly endanger the United States to such an extent that a war which can have catastrophic economic and political consequences might be justified?
Obama, to give him his due, is holding out against immense pressure on many fronts from Israel and its friends to draw a “nuclear capability” red line that will mean war in fairly short order. He is supported by the Pentagon and the intelligence community in his resistance. But he has nevertheless turned over US foreign policy in a key part of the world to Israel, saying unconditionally that he has “Israel’s back” and that he guarantees its security. That means that no matter what Israel does, justified or not, the US will get involved, something that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu understands very well. It would be war with no concern for what the consequences might be for the American people because, after all, Netanyahu could care less about the US except insofar as it is a source of material and political support.
Obama has also opened the door to a replay of Iraq. He has pledged to use military force against Iran to “prevent” Tehran’s development of a nuclear weapon. Prevent is the key word as it means preemption. Preemption will be based on evidence that Iran is building a weapon. As with Iraq, evidence can be fabricated or planted to suit. There have already been instances of fabricated intelligence being generated to create the impression that Iran is not only seeking a weapon but is also advancing a project to be able to mount it on a ballistic missile. It is not hard for a sophisticated intelligence agency like Mossad to fake the necessary evidence, that will then be picked up by the usual suspects in the US media and in congress, to make the case for war.
We are seeing something awful unfolding before our very eyes – an essentially phony case for going to war being driven by a foreign country and its domestic lobby with the political class too terrified to say no and a complicit media beating the drum.
From the Alawite Fantasy to the Surrealism of the UN
By PIERRE PICCININ | March 06, 2012
More than a year after civil unrest broke out and plunged part of Syria into the chaos of the ‘Arab Spring’, the Baath government remains firmly in control and the majority of the country is calm; almost untouched by an opposition which is scattered and confined to the cities of Homs and Hama, as well as a few towns on the Turkish and Lebanese border. The main reported cases of unrest are linked to regular attacks from Salafist bands which are of an extremely violent nature and more importantly, the Free Syrian Army. The latter counts amid its ranks numerous Qataris and Libyans, all whom have been trained in the art of urban guerilla warfare by the French army in refugee camps, which provide perfect bases from which to operate and orchestrate attacks.
How can one explain the resilience of this regime? A regime which is more or less in complete control despite facing what is usually described as a “revolutionary populist uprising”? One which is determined to overthrow the “Alawite dictatorship” from the political and economic realms of Syrian society, the so-called privilege of the Alawi, a community which accounts for no more than about 10% of the population?
Perhaps it is because the reality does not correspond to this over simplified equation.
Indeed, the communitarian and religious Syrian patchwork is far from closing ranks on the Alawi population. Moreover, this group, do not in fact monopolize the political landscape.
Therefore, even back in the 1980s, when Hafez Al-Assad, father of the incumbent president, Bashir, and author of the “Alawi coup d’état”, succumbed to serious health issues, he had designed a directorate of six members to run the Syrian government – All six were Sunnis.
Furthermore, all the prime ministers who have served in Bashir Al-Assad’s government have been Sunnis. Similarly key positions including the Ministers of Defence, Finance and Oil and the heads of the numerous police corps and the secret service do not depend on the Alawi community. The Druze, Christian, Shiite and Kurd minorities also benefit from governmental representation.
This would explain why the opposition is a fractious minority whose support base lies outside Syria’s borders rather than at the heart of the population.
In these circumstances it is understandable that Russia (and China), treading carefully in order to preserve her last card in the Middle East, resolutely opposes the pressure to sign up to the latest United Nations Security Council resolution. This would undoubtedly lead Syria into a scenario similar to Libya, where tens of thousands of civilians would perish as during the destruction of Sirte (and Russia has asked for there to be a UN commission to investigate these Atlantic war crimes).
The most striking element in this whole situation is that the UN has neither the right nor the objective, to decide the nature of a sovereign government, less still the identity of its head of state; meaning that the text proposed to the Security Council by the Arab league, calling for the departure of President Bashir Al-Assad, a text supported by Qatar with substantial French backing, is directly opposed to the basic principles of international law and completely surreal.
Furthermore, if the Baath regime is dictatorial and brutal, so are numerous factions of the opposition: an opposition which is seriously divided and made up of groups with conflicting objectives, none of which necessarily represent the Syrian population; for on the one hand there are the radical Islamic factions, who massacre their opponents and commit atrocities against the military (kidnappings, mutilations, decapitations…) but also civilians who refuse to support their objectives. This is why Russia has demanded that any UN resolution must be applied not only to the government forces but to all factions resorting to violence, including those supported by foreign states, specifically France and Qatar.
It would therefore seem that from an Alawite fantasy to the surrealism of the United Nations, Syria as depicted by the mass media certainly bears very little resemblance to the reality of the actual situation.
Pierre Piccinin is a professor of political science at the Ecole Européen de Bruxelles I.
Is the BBC really aligned with warmongers? Will it continue to play the same role it played in months leading to the invasion of Iraq? Many of the BBC’s reports and programmes containing a reference to Iran alarmingly support this assumption.
While the BBC claims impartiality since the end of World War II, it is trotting a very delicate line of deliberate bias in many different and usually complex ways. This bias becomes more visible in matters of international affairs compared to domestic politics.
Many believe that the difference between the BBC and other corporate media is that the BBC’s manipulation of the public’s mind is more sophisticated in that it is more subtle and implicit and therefore more effective.
While there are countless examples of biased reporting and analyses in the history of the BBC, probably the most bitter and lasting for Iranians is its key role in bringing down the popular democratically elected government of Mohammad Mosaddegh in the joint coup d’etat by the British and American intelligence services which reinstated the US client Monarchy for another 25 years in Iran.
The role of corporate media in illegal war against Iraq is unquestionable and has been verified by many investigators including Paul Long and Tim Wall. The false statements used to justify the invasion of Iraq not only were not questioned but also were reinforced by the media. The documentary, The War You Don’t See, directed by the veteran investigative journalist, John Pilger, shows shocking evidence of how corporate media including the BBC paved the way for military intervention in Iraq. In the current western manufactured hype over Iran’s nuclear program, which has led to the imposition of draconian sanctions and the threat of military strikes, the BBC plays its role very well, as an instrument of war, by its biased programs and reporting.
One such report written by Jonathan Markus, the BBC’s diplomatic correspondent was broadcast on 27 February. Without explicitly saying, in his article “How Israel might strike at Iran”, Jonathan Markus assumes and tries to inculcate also into the reader’s subconscious the idea that there is no question about the legitimacy of such a war; the war is justified and the only question to be discussed is how and what it might look like.
Although the programme starts with the “potential nuclear-armed Iran threat” but gives the impression that this potential threat is very likely to become a reality, and then moves on to address Israel’s worries. This and similar programmes by the BBC by discussing procedural details of possible military operations without questioning the legitimacy and the legality of such operations, serve to normalise the idea of war and prepare the public’s mind for a military confrontation with Iran. Now there is still time for all peace loving people, for all those concerned with emancipation and justice, to oppose another catastrophic illegal war before it becomes too late. Given the crucial role that corporate media played in manipulating the public opinion in preparation for the invasion of Iraq, the campaign against war should start with a relentless opposition against biased pro-war media programs and reports.
Hosts beg and cajole on air hour after hour, day after day for money.
They creatively and with cool music in the background alternately shame and praise listeners to pony up part of the paycheck.
And promise membership cards, mugs, and messenger bags in return.
NPR is your radio station.
Send money; get “unbiased” reporting.
Send money; hear the views “of all sides.”
According to Gabriel Spitzer.
And Melba Lara.
And Scott Simon. Host of Weekend Edition. Saturday.
Simon supported the war in Afghanistan.
Simon: “It seems to me that in confronting the forces that attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, American pacifists have no sane alternative now but to support the war. I don’t consider this reprisal or revenge, but self-defense: protecting the world from further attacks by destroying those who would launch them.”
Simon says. Sir, yes, sir.
Simon’s salary: $300,648.
Biased.
Steve Inskeep. “My job is to bring an unvarnished view of what’s happening around the world every day…”
The tone of Inskeep’s voice changes when he interviews Palestinians, Pakistanis, and Iranians vs. Israelis, Saudi’s, CEOs, and US government officials.
Hostile, disbelieving, aggressive for the former.
Cordial, obsequious, passive for the latter.
Inskeep’s salary: $331,241.
Biased.
I admit I listen and I don’t pay.
Because NPR doesn’t air the views of all sides.
All things are not considered.
The so-called “experts” NPR interviews are pro-government, pro-war, and promote the ideas of right-wing think tanks. A faction of former national security advisors, defense department officials, ambassadors, ex-pentagon generals, and military commanders.
Inside the DC beltway.
The government to K-street, to think tank, to NPR pipeline.
Those are the opinions and views heard in the vast majority of stories.
I know because after stories air, I google the website the expert represents.
The websites use words like: nonpartisan, principled, independent, strong, pragmatic, quality, benchmarking, innovative, strategic, impact.
Distinguished, deep thinkers thinking about good governance, rule of law, nuclear proliferation, counterterrorism, cybersecurity, 21st century defense, metrics, kinetics, energy security, failed states, nation building, geoeconomics, transparency, emerging markets, saving behavior, managing global order.
Like the Brookings Institution.
An NPR story titled: Technological Innovations Help Dictators See All.
Weekend Edition host Rachel Martin. Sunday. She interviewed an expert.
John Villasenor. Senior Fellow.
Brookings Institution.
Martin asks: “Give us some real-world examples. How could this play out in a country like Syria?”
Villasenor: “Well, in countries like Syria, there’s no reason to expect that governments won’t take advantage of every possible technological tool at their disposal to monitor their citizenry. Smartphones, and the apps that run on smartphones, very often track location in an authoritarian country.”
C’mon Rachel! Syria?
How many Syrians do you think own Smartphones?
How many Americans do you think own Smartphones?
The American surveillance state intercepts and stores 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications every day!
Why not talk about that?
They didn’t talk about that.
An NPR story titled: As Drones Evolve, More Countries Want Their Own.
Talk of the Nation host Neal Conan interviewed an expert.
John Villasenor.
The Brookings Institution Senior Fellow:
“And so, you know, unfortunately we have a long history of machines essentially engaging in killing, and so I think when people are designing – figuring out how to use drones, we have to keep in mind that, you know, there’s already been a precedent of these things and try to improve upon that.”
You lost me. Precedent? Improve on what?
Villasenor didn’t mention that American drones have killed hundreds of civilians in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Conan doesn’t ask.
For experts like Villasenor, civilian deaths are unfortunate but inevitable collateral damage in the war on terror.
I think they’re crimes against humanity.
Drone attacks are remote control terrorism.
That is my opinion.
But I’m no expert.
And NPR doesn’t want to hear my side.
Council on Foreign Relations.
An NPR story titled: Obama sends 30,000 More Troops to Afghanistan.
All Things Considered host Michele Norris interviewed an expert.
Max Boot is the “Jeane J. Kirkpatrick” Senior Fellow for
National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Norris: “…based on what you heard tonight, do you think the president went far enough?”
Boot: “I mean, the parts that I really liked and I thought were terrific were when he talked about that we have a vital national interest in Afghanistan. We have to be there to prevent a cancer from, once again, spreading throughout that country.”
The US military counterinsurgency won’t let cancer metastasize in Afghanistan.
But the troops can’t save everyone. Millions of Afghans are at the end stage.
There is no morphine to kill the pain.
An article by Max Boot on the recent clashes in Afghanistan over the burning of Qurans.
Title: Afghans Don’t Hate Americans.
The Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow:
“Many Americans seem to be saying that if the Afghan people don’t want us there, why should we stay? That’s dubious logic because we are not in Afghanistan as a favor to the Afghan people. We are there to protect our own self-interest in not having their territory once again become a haven for al-Qaida.”
I think the American people are right.
The US military shouldn’t stay in Afghanistan.
That’s not dubious logic.
It’s smart logic.
I think Afghans hate the troops for occupying their country and killing their people.
I can understand that. I would, too.
I don’t believe Afghans hate all Americans.
Just some.
Like Max Boot and other Senior Fellows at right-wing think tanks.
Who want to continue the war, occupation, targeted assassinations, sanctions, night raids, kill-capture operations, and drone strikes.
But I’m no expert. Nor are the American people.
And NPR doesn’t want to hear our views.
We didn’t write two books about war like Boot did:
War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today.
The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power.
Check out the search engine for stories at NPR’s website.
Search for the following: American Enterprise Institute, Brookings Institution, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Center for a New American Security, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Council on Foreign Relations, Royal United Services Institute.
A ton of hits.
A ton of expert opinion and analysis of the world.
You’ll be amazed.
Or maybe you won’t.
NPR.
The voices and views of one side.
Biased.
I listen, but I won’t pay.
Helen Redmond is an independent journalist. She writes about health care and the international war on drugs. She can be reached at redmondmadrid@yahoo.com
PALO ALTO (California) – In their recent visit to Iran, the high-level officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) missed a golden opportunity to resolve one of the lingering questions about Iran’s nuclear program, due to the personal intervention of the IAEA Director-General, Yukiya Amano, whose reports have raised suspicion of a “possible nuclear dimension.”
According to a source close to the Iranian nuclear negotiation team in Iran, during the two-day visit on February 20-21, the IAEA team headed by Herman Nackaerts, the Deputy Director-General for Safeguards, was informed that even though the purpose of the visit was for discussion of a framework to resolve the “ambiguities,” they were invited to visit the site at Marivan, cited in the November 2011 IAEA report for suspected “high explosive” tests pertaining to nuclear weapons — a charge denied by Tehran. Instead of accepting this invitation, and thus putting to rest one of IAEA’s stated concerns, the IAEA team declined the offer after consulting with Mr. Amano in Vienna. Amano ordered the team to return to Vienna immediately.
According to sources in Tehran, if Amano had permitted his team to inspect the Marivan site, then he would have had to mention the agency’s finding in his report due next week. “By personally intervening to torpedo a chance to lay to rest a key IAEA suspicion about Iran, unfortunately once again Mr. Amano proved his bias,” maintains the Tehran source.
Mr. Amano has been criticized in the past as being supportive of U.S. interests regarding Iran’s nuclear activities. On his appointment as head of the IAEA, Mr. Amano was referred to by U.S. diplomats as being “a friend” to U.S. interests, according to secret diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks in 2010.
In addition to failing to mention Iran’s offer to the IAEA inspection team to visit facilities at Marivan, Mr. Amano disingenuously complained of Iran’s failure to allow the IAEA team to inspect the military base at Parchin, despite the fact that in his own November 2011 report on Iran, he admits that the purpose of a visit would be “to discuss the issues identified.” This has led to Western media coverage describing Nackaerts’ trip as a “failure,” and blaming it on Iran’s “intransigence.”
Iranian witnesses suggest otherwise, indicating that the two sides made substantial progress on a six-step “draft modality” that would address the agency’s lingering concerns about Iran’s nuclear program. Although no final agreement was reached at the February meeting, Tehran insists that an agreement is still on the table and Iran is willing to implement it. The agreement includes a framework calling for “practical steps” to further Iran-IAEA cooperation, covering a future inspection of Parchin, which incidentally has been previously visited by the IAEA without ever finding anything “unusual.”
“We have had three rounds of negotiations with Mr. Nackaerts, twice in Tehran and once in Vienna, and we are getting very close to finalizing an agreement, barring any negative intervention by certain powers that manipulate the IAEA to perpetuate a crisis environment surrounding Iran’s peaceful nuclear program,” says a Tehran source on condition of anonymity.
Tehran has expressed its readiness to engage in a new round of nuclear talk with the representatives of the “5+1” nations (i.e., the UN Security Council’s Permanent Five plus Germany). From Iran’s perspective, for the coming talks to be successful the other side needs to be more attuned to Iran’s “confidence-building initiatives” such as the offer to IAEA to inspect a suspected site. Clearly, Mr. Amano must explain why he refused the offer and failed to make public Iran’s invitation.
According to recent admissions by various top US officials, including Defense Secretary Leon Paneta, the United States has no evidence that Iran is attempting to produce nuclear weapons. This means the Iran nuclear crisis is a “crisis of choice” rather than “necessity,” and its resolution requires dexterous diplomacy on the part of both sides.
This is not a time for military threat and intimidation. Given the admission by the IAEA, and reflected in its various reports, there is no evidence of military diversion in the development of nuclear material in Iran. All of Iran’s uranium enrichment activities — allowed under the articles of the Non-Proliferation Treaty — are covered by the IAEA’s routine inspections, as well as surveillance cameras. And Iran’s President Ahmadinejad has offered to suspend the 20 percent enrichment in return for an external supply of nuclear fuel for Iran’s medical reactor.
A prudent Western nuclear strategy toward Iran, one that would respect Iran’s nuclear rights, would continue to insist on Iran’s nuclear transparency, but refrain from threatening Iran with military strikes and or coercive “crippling sanctions.” Iran, like all other nations, has “inalienable rights” that are expressly recognized under the articles of the NPT.
~
Kaveh Afrasiabi was an advisor to Iran’s Nuclear Negotiation Team (2004-2006), a former political science professor at Tehran University, and author of several books on Iran’s foreign and nuclear policies, including After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran’s Foreign Policy, Iran’s Nuclear Program: Debating Facts Versus Fiction, Iran’s Foreign Policy After September 11, and Iran Phobia and US Terror Plot, A Legal Deconstruction.
“You can’t kill and talk at the same time.” – William Luers, former U.S. Ambassador & senior State Dept. official
In 2006, after Palestinians democratically elected Hamas to the shock and chagrin of both Israel and the United States (who had insisted on the elections in the first place), a devastating economic siege was imposed on the 1.5 million residents of Gaza by Israel as punishment for the crime of Palestinian self-determination. As Dov Weisglass, adviser to then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said with a chuckle, “It’s like an appointment with a dietitian. The Palestinians in Gaza will get a lot thinner, but won’t die.”
What’s so obviously funny about Weisglass’ statement is that, due to the brutal blockade that has deliberately strangled Gaza for six years, at least 61% of Palestinians in the territory are “food insecure,” of which “65% are children under 18 years;” the level of anemia in infants is as high as 65.5%, about 70% of Palestinians in Gaza live on less than $1 a day, over 80% rely on food aid, and 60% have no daily access to water, 95% of which is undrinkable anyway.
And now, apparently, Israeli officials are hoping the West will duplicate this hilarity by similarly depriving Iranians of their own means to survive.
An article published this week in Yediot Ahronot was headlined, “Israeli officials: Starve Iranians to stop nukes,” reported, “Iran’s citizens should be starved in order to curb Tehran’s nuclear program, officials in Jerusalem said Wednesday ahead of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s upcoming trip to Washington.” The article quoted an unnamed official as saying, “Suffocating sanctions could lead to a grave economic situation in Iran and to a shortage of food. This would force the regime to consider whether the nuclear adventure is worthwhile, while the Persian people have nothing to eat and may rise up as was the case in Syria, Tunisia and other Arab states.”
The official urged, “The Western world led by the United States must implement stifling sanctions at this time…[i]n order to suffocate Iran economically and diplomatically and lead the regime there to a hopeless situation, this must be done now, without delay.”
Encouraging the willful, foreign creation of a humanitarian crisis upon a nation of 74 million human beings in the form of collective punishment with the intention of fomenting regime change is not only appalling, its prescription is criminal under international law. It goes without saying that, were anyone to suggest that Israel itself be targeted with such destructive tactics for any reason whatsoever, the mere idea would elicit accusations of utterly insane, genocidal anti-Semitism. But, of course, to Israeli officials pushing the starvation of a mostly Muslim civilian population, Iranian lives are as expendable as Palestinian lives.
How can such talk be discussed so flippantly? The answer, sadly, is obvious.
Iranians, over the past three decades, have been so dehumanized by Western politicians and media that talk of economic “strangulation” and “crippling” sanctions are not only routine but, at this point, mundane. Just last week, conservative pundit Tucker Carlson stated on Fox News that “Iran should be annihilated.” Rhetoric like this is nothing new.
On April 18, 2007, John McCain, that mavericky steward of the self-described “Straight Talk Express”, held a campaign event at Murrells Inlet VFW Hall in South Carolina, where he was asked when he thought the United States might “send an air mail message to Tehran.” His reply began with him singing “Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran” to the tune of The Beach Boys’ “Barbara Ann.”
Shortly thereafter, ABC newsreported, “McCain campaign spokesman Kevin McLaughlin points out that the Senator’s song was not serious and the people in the room were laughing” and quotes McLaughlin as saying, “He was just trying to add a little humor to the event.” In response to critics who suggested McCain’s little ditty might be insensitive, the Arizona Senator said, “Insensitive to what? The Iranians?” and proposed his detractors “lighten up and get a life.”
McCain did this because, obviously, bombing thousands of people to death for no reason is funny, especially to a septuagenarian war veteran who was tortured in captivity for years. He was running for President after all.
A year later on April 22, 2008, while on the campaign trail, presidential-aspirant Hillary Clinton declared her intention to “totally obliterate” Iran if Iran ever launched a first-strike on Israel, despite the fact that Iran has never threatened to do so and has expressly denied any intention to ever do so.
In July 2008, on a campaign stop in Pittsburgh, John McCain reacted to a recent report that U.S. cigarette exports to Iran were increasing by cheerfully suggesting, “Maybe that’s a way of killing ’em,” before adding, “I meant that as a joke.” Again, because that’s hilarious.
On April 27, 2009, the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute held an event dedicated to discussing “the implications of the upcoming Iranian elections for the Obama administration’s policy toward Iran.” Speaking at the conference, alongside such Iran hawks as Joe Lieberman, Michael Rubin, Kenneth Pollack and Danielle Pletka, AEI resident scholar Fred Kagan addressed recently introduced legislation (by Lieberman) to impose more sanctions in order to “cripple” Iran, saying, “Look, we need to be honest about this, Iranians are going to die if we impose additional sanctions.” Later on in the discussion, Kagan insisted that, despite their inevitable “human cost”, he was in favor of such sanctions.
Clifford May, president of Likudnik think tank Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, wrote on May 6, 2010 in National Review that “[t]here is no greater threat to national and international security than the possibility that Iran’s current rulers – militant Islamists, terrorist masters, and sworn enemies of both the Great Satan and the Little Satan – may acquire nuclear weapons” and wondered if “crippling sanctions and their impact on an already ailing Iranian economy” could “change the behavior of the Iranian regime – or cause a change of regime?” His titillating answer: “There’s only one way to find out.”
The next month, Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice introduced a new – and thoroughly macabre – phrase to official U.S. government discourse. Appearing on the June 9, 2010 edition of PBS Newshour, Rice told host Ray Suarez that the then-latest round of U.N. Security Council sanctions on Iran would “tighten the noose with a new inspections regime [and] new restrictions on its financing and commercial activities.”
In August 2010, California congressman Brad Sherman wrote an article for The Hill promoting even more devastating sanctions on Iran for asserting its inalienable national rights and not kowtowing to American and Israeli diktat. He wrote, “The goal of the bill is to drive Iran’s economy into a crisis and force its leaders to the negotiating table…Critics also argued that these measures will hurt the Iranian people. Quite frankly, we need to do just that.”
On November 16, 2011, when he was still in the GOP race, John Huntsman told CNN‘s Piers Morgan that sanctions alone won’t force Iran to abandon its nuclear program, explaining, “You can tighten the noose in ways that will make life a lot more difficult from an economic standpoint. But my sense is that their ultimate aspiration is to become a nuclear power, in which case sanctions probably aren’t going to get you there.”
On January 5, 2012, State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland told press at the daily briefing that an internationally-imposed oil embargo on Iran is supported by the Obama administration because “we believe that if we work together and if we also work to increase global supply generally that this will be an important next step in the global effort to tighten the noose on their regime.”
The very next day, January 6, 2012, Maria Otero, Undersecretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs, concluded an appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations with these remarks:
“We do see Iran as a — as a threat, as a threat with — because they support destabilization and because they have — they have really supported things that are threatening not only the region, but the world overall. So this is going to be moving forward, and we will continue to be supporting an embargo that will tighten the noose around them.”
By now, the lynching analogy has become so prevalent in the political lexicon that it’s even made its way into Congressional statements. On February 2, 2012, New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez posted a press release on his website that “hailed the Senate Banking committee’s approval and bipartisan support for the Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Human Rights Act,” which, according to Menendez, is designed to “further enhance pressure on the Iranian regime to halt its illicit nuclear weapons program.” The statement quotes Mendez as declaring,
“This legislation will thwart the work-arounds that Iran has devised to circumvent the U.S., EU and UN sanctions regimes, tighten the noose on the Iranian government, and send a message to the world that there is a choice – you can either do business with Iran or the United States, but not both.”
The following day, on February 3, 2012, Asia Times columnist David P. Goldman lamented that an illegal and unprovoked military attack (i.e. a war crime) had not been carried out on Iran by the United States back in 2005 when “surgical strikes to destroy Iran’s nuclear capacity would have been comparatively easy.” Now, however,
Senior planners at the Pentagon say privately that it would be very difficult to destroy centrifuges in bunkers, and that aerial attacks would concentrate on killing the political and military leadership as well as destroying command and control…It seems likely, however, that stopping Iran from getting nuclear weapons would be a messy and bloody business rather than a well-defined surgical operation. It is too bad the West did not have the good sense to correct the problem in 2005. However much it costs in Iranian blood and well-being, it’s still worth it.”
Yes, a human person actually wrote this. And another human person published it.
As Marsha Cohen points out in a phenomenal new piece for LobeLog, a 2009 study produced for the Center for International and Strategic Studies briefly addressed “the human and environmental human catastrophe that would result just from an attack on the Iranian nuclear power plant in Bushehr,” and determined:
Any strike on the Bushehr Nuclear Reactor will cause the immediate death of thousands of people living in or adjacent to the site, and thousands of subsequent cancer deaths or even up to hundreds of thousands depending on the population density along the contamination plume.
That these casualty figures are “worth it” for Goldman puts him in a special class of despicable along with Madeleine Albright, who determined that the deaths of over half a million Iraqi children due to Western sanctions were also “worth it.”
On February 15, 2012, Bob Menendez was back with a new statement praising Joe Lieberman and Lindsay Graham’s so-called “Non-Containment Resolution” which dangerously “rejects any United States policy that would rely on efforts to contain a nuclear weapons-capable Iran.” Menendez stated, “At this moment, Iran is the greatest threat; the great challenge to peace and security in the world,” warned of “the unquestioned military intent of Iran’s nuclear program,” and again commended the imposition of more sanctions in order to “further tighten the noose” on Iran.
It is instructive to note that Menendez, a Democrat, voted against giving George W. Bush congressional approval to attack and invade Iraq. He has proudly stood behind this decision, declaring during his successful 2006 Senate run,
“I’m proud to have voted against Bush’s war in Iraq right from the start, even when it was unpopular to do so. The Bush administration failed to make the case that Iraq was an imminent threat to our national security. Moreover, there was no conclusive evidence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. This was a war of choice, not a war of necessity. The Bush administration misled the American people with faulty premises and false promises.”
This time around, however, one has to wonder what “imminent threat” Bob Menendez believes Iran actually poses to the United States, what “conclusive evidence” of Iranian weapons of mass destruction he is privy to and what “premises” and “promises” he thinks are right and true.
On December 9, 2005, Menendez told his constituents, “I pledge to you that I will never send New Jerseyans into a war that I would be unwilling to send my own son or daughter to fight,” adding, “I’m proud of my vote [against authorizing the war in Iraq], because despite the administration’s efforts to manipulate the justifications for war, I did my due diligence. We now know that the war in Iraq has overstretched our military, drained our treasury and cost far too many of our bravest Americans.”
Considering that the Lieberman-Graham resolution, which Menendez so adamantly supports and has co-sponsored, essentially calls for war against Iran to prevent it from reaching what is now termed “nuclear weapons capacity,” it can be assumed Menendez is currently filling out recruitment papers for his children.
This new, so-called “red line” of “nuclear weapons capability” – the ability, after having mastered the nuclear fuel cycle and reached sufficient levels of nuclear expertise and scientific development, to manufacture atomic weapons if such a decision is made – makes no sense. Iran, which already has operational enrichment facilities and a functioning power plant, already has such “capability,” which is often dubbed the “Japan option” or “breakout option.” And it’s not alone. In fact, at least 140 countries “currently have the basic technical capacity to produce nuclear weapons.” Additionally, according to Green Peace, “[o]ver 40 countries have the materials and know-how to build nuclear weapons quickly, a capacity that is referred to as ‘rapid break-out.'”
Nevertheless, Senator Lindsey Graham – who clearly knows better than the U.S. intelligence community and the IAEA – decided to tell reporters that Iran is “not building a nuclear power plant for peaceful purposes. They’re marching towards nuclear weapons capability,” adding, “The end game is, sanctions can work and will work if properly applied, but in case they fail… the Iran regime will not be allowed to possess nuclear capability. And if that means military actions, so be it.”
Bloomberg News now reports that “the Joint Chiefs of Staff have prepared military options to strike Iranian nuclear sites in the event of a conflict” and quotes Air Force Chief of Staff General Norton Schwartz as telling reporters “What we can do, you wouldn’t want to be in the area.” Obviously, millions of Iranians don’t have the option of not being “in the area” considering they live there.
In an extensive interview focused primarily on Iran, conducted by Jeffrey Goldberg in the Oval Office and published in The Atlantic today, President Barack Obama defined what the constant threat that “all options are on the table” with regard to U.S. policy toward Iran:
“I think the Israeli people understand it, I think the American people understand it, and I think the Iranians understand it. It means a political component that involves isolating Iran; it means an economic component that involves unprecedented and crippling sanctions; it means a diplomatic component in which we have been able to strengthen the coalition that presents Iran with various options through the P-5 plus 1 and ensures that the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] is robust in evaluating Iran’s military program; and it includes a military component. And I think people understand that.”
Despite admitting that “Iran does not yet have a nuclear weapon and is not yet in a position to obtain a nuclear weapon without us having a pretty long lead time in which we will know that they are making that attempt,” Obama nevertheless was proud of inflicting such economic, diplomatic and political hardship on Iran that, in his words, have put the Iranian government in “a world of hurt.”
Such nonchalanttalk and campaign trail knee-slappers about the “annihilation” and “obliteration,” of murder and war crimes, of tightened nooses – the execution of a death sentence – and of deliberately hurting a nation of 74 million human beings, along with chest-thumping boasts about destroying the internationally safeguarded nuclear facilities of a sovereign country, would be unequivocally condemned were it directed toward the United States or its allies.
After thirty years of warmongering, threats, and propaganda, it’s clear that American and Israeli discourse about Iran is starving for humanity.
Good question. Perhaps we need to ask the well-connected Committee to Protect Journalists. Here’s the very revealing bio (emphasis added) of one of their staff members:
MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA PROGRAM COORDINATOR
Mohamed Abdel Dayem
Before joining CPJ in December 2008, Mohamed Abdel Dayem was a research analyst at the Save Darfur Coalition, where he was responsible for researching and producing all of the coalition’s written materials. Abdel Dayem was also involved in increasing the coalition’s outreach and coordination with activists, governments, and the media in the Middle East and Muslim world at large. In late 2006 and early 2007, Abdel Dayem worked at the National Endowment for Democracy, where he managed the Endowment’s Iraq portfolio. Prior to that, he spent nearly five years at Human Rights Watch, conducting research and media outreach on countries throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Abdel Dayem has also worked at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He has also been a consultant to a variety of NGOs, including the International Center for Transitional Justice, the Open Society Institute’s Iraq Revenue Watch, the Fund for Global Human Rights, and the InternationalCenter for Journalists, among others. A graduate of the University of Central Florida, where he majored in political science and anthropology, Abdel Dayem also has an M.A. from the School of Advanced International Studies at the JohnsHopkins University, where he specialized in international law, conflict management and international economics. Aside from English, Abdel Dayem is fluent in Arabic and German. He has lived and traveled extensively in the Middle East.
>> Read Mohamed Abdel Dayem’s blog.
Homs, now, is nothing but a sinister battlefield where government soldiers face armed groups which, according to independent witnesses about the true nature of the rebellion, are blindly firing cannon shots to sow terror and death, then pretending that only government forces are bombarding the city.
The Western media, for its part, continues to adduce as evidence the statements of local committees which spread propaganda of the armed “opponents”, in coordination with the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights, a London-based body created and funded by the rebellion-allied forces The Syrian Observatory of Human Rights — which collects the statements of various local committees in Syria — has been repeatedly denounced as nothing but a vulgar instrument of disinformation in the service of the revolt. Despite ample evidence of that, it remains the principal source of information from Syria – together with the famous “great reporters” — and the entire Western media are referring to it, spreading day after day the reports by this observatory.1
To understand what happens in Syria, it is therefore not possible to rely on the Syrian Observatory or on bloggers who are part of this rebellion. We also cannot rely on foreign correspondents who are, as we can see, systematically and from the heart and soul on the side of the armed “opponents”, qualifying them as “heroes” and presenting the battle that divides the Syrian people in an entirely Manichaean way: On one side the opposition which “struggles for democracy”, and on the other the terrible dictator.
Things are not like that. As demonstrated by a recent poll, as well as by the massive demonstrations in support of the Russian and Chinese veto at the UN, the vast majority of the Syrian people do not want this armed revolt, which seeks solely to legitimize NATO powers and several Arab states — notoriously known as champions of democracy, such as Qatar.
If you want to speak of “heroes” in Syria, then you should refer to all parties who are suffering, not only to the “heroes” recognized by the West …
How many Milan missiles were handed over to the rebels?
The number of Syrian citizens appealing to to their president for intervention of government forces is very high. This is especially true in Homs, where the situation is alarming because large sections of the population are held hostage by these groups occupying entire areas of the city — the neighborhoods of Baba Amr, Khaldiyeh, Karm el-Zeytoun — where the people have been calling for months for Damascus to rescue them.2
Their fate has become even more a source of anxiety since the same Milan anti-tank missile launchers delivered to the Libyan rebels during the Libyan campaign, less than a year ago, by France and Qatar, began to be used. We can remember how at the time Sarkozy and Bernard Henry Levy misled public opinion by putting the blame on forces loyal to Gaddafi for the use of these Milan missiles, which were taking a heavy toll on the people.
This is the same disturbing scenario repeating itself in Syria. Politicians, journalists and NGOs are once again taking a firm stand concerning the war, provoked by groups exploited by foreign powers. They attribute to the government forces, as was done in Libya and without proper inspection, the acts of barbarism perpetrated by the armed ‘opponents’ who are terrorizing the majority of the population.
For three weeks correspondents have been repeating that Homs has been unilaterally shelled by the Syrian army. On the contrary, the loyalist contingents attacked by the Milan missiles have suffered heavy losses since the beginning of their intervention. It is not clear whether the authorities in Damascus will be able to dislodge these groups with heavy weaponry from all quarters of the city.
Could the Syrian government not respond?
From the beginning of these battles it has been repeatedly demonstrated that the armed ‘rebels’ are trained, drilled and formed by foreign special forces and that among their ranks the opponents have elements acting on behalf of foreign powers whose presence in Syria is self-evident. Syrian television has recently disseminated pictures of Homs taken by a foreign “war photographer” who followed and filmed these armed “opponents” — the same ones glorified by the “great reporters” — who wildly launch rockets and missiles. An image has attracted attention: In a building, whose stairs are dirty with blood and destroyed furniture, a surprising graffiti with heavy meaning stood out on a wall: “From Misurata, after we have freed Lybia, we came to free Syria!”
Who is responsible for the massacres of Homs, and which objectives does he pursue?
These armed groups, whose most violent actions are attributed to Al Assad soldiers facing them, are systematically presented by the Western press as “foes” fighting for “democracy.”
Why do “great reporters” not bring evidence of Syrian victims of abductions, tortures and murders by these armed “opponents”?
Why has the President of Doctors without Borders recently contributed to this process of intoxication, showing as credible the testimonies of anonymous Syrians with covered faces — standing side by side with the rebels, and attributing to Al-Assad forces and to the hospitals’ doctors unspeakable acts of torture and injury of children?3
Who would believe in Bashar Al Assad’s interest in torturing his people, in raping children and girls? Who would believe that the majority of the Syrian people would continue supporting Bashar Al Assad if he was really such a bloody torturer as painted in the West for the purpose of war propaganda?
These incessant campaigns which defend the violent opposition, and not the people terrorized and oppressed by these rebels, are dangerous. They aim to bring grist to the foreign power’s mill — France, Great Britain, the United States, backed by Qatar and Saudi Arabia — which have been preparing for months the ground for a military intervention in Syria, and are just waiting for the green light by Obama.
Notes
[1] The Syrian Observatory of Human Rights – which collects the statements of various local committees in Syria – has been repeatedly denounced as nothing but a vulgar instrument of disinformation in the service of the revolt. Despite ample evidence of that, it remains the principal source of information from Syria – together with the famous “great reporters” – and the entire Western media are referring to it, spreading day after day the reports by this rip-of observatory.
[2] See: “Une Syrienne, dont le frère a été tué à Homs par des “opposants”, témoigne” (“A Syrian who had killed his brother in Homs by ’opponents’ witnesses”), story picked up by Nadia Khost, February 8, 2012.
(http://www.silviacattori.net/article2790.html)
[3] The role of NGOs that have contributed to the misinformation affecting Syria and thus increasing the risk of foreign intervention, and in particular Amnesty International and Medecins Sans Frontières will be the subject of further investigations.
By Donald Neff | Washington Report On Middle East Affairs | January 1996
On January 4, 1948, Jewish terrorists drove a truck loaded with explosives into the center of the all Arab city of Jaffa and detonated it, killing 26 and wounding around 100 Palestinian men, women and children.[1] The attack was the work of the Irgun Zvai Leumi – the “National Military Organization,” also known by the Hebrew letters Etzel – the largest Jewish terrorist group in Palestine. The Irgun was headed by Revisionist Zionist Menachem Begin and had been killing and maiming Arabs, Britons and even Jews for the previous ten years in its efforts to establish a Jewish state.
This terror campaign meant that at the core of Revisionist Zionism there existed a philosophical embrace of violence. … continue
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The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
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