[hope you all were able to tune in to WAMC http://www.WAMC.org 90.9 FM this morning folks-- Trita Parsi, author of "A Single Roll of the Dice - Obama's Diplomacy with Iran" ( http://www.TritaParsi.com ) was a guest on the morning show from about 10 am on; also-- see below-- two new spot-on new ones just posted online yesterday-- "Divining the Truth about Iran" by Ray McGovern and "Focus on Iran and China Could Hasten American Decline" by William Pfaff....finally-- and most importantly-- pls come out to join us for rally on this Sat.!...Joel (845-444-0599)]
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
From http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=637261858&ref=ts#!/events/333764903321430/
Albany says, "No War with Iran"
Public Event · By Joe Lombardo
When: Saturday, February 4, 2012
Time: 12:00 pm until 2:00 pm
Where: Wolf Rd and Central Ave, Colonie
Description: Join Occupy Albany and the Capital District antiwar movement to protest the threat of war with Iran. NO WAR, NO Sanctions, No Assassinations. This is part of a national day of action.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
http://www.Independent.co.uk last month (Jan. 7th)...
Trita Parsi: Reckless talk of war with Iran makes confrontation a probability
TRITA PARSI
SATURDAY 07 JANUARY 2012
The temperature between the West and Iran has increased dramatically. Escalation by both sides coupled with a reckless discourse that has normalized the idea of war have created an environment where military confrontation is a rising probability. The next escalatory step pondered by Europe - in the midst of its own economic crisis - is a total embargo on Iranian oil. An idea that a few months ago was considered a non-starter now has an air of inevitability.
Sanctions are rarely effective. But right before their imposition - at the moment where they remain a withdrawable threat - their effectiveness is at their height. The challenge with multilateral sanctions, however, is that the diplomatic resources required to create concensus around sanctions are so great that once the sanctions threat gains momentum, the commitment of the sanctioning countries to this path tends to become irreversible. Rather than utilising the threat of sanctions to compel a change in policy, they tend to confuse the means with the goal. Backing down from the threat becomes too costly so sanctions become unstoppable - and ineffective.
This is what happened in May 2010 when the Obama administration and the EU opted for a new round of UN Security Council sanctions on Iran even though Tehran at the last moment succumbed to Western demands on a fuel swap offer.
The Obama administration's limited diplomacy with Iran in October 2009 was centered on a fuel swap aimed at getting 1,200kg of Low Enriched Uranium (LEU) out of Iran in return for fuel pads for a medical research reactor and by that create greater political space for continued talks. But political infighting in Iran and Iranian demands for mechanisms that would guarantee that the fuel would be delivered caused the diplomacy to fall short.
Though the West recognized that the deal had fallen victim to internal politics in Iran, the US and the EU abandoned diplomacy and returned to the sanctions track by November 2009. But resistance from Russia and China was stiff and a new resolution could not be adopted early Spring 2010 as they had hoped. Far greater diplomatic resources and time had to be invested to win China and Russia's buy-in.
Moscow and Beijing were not the only obstacles. Turkey and Brazil, who also served on the UN Security Council at the time, believed that diplomacy could still be resurrected. With Washington's half-hearted blessing, the two states embarked on their own mediation effort in order to get Iran to yes.
With a letter in hand from Obama declaring Washington's desire to see 1,200kg of Iranian Low Enriched Uranium put in escrow in Turkey, the Brazilians and Turks headed to Tehran for an 18-hour marathon negotiation. The West did not expect them to be successful, after all, the Iranians were not interested in a deal, White House officials believed. Still, Turkey and Brazil needed to experience failure on their own in order for them to come onboard with sanctions.
After two days of talks, Brazil and Turkey shocked the West - they had an agreement. These two up and coming states had succeeded where the US and the EU powers had failed for years. Though some facts had changed on the ground, the deal - the Tehran Declaration - followed the benchmarks of the US proposal from only six months earlier and the guidelines listed in Obama's letter to the leaders of Turkey and Brazil.
But rather than viewing this as the diplomatic breakthrough the West had sought in October 2009, it was viewed as a deceptive Iranian trick. Unbeknownst to Turkey and Brazil, Obama had secured Russia and China's approval for sanctions only a day before the talks in Tehran began. Almost without reflection, Sectary of State Hillary Clinton gave the agreement the death knell, declaring in the US Senate that Washington's response was to adopt a sanctions resolution at the UN, while adding that this diplomatic efforts had made "the world more dangerous."
The British viewed the agreement as a "distraction." Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon told me that it was a "blatant ploy" by Iran and that Turkey and Brazil had been taken for a ride. Connecting the agreement with the UN vote in a negative way, a senior EU official told me that "If you look at the timing of the Tehran Declaration, it was done at the eve of the vote. Is that a very credible sign? ... The P5 didn't want any monkey business at that time."
The sanctions momentum had become too great - the lure of the sanctions trumped the diplomatic breakthrough it ostensibly was supposed to bring about. Once concencus on sanctions among the five permanent members of the UN Security Council had been reached, it was deemed more valuable than a nuclear opening.
Now the EU is about to repeat this mistake. One the one hand, the EU is aggressively moving forward with an oil embargo - a step that a senior EU official explained to me as the last step short of war. On the other hand, a new round of talks is in the making.
Sceptics will argue that the Iranians are only coming to the table due to the sanctions pressure and that their aim is to undo the sanctions momentum. This is an astonishing statement. After all, the official objective of the sanctions are to get Iran back to the table.
If a new round of talks take place, there should be little doubt that negotiations will be tough. The divide between the two sides has grown as a result of the mutual escalation. And political space for the kind of sustained diplomacy needed to produce a breakthrough is in short supply in the US, Iran and the EU.
Rather than a negotiation, we are likely to see yet another exchange of ultimatums. But if the EU repeats the mistake of 2010 and lets its mistrust overtake its judgement and imposes an oil embargo prior to the next meeting, then diplomacy will likely be dead on arrival.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
From http://www.CommonDreams.org ...
Published on Wednesday, February 1, 2012 by Common Dreams
Divining the Truth about Iran
by Ray McGovern
Watching top U.S. intelligence officials present the annual "Worldwide Threat Assessment" before the Senate Intelligence Committee, I found myself wondering if they would depart from the key (if politically delicate) consensus judgment that Iran is NOT working on a nuclear weapon.
In last year's briefing, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper had stood firm on this key point, despite severe pressure to paint Iran in more pernicious terms. On Tuesday, I was relieved to see in Clapper's testimony a reiteration of the conclusions of a formal National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of November 2007, issued unanimously by all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, including judgments like this:
"We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program; Š Tehran's decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005."
Sadly, this judgment still comes as news to many of those Americans who are malnourished on the low-protein gruel of the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) - even though the NIE was immediately declassified in 2007 and has been in the public domain for more than four years.
Granted, former President George W. Bush did not like it - not one bit. In an unusually revealing comment in his memoir Decision Points, Bush complained bitterly that "the NIE tied my hands on the military side," preventing him from attacking Iran. That was the course strongly favored by hawkish Vice President Dick Cheney with his PhD summa cum laude in Preventive War.
And, America's FCM consistently ignores the official NIE when writing news stories hyping Iran's nuclear threat. However, if you read the articles very closely you may see references to Iran supposedly working toward the "capacity to build" nuclear weapons, not that Iran is actually working on building a nuclear bomb.
The distinction is important, but it is so subtle as to be misleading. Most casual readers would simply assume that Iran is building a nuclear bomb.
The FCM's rhetorical shift from accusing Iran of "building" nukes to seeking a "capacity to build" them is reminiscent of Bush's sleight of hand when he went from talking about Iraq's supposed WMD "stockpiles" to its WMD "programs" - after it turned out there were no WMD stockpiles.
Oddly, even when Israeli sources concur with this key point that Iran has NOT decided to build a nuclear bomb - as the Israeli newspaper Haaretz and Defense Minister Ehud Barak indicated recently - the FCM in the United States continues to leave the impression among Americans that Iran is on the verge of having nukes. [See Consortiumnews.com's "US/Israel: Iran NOT Building Nukes."]
You will almost never see in a major U.S. newspaper the assessment - backed by the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies - that Iran is NOT building nuclear weapons. At most, you'll see a boilerplate phrase about Iran denying that it is. You're also not likely to see references to the fact that Israel has a sophisticated nuclear arsenal of its own.
'Tell-It-Like-It-Is' Intelligence
Still, it's encouraging to see U.S. intelligence officials resist bending with the prevailing political winds the way the malleable CIA director, George Tenet, and his deputy John McLaughlin did when they orchestrated the fraudulent October 2002 NIE on Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction."
After they left in disgrace (having contributed to the bloody war in Iraq), fresh institutional blood was brought in to manage intelligence estimates. In a professional sense, the two were not a hard act to follow. But courage can still be a rare commodity in the careerist world of Official Washington.
What happened is that the new managers launched a bottom-up assessment of all the evidence on Iran's nuclear development program. They reached conclusions based on what they found, not on what was politically expedient; they spoke truth to power, and, in the process, helped prevent yet another disastrous war.
This year, though, there was good reason to worry that the current intelligence managers might succumb to pressure for a more "politically correct" course. One factor has been the rising crescendo in the FCM, echoing the Israeli government's hyperbolic fears regarding a "nuclear threat" from Iran.
The FCM, for example, gave unconscionably inflammatory coverage to a highly misleading November 2011 report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Iran. The FCM ignored available evidence from WikiLeaks documents showing that the new IAEA management was collaborating behind-the-scenes with U.S. and Israeli officials on the Iran issue.
And there was growing concern that National Intelligence Director Clapper might be outmaneuvered by the new CIA Director David Petraeus, the retired four-star general who is always the darling of Congress.
The ambitious Petraeus's own words have shown him groveling before the Israel Lobby - to the point of backing away from his own congressional testimony of March 2010, a small segment of which was implicitly critical of Israeli intransigence on the issue of Palestine.
E-mails revealed Petraeus begging neocon pundit Max Boot to help him withstand criticism from neocon circles over the rare burst of honesty that had slipped into Petraeus's prepared testimony. Petraeus then mistakenly shared the e-mail train with blogger James Morris, who made them public.
On Tuesday, Petraeus was pandering again in his gratuitous repetition of the neocons' characterizations of the IAEA report. Petraeus said: "The IAEA Š report was a very accurate reflection of reality, of the situation on the ground. I think that is the authoritative document when it comes to informing the public of all the countries of the world of the situation there."
This is a remarkable statement coming from the head of the CIA, an agency that was one of the principal drafters of the NIE in 2007, which stands at variance with the politically tinged IAEA report, which labored to make the case that Iran was gaining expertise needed to build a nuclear bomb.
However, there were, in fact, significant overlaps in the IAEA's description of Iran's nuclear program and the key judgments of the NIE, but you would hardly know that from reporting in the FCM. The IAEA report contains no smoking gun regarding Iran's intentions about building nuclear weapons, but notes that much of Iran's progress occurred prior to fall 2003 - when the NIE reported that Iran abandoned its weapons program.
Still, many pundits and politicians walked away with two misleading messages from the IAEA report: that it refuted the NIE and that Iran is now making a break for the bomb. Both representations are false, yet the assertions have been repeated often enough to give them traction with the public and Congress, which was evident in Petraeus's remarks.
As Petraeus knows better than most, the National Intelligence Estimate is the genre of intelligence assessment that the U.S. government considers "authoritative." I found it shameful, but not surprising, that he would identify himself with the IAEA rather than with the U.S. intelligence community. Shameful pandering, which Clapper - to his credit - would have none of.
The way the wind seems to be blowing from the White House and Capitol Hill, however, I think it a good bet that, before many months go by, Petraeus will be taking over the job of his current nominal boss, and Clapper will be set out to pasture for special services not rendered.
The Media on the Briefing
True to form, the FCM offered little truth in its reports on the Tuesday briefing - and quite a lot of distortion. Very little mention was made of Clapper's key assertion that Iran is not building nuclear weapons, just as the FCM discreetly averted its eyes and ears from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's definitive statement to that effect on Jan. 8.
The Washington Post initially ran an article by Greg Miller titled, "Iran, perceiving threat from West, willing to attack on U.S. soil, U.S. intelligence report finds." That title was then squished to fit at the top of page one, right next to a smiling photo of Mr. and Mrs. Romney, and reads "U.S. spy agencies see new Iran risk: Tehran more willing to launch attacks on American soil, they say."
For his story, Miller selects the two short paragraphs in which Clapper claims that some Iranian officials - probably including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei - "are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real or perceived U.S. actions that threaten the regime." (I can readily imagine the word-smithing by senior officials that yielded that profound observation.)
In an instant commentary, Salon blogger Glen Greenwald described Miller's article - correctly - as a "monument to mindless stenographic journalism" and asks if anyone is still "doubting that there is a concerted media-aided fear-mongering campaign aimed at Iran."
For the record, the New York Times' Eric Schmitt led off his report in a similar vein: "Some senior Iranian leaders are now more willing to carry out attacks inside the U.S. in response to perceived American threats against their country," citing senior intelligence officials.
It is not at all picayune to note that the Times dropped the "real or" from Clapper's "in response to real or perceived U.S. actions that threaten the regime," thus removing the point that Iran might actually encounter "real" threats from the United States. All that high-priced word-smithing for nothing!
As if further proof were needed about the bias of the FCM, blogger Michael Rozeff took the Boston Globe to task for piecing together two unconnected parts of Clapper's testimony to leave the impression that Iran is making enriched uranium in order to conduct an attack on the U.S.
Who Will Tell the Truth?
As a former analyst of Soviet affairs, I became familiar with how to dissect controlled media. And as a liaison officer to Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty during the late Sixties, I learned ways to penetrate denied areas with radio waves and other means.
It was those two radio stations, plus VOA and the BBC, that played such a key role in informing Russians and East Europeans about what was possible in the outside world. So, how to break through the blanket of the Fawning Corporate Media to give Americans a shot at knowing what is going on?
It seems a kind of delicious irony that - how to say this - the Russians Are Coming to help those of us hoping to break through the FCM and make our reporting and analysis available to our fellow citizens. As senators were clapping for Clapper, RT (for Russia Today) asked to interview me for their evening news program.
Knowing that my old friend Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has already spoken approvingly of RT, I did not think I needed to ask permission. Here's what I said; I can only hope some folks watched it.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. During his career as a CIA analyst, he prepared and briefed the President's Daily Brief and chaired National Intelligence Estimates. He is a member of the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
From http://www.TruthDig.com ...
Published on Wednesday, February 1, 2012 by Truthdig.com
Focus on Iran and China Could Hasten American Decline
by William Pfaff
The framework in which most Americans, including the foreign policy specialists, see the world has totally changed in a decade. In February 2002, the United States and Afghanistan's Northern Alliance had just won their blitzkrieg, unseating the Taliban government of Afghanistan, and a new client government was being set in place. The Economist was to say of it a year later that optimists believed Afghanistan to be "more stable than at any time in the past 24 years." Another war, against Iraq, was confidently being prepared to avenge the trade towers and Pentagon attacks (to which, it was to turn out, Iraq had no connection), and to create a "New Middle East."
Americans in 2002 believed themselves on top of the world, capable of anything. They took progress for granted. A leading neo-conservative of the time said, "We have something called the Agency for International Development, in the hope that someday Somalia might look like Norway." That's what the New Middle East was all about.
One decade, more than a trillion American dollars and uncounted thousands of lives later, the Afghan War continues, and the Iraq War, nominally over, but with 6,000 American officials and their bodyguards left in the country, is not really over at all. A third American war against a Muslim society, Iran, is seriously likely.
The same time Washington conducts and enlarges this military involvement in the non-Western world, the American public, and again, many of its foreign policy experts and political leaders, have decided that the United States is in decline, its social coherence, its sense of unity and purpose lost, divided as never before by economic class and a newly felt and newly expressed hatred between the one percent monopolizing its wealth and the excluded 99 percent. The American and Western economies are badly weakened by a global recession and potential depression, wrought by Wall Street.
This is no illusion, nor is the widespread conviction that the American government and its electoral system suffer a crisis of function, accountability, competence and venomous political conflict.
Today a leading figure in the policy community, Zbigniew Brzezinski, writes in his new book that America "is in serious decline for domestic and/or external reasons" and that its loss of international authority risks stalling international efforts to deal with "issues of central importance to social well-being and ultimately to human survival."
The framework in which Americans now see international society is usually one of Chinese ascendance to take America's place.
This is a mistake based on China's economic development and financial power, widely misunderstood (see below), and on the intimidating size of China's population, 1.3 billion people. This ignores the fact that large numbers of people do not readily translate into economic prosperity and influence (as India is also finding out), nor into military power, as the Pentagon seems to think-inaugurating bases and new American deployments in East Asia, so that if a new war breaks out there, the United States can automatically be at the center of it (which some might think a less than good idea).
While China has a very large gross domestic product, it has a very low GDP per capita (ranking 91 on an International Monetary Fund listing of 184 countries; it is lower than six African countries and has only a tenth of American GDP/capita.). In living standards (purchasing power comparisons), China is lower yet in world rankings, just above Albania.
It also is necessary to ask what China's ambitions are. It has never in the past shown much interest in international domination, other than in its own immediate area, considering itself the natural center of civilization, superior to everyone else. Its current global program of investments is never political-attempting to exercise political or strategic influence-but economic, concerned with sourcing resources needed for China's development. Its economic assistance to countries in Africa or elsewhere in Asia is usually payment to secure access to foreign mineral resources and energy.
A recent letter from a friend who lives in Beijing included the following observation: "A senior lawyer in Beijing told me a few months ago that much of his firm's business is winding up German-Chinese joint ventures, in order for the German partner to leave. The Germans are finding themselves competing in other countries against Chinese technology that's been copied from German companies, reengineered to lower costs." He adds that he feels "[China] is in the beginning phases again of an historical rejection of foreign influences ... [that will make it] impossible for China to develop the broad culture of innovation that exists in the West." My friend is an engineer himself.
Americans might do better to give up their China obsession and go back to their traditional vision of a European threat. If the Europeans can get their indebtedness problem solved (imported from the United States; thank you, Wall Street), Americans will find that the European Union states collectively have a larger GDP, a higher GDP/capita (depending on variable currency exchange values), and on average better standards of living and education than the United States, and even have some capable engineers and managers, as Boeing has found out. They also are tired of fighting foreign wars just to advance American projects and policies.
© 2012 TruthDig
William Pfaff is a globally respected political commentator and author on international relations, contemporary history and U.S. policy. He is the author of eight books, most recently Fear, Anger and Failure: A Chronicle of the Bush Administration's War Against Terror from the Attacks of September 11, 2001 to Defeat in Baghdad. Visit William Pfaff's Web site at www.williampfaff.com.
###############################################
[recall below sent out last Thurs. to this list]
re: Iran, Caddyshack, Jon Stewart tonight...(anyone see Daily Show just now on this?)...
[Jon Stewart at beginning of tonight's "Daily Show" justifiably mocked Obama's continued sabre-rattling re: Iran-- asking when a new war in a Middle Eastern country become the equivalent of Rodney Dangerfield's exuberant exhortation from the end of "Caddyshack"...lol...more background-- recall my blog post: http://dutchessdemocracy.blogspot.com/2011/12/stop-next-us-war-with-iran-call-obama.html ]
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[new must-read just posted online yesterday from Ray McGovern-- "US/Israel: Iran NOT Building Nukes"
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/25-5 ]
[also see-- Rabbi Lerner: http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/mj-rosenberg-on-israels-possible-strike-at-iran ]
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
From http://www.Progressive.org ...(note fifth paragraph below in particular!):
Published on Wednesday, January 25, 2012 by The Progressive
In Obama's State of the Union, Troublesome Passages for Progressives
by Matthew Rothschild
Excuse me for not yelling myself hoarse for Obama's warmed over State of the Union address.
While I agree with his call for economic fairness, there was not much in his speech that was new or all that promising. And there were several troublesome passages for progressives.
First, mentioning John Boehner, Obama said he was still open to a grand compromise on Social Security and Medicare, which would make Americans have to work longer and get less benefits from Medicare and Medicaid. We don't need a Democrat to hack away at these crucial social programs.
Second, he took a gratuitous swipe at universal single-payer health care. Sounding like Ronald Reagan, he said, "I believe what Republican Abraham Lincoln believed: That Government should do for people only what they cannot do better by themselves, and no more." As an illustration, he said, "That's why our health care law relies on a reformed private market, not a Government program." Huh?
He used to say he was for single-payer universal health care. Then, when he was running for President the first time, he said, "If I were starting from scratch," I'd be for single-payer universal health care. Now he disparages it to score cheap political points.
Third, he was belligerent on Iran, saying (to raucous applause) that he would take "no options off the table," which is easily decipherable code for saying he'd threaten to blow Iran off the map if it got one nuclear weapon, even though the United States has thousands and Israel has hundreds.
Fourth, he said that America is a "Pacific power," reiterating the theme of his new strategic doctrine, which is aimed recklessly at China.
And finally, sounding like a mix of Madeleine Albright and George W. Bush, he boasted that the United States is the "one indispensable nation in world affairs-and as long as I'm President, I intend to keep it that way."
This was cheap jingoism that the American people, already suffering from a superiority complex, really could have lived without.
© 2012 The Progessive
Matthew Rothschild is the editor of The Progressive magazine.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
From http://www.democracynow.org/2012/1/25/he_says_one_thing_and_does ...
January 25, 2012
"He Says One Thing and Does Another":
Ralph Nader Responds to Obama's State of the Union Address
AMY GOODMAN: We are joined right now by Ralph Nader to talk more about President Obama's State of the Union address, longtime consumer advocate, former presidential candidate. His latest book is Getting Steamed to Overcome Corporatism: Build It Together to Win."
Ralph Nader, your response to the State of the Union address? It could be President Obama's last. It could be the beginning of a new President Obama for a second term. What do you think?
RALPH NADER: Well, I think his lawless militarism, that started the speech and ended the speech, was truly astonishing. I mean, he was very committed to projecting the American empire, in Obama terms, force projection in the Pacific, and distorting the whole process of how he explains Iraq and Afghanistan. He talks about Libya and Syria, and then went into the military alliance with Israel and didn't talk about the peace process or the plight of the Palestinians, who are being so repressed. Leaving Iraq as if it was a victory? Iraq has been destroyed: massive refugees, over a million Iraqis dead, contaminated environment, collapsing infrastructure, sectarian warfare. He should be ashamed of himself that he tries to drape our soldiers, who were sent on lawless military missions to kill and die in those countries, unconstitutional wars that violate Geneva conventions and international law and federal statutes, and drape them as if they've come back from Iwo Jima or Normandy. So I think it was very, very poor taste to start and end with this kind of massive militarism and the Obama empire....
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Recall-- from http://consortiumnews.com/2012/01/12/herding-americans-to-war-with-iran/ ...
Herding Americans to War with Iran
January 12, 2012
By Robert Parry
In spring 2010, a promising effort - led by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Brazil's then-President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva - got Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to agree to relinquish Iranian control of nearly half the country's supply of low-enriched uranium in exchange for isotopes for medical research. The Turkish-Brazilian initiative revived a plan first advanced by Obama in 2009 - and the effort had the President's private encouragement. But after Ahmadinejad accepted the deal, Secretary Clinton and other U.S. hardliners switched into overdrive to kill the swap and insist instead on imposing harsher sanctions against Iran.
At the time, Clinton's position was endorsed by editors at the Washington Post and the New York Times, who mocked Erdogan and Lula da Silva as inept understudies on the international stage. If anything, the Post and Times argued, the United States should take an even more belligerent approach toward Iran, i.e. seeking "regime change." [See Consortiumnews.com's "WPost, NYT Show Tough-Guy Swagger."] As Clinton undercut the uranium swap and pushed instead for a new round of United Nations' sanctions, Lula da Silva released a private letter from Obama who had urged the Brazilians to press forward with the swap arrangement. However, with Washington's political momentum favoring another confrontation with a Muslim adversary, Obama retreated and lined up behind the sanctions.
Over the next nearly two years, the sanctions have failed to stop Iran's work on enriched uranium which it claims is needed for medical research. Israel, the neocons and other American hardliners have responded by demanding still more draconian sanctions, while promoting anti-Iran propaganda inside the United States and winking at the murder of Iranian scientists inside Iran.
In this U.S. election year, Israel and the neocons may understand that their political leverage on Obama is at its apex.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
From http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/25-5 ...
Published on Wednesday, January 25, 2012 by Common Dreams
US/Israel: Iran NOT Building Nukes
by Ray McGovern
Has Iran decided to build a nuclear bomb? That would seem to be the central question in the current bellicose debate over whether the world should simply cripple Iran's economy and inflict severe pain on its civilian population or launch a preemptive war to destroy its nuclear capability while possibly achieving "regime change."
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak meeting Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2007
And if you've been reading the New York Times or following the rest of the Fawning Corporate Media, you'd likely assume that everyone who matters agrees that the answer to the question is yes, although the FCM adds the caveat that Iran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only. The line is included with an almost perceptible wink and an "oh, yeah."
However, a consensus seems to be emerging among the intelligence and military agencies of the United States - and Israel - that Iran has NOT made a decision to build a nuclear weapon. In recent days, that judgment has been expressed by high-profile figures in the defense establishments of the two countries - U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak.
You might think that you would have heard more about that, wouldn't you? U.S. and Israel agree that Iran is NOT building a nuclear bomb. However, this joint assessment that Iran has NOT decided to build a nuclear bomb apparently represented too big a change in the accepted narrative.
Yet, on Jan. 18, the day before U.S. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey arrived for talks in Israel, Israeli Defense Minister Barak gave an interview to Israeli Army radio in which he addressed with striking candor how he assesses Iran's nuclear program. It was not the normal pabulum.
Question: Is it Israel's judgment that Iran has not yet decided to turn its nuclear potential into weapons of mass destruction?
Barak: Š confusion stems from the fact that people ask whether Iran is determined to break out from the control [inspection] regime right now Š in an attempt to obtain nuclear weapons or an operable installation as quickly as possible. Apparently that is not the case. Š
Question: How long will it take from the moment Iran decides to turn it into effective weapons until it has nuclear warheads?
Barak: I don't know; one has to estimate. Š Some say a year, others say 18 months. It doesn't really matter. To do that, Iran would have to announce it is leaving the [UN International Atomic Energy Agency] inspection regime and stop responding to IAEA's criticism, etc.
Why haven't they [the Iranians] done that? Because they realize that Š when it became clear to everyone that Iran was trying to acquire nuclear weapons, this would constitute definite proof that time is actually running out. This could generate either harsher sanctions or other action against them. They do not want that.
Question: Has the United States asked or demanded that the government inform the Americans in advance, should it decide on military action?
Barak: I don't want to get into that. We have not made a decision to opt for that, we have not decided on a decision-making date. The whole thing is very far off. Š
Question: You said the whole thing is "very far off." Do you mean weeks, months, years?
Barak: I wouldn't want to provide any estimates. It's certainly not urgent. I don't want to relate to it as though tomorrow it will happen.
As noted in my Jan. 19 article, "Israel Tamps Down Iran War Threats," which was based mostly on reports from the Israeli press before I had access to the complete transcript of the interview, I noted that Barak appeared to be identifying himself with the consistent assessment of U.S. intelligence community since late 2007 that Iran has not made a decision to go forward with a nuclear bomb.
A Momentous NIE
A formal National Intelligence Estimate of November 2007 - a consensus of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies - contradicted the encrusted conventional wisdom that "of course" Iran's nuclear development program must be aimed at producing nuclear weapons. The NIE stated:
"We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program; Š Tehran's decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005."
The Key Judgments of that Estimate elicited a vituperative reaction from some Israeli officials and in neoconservative circles in the United States. It also angered then-President George W. Bush, who joined the Israelis in expressing disagreement with the judgments. In January 2008, Bush flew to Israel to commiserate with Israeli officials who he said should have been "furious with the United States over the NIE."
While Bush's memoir, Decision Points, is replete with bizarre candor, nothing beats his admission that "the NIE tied my hands on the military side," preventing him from ordering a preemptive war against Iran, an action favored by hawkish Vice President Dick Cheney.
For me personally it was heartening to discover that my former colleagues in the CIA's analytical division had restored the old ethos of telling difficult truths to power, after the disgraceful years under CIA leaders like George Tenet and John McLaughlin when the CIA followed the politically safer route of telling the powerful what they wanted to hear.
It had been three decades since I chaired a couple of National Intelligence Estimates, but fate never gave me the chance to manage one that played such a key role in preventing an unnecessary and disastrous war - as the November 2007 NIE did.
In such pressure-cooker situations, the Estimates job is not for the malleable or the faint-hearted. The ethos was to speak with courage, and without fear or favor, but that is often easier said than done. In my days, however, we analysts enjoyed career protection for telling it like we saw it. It was an incredible boost to morale to see that happening again in 2007.
Ever since the NIE was published, however, powerful politicians and media pundits have sought to chip away at its conclusions, suggesting that the analysts were hopelessly naïve or politically motivated or vengeful, out to punish Bush and Cheney for the heavy-handed tactics used to push false and dubious claims about Iraq's WMD in 2002 and 2003.
A New Conventional Wisdom
There emerged in Official Washington a new conventional wisdom that the NIE was erroneous and wasn't worth mentioning anymore. Though the Obama administration has stood by it, the New York Times and other FCM outlets routinely would state that the United States and Israel agreed that Iran was developing a nuclear bomb and then add the wink-wink denial by Iran.
However, on Jan. 8, Defense Secretary Panetta told Bob Schieffer on "Face the Nation" that "the responsible thing to do right now is to keep putting diplomatic and economic pressure on them [the Iranians] Š and to make sure that they do not make the decision to proceed with the development of a nuclear weapon."
Panetta was making the implicit point that the Iranians had not made that decision, but just in case someone might miss his meaning, Panetta posed the direct question to himself: "Are they [the Iranians] trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No."
Barak's Jan. 18 statement to Israeli Army radio indicated that his views dovetail with those of Panetta - and their comments apparently are backed up by the assessments of each nation's intelligence analysts. In its report on Defense Minister Barak's remarks, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on Jan. 19 summed up the change in the position of Israeli leaders as follows:
"The intelligence assessment Israeli officials will present Š to Dempsey indicates that Iran has not yet decided whether to make a nuclear bomb. The Israeli view is that while Iran continues to improve its nuclear capabilities, it has not yet decided whether to translate these capabilities into a nuclear weapon - or, more specifically, a nuclear warhead mounted atop a missile. Nor is it clear when Iran might make such a decision."
At the New York Times, the initial coverage of Barak's interview focused on another element. An article by Isabel Kershner and Rick Gladstone appeared on Jan. 19 on page A5 under the headline "Decision on Whether to Attack Iran is 'Far Off,' Israeli Defense Minister Says."
To their credit, the Times' Kershner and Gladstone did not shrink from offering an accurate translation of what Barak said on the key point of IAEA inspections: "The Iranians have not ended the oversight exercised by the International Atomic Energy Agency Š They have not done that because they know that that would constitute proof of the military nature of their nuclear program and that would provoke stronger international sanctions or other types of action against their country."
But missing from the Times' article was Barak's more direct assessment that Iran apparently had not made a decision to press ahead toward construction of a nuclear bomb. That would have undercut the boilerplate in almost every Times story saying that U.S. and Israeli officials believe Iran is working on a nuclear bomb.
But That's Not the Right Line!
So, what to do? Not surprisingly, the next day (Jan. 20), the Times ran an article by its Middle East bureau chief Ethan Bronner in which he stated categorically: "Israel and the United States both say that Iran is pursuing the building of nuclear weapons - an assertion denied by Iran - Š"
By Jan. 21, the Times had time to prepare an entire page (A8) of articles setting the record "straight," so to speak, on Iran's nuclear capabilities and intentions: Here are the most telling excerpts, by article (emphasis mine):
1- "European Union Moves Closer to Imposing Tough Sanctions on Iran," by Steven Erlanger, Paris:
"Senior French officials are concerned that these measures [sanctions] Š will not be strong enough to push the Iranian government into serious, substantive negotiations on its nuclear program which the West says is aimed at producing weapons."
"In his annual speech on French diplomacy on Friday, President Nicolas Sarkozy accused Iran of lying, and he denounced what he called its 'senseless race for a nuclear bomb.'"
"Iran says it is enriching uranium solely for peaceful uses and denies a military intent. But few in the West believe Tehran, which has not cooperated fully with inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency and has been pursuing some technologies that have only a military use."
(Pardon me, please. I'm having a bad flashback. Anyone remember the Times' peerless reporting on those infamous "aluminum tubes" that supposedly were destined for nuclear centrifuges - until some folks did a Google search and found they were for the artillery then used by Iraq?)
2- "China Leader Warns Iran Not to Make Nuclear Arms," by Michael Wines, Beijing
"Prime Minister Wen Jiabao wrapped up a six-day Middle East tour this week with stronger-than-usual criticism of Iran's defiance on its nuclear programŠ."
"Mr. Wen's comments on Iran were unusually pointed for Chinese diplomacy. In Doha, Qatar's capital, he said China 'adamantly opposes Iran developing and possessing nuclear weapons.'"
"Western nations suspect that Iran is working toward building a nuclear weapon, while Iran insists its program is peaceful."
3- "U.S. General Urges Closer Ties With Israel." by Isabel Kershner, Jerusalem
"Though Iran continues to insist that its nuclear program is only for civilian purposes, Israel, the United Stated, and much of the West are convinced that Iran is working to develop a weapons program. Š"
Never (Let Up) on Sunday
Next it was time for the Times to trot out David Sanger from the Washington bullpen. Many will remember him as one of the Times' stenographers/cheerleaders for the Bush/Cheney attack on Iraq in March 2003. An effusive hawk also on Iran, Sanger was promoted to a position as chief Washington correspondent, apparently for services rendered.
In his Jan. 22 article, "Confronting Iran in a Year of Elections," Sanger pulls out all the stops, even resurrecting Condoleezza Rice's "mushroom cloud" to scare all of us - and, not least, the Iranians. He wrote:
"'From the perception of the Iranians, life may look better on the other side of the mushroom cloud,' said Ray Takeyh, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He may be right: while the Obama administration has vowed that it will never tolerate Iran as a nuclear weapons state, a few officials admit that they may have to settle for a 'nuclear capable' Iran that has the technology, the nuclear fuel and the expertise to become a nuclear power in a matter of weeks or months."
Were that not enough, enter the national champion of the Times cheerleading squad that prepared the American people in 2002 and early 2003 for the attack on Iraq, former Executive Editor Bill Keller. He graced us the next day (Jan. 23) with an op-ed entitled "Bomb-Bomb-Bomb, Bomb-Bomb-Iran?" - though he wasn't favoring a military strike, at least not right now. Here's Keller:
"The actual state of the [nuclear] program is not entirely clear, but the best open-source estimates are that if Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered full-speed-ahead - which there is no sign he has done - they could have an actual weapon in a year or so. Š In practice, Obama's policy promises to be tougher than Bush's. Because Obama started out with an offer of direct talks - which the Iranians foolishly spurned - world opinion has shifted in our direction."
Wow. With Iraqi egg still all over his face, the disgraced Keller gets to "spurn" history itself - to rewrite the facts. Sorry, Bill, it was not Iran, but rather Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other neocons in the U.S. Department of State and White House (with you and neocon allies in the press cheering them on), who "foolishly spurned" an offer by Iran in 2010 to trade about half its low-enriched uranium for medical isotopes. It was a deal negotiated by Turkey and Brazil, but it was viewed by the neocons as an obstacle to ratcheting up the sanctions.
In his Jan. 23 column, with more sophomoric glibness, Keller wrote this:
"We may now have sufficient global support to enact the one measure that would be genuinely crippling - a boycott of Iranian oil. The Iranians take this threat to their economic livelihood seriously enough that people who follow the subject no longer minimize the chance of a naval confrontation in the Strait of Hormuz. It's not impossible that we will get war with Iran even without bombing its nuclear facilities."
How neat! War without even trying!
The Paper of (Checkered Record)
Guidance To All NYT Hands: Are you getting the picture? After all, what does Defense Minister Barak know? Or Defense Secretary Panetta? Or the 16 agencies of the U.S. intelligence community? Or apparently even Israeli intelligence?
The marching orders from the Times' management appear to be that you should pay no heed to those sources of information. Just repeat the mantra: Everyone knows Iran is hard at work on the Bomb.
As is well known, other newspapers and media outlets take their cue from the Times. Small wonder, then, that USA Today seemed to be following the same guidance on Jan. 23, as can be seen in its major editorial on military action against Iran:
"The U.S. and Iran will keep steaming toward confrontation, Iran intent on acquiring the bomb to establish itself as a regional power, and the U.S. intent on preventing it to protect allies and avoid a nuclear arms race in the world's most volatile region.
"One day, the U.S. is likely to face a wrenching choice: bomb Iran, with the nation fully united and prepared for the consequences, or let Iran have the weapons, along with a Cold War-like doctrine ensuring Iran's nuclear annihilation if it ever uses them. In that context, sanctions remain the last best hope for a satisfactory solution."
And, of course, the U.S. press corps almost never adds the context that Israel already possesses an undeclared arsenal of hundreds of nuclear weapons, or that Iran is essentially surrounded by nuclear weapons states, including India, Pakistan, Russia, China and - at sea - the United States.
PBS Equally Guilty
PBS's behavior adhered to its customary
don't-offend-the-politicians-who-might-otherwise-cut-our-budget attitude on the Jan. 18 "NewsHour" - about 12 hours after Ehud Barak's interview started making the rounds. Host Margaret Warner set the stage for an interview with neocon Dennis Ross and Vali Nasr (a professor at Tufts) by using a thoroughly misleading clip from former Sen. Rick Santorum's Jan. 1 appearance on "Meet the Press."
Warner started by saying: "Back in the U.S. many Republican presidential candidates have been vowing they'd be even tougher with Tehran. Former Senator Rick Santorum spoke on NBC's Meet the Press: 'I would be saying to the Iranians, you open up those facilities, you begin to dismantle them and make them available to inspectors, or we will degrade those facilities through air strikes and make it very public that we are doing so.'"
Santorum seemed totally unaware that there are U.N. inspectors in Iran, and host David Gregory did nothing to correct him, leaving Santorum's remark unchallenged. The blogosphere immediately lit up with requests for NBC to tell their viewers that there are already U.N. inspectors in Iran, which unlike Israel is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and allows IAEA inspections.
During the Warner interview, Dennis Ross performed true to form, projecting supreme confidence that he knows more about Iran's nuclear program than the Israeli Defense Minister and the U.S. intelligence community combined:
Margaret Warner: If you hamstring their [Iran's] Central Bank, and the U.S. persuades all these other big customers not to buy Iranian oil, that could be thought of as an act of war on the part of the Iranians. Is that a danger?
Ross: I think there's a context here. The context is that the Iranians continue to pursue a nuclear program. And unmistakably to many, that is a nuclear program whose purpose is to achieve nuclear weapons. That has a very high danger, a very high consequence. So the idea that they could continue with that and not realize that at some point they have to make a choice, and if they don't make the choice, the price they're going to pay is a very high one, that's the logic of increasing the pressure.
Never mind that the Israeli Defense Minister had told the press something quite different some 12 hours before.
Still, it is interesting that Barak's comments on how Israeli intelligence views Iran's nuclear program now mesh so closely with the NIE in 2007. This is the new and significant story here, as I believe any objective journalist would agree.
However, the FCM - led by the New York Times - cannot countenance admitting that they have been hyping the threat from Iran as they did with Iraq's non-existent WMDs just nine years ago. So they keep repeating the line that Israel and the U.S. agree that Iran is building a nuclear weapon.
In this up-is-down world, America's newspaper of record won't even report accurately what Israel (or the CIA) thinks on this important issue, if that goes against the alarmist conventional wisdom that the neocons favor. Thus, we have this divergence between what the U.S. media is reporting as flat fact - i.e., that Israel and the United States believe Iran is building a bomb (though Iran denies it) - and the statements from senior Israeli and U.S. officials that Iran has NOT decided to build a bomb.
While this might strike some as splitting hairs - since peaceful nuclear expertise can have potential military use - this hair is a very important one. If Iran is not working on building a nuclear bomb, then the threats of preemptive war are not only unjustified, they could be exactly the motivation for Iran to decide that it does need a nuclear bomb to protect itself and its people.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. During his career as a CIA analyst, he prepared and briefed the President's Daily Brief and chaired National Intelligence Estimates. He is a member of the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
From http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/25-6 ...
Published on Wednesday, January 25, 2012 by The Independent
It Suits 'Nuclear Israel' That We Never Forget 'Nuclear Iran'
The Ayatollah ordered the entire nuclear project to be closed down because it was the work of the devil
by Robert Fisk
Turning round a story is one of the most difficult tasks in journalism - and rarely more so than in the case of Iran. Iran, the dark revolutionary Islamist menace. Shia Iran, protector and manipulator of World Terror, of Syria and Lebanon and Hamas and Hezbollah. Ahmadinejad, the Mad Caliph. And, of course, Nuclear Iran, preparing to destroy Israel in a mushroom cloud of anti-Semitic hatred, ready to close the Strait of Hormuz - the moment the West's (or Israel's) forces attack.
Given the nature of the theocratic regime, the repulsive suppression of its post-election opponents in 2009, not to mention its massive pools of oil, every attempt to inject common sense into the story also has to carry a medical health warning: no, of course Iran is not a nice place. But ...
Let's take the Israeli version which, despite constant proof that Israel's intelligence services are about as efficient as Syria's, goes on being trumpeted by its friends in the West, none more subservient than Western journalists. The Israeli President warns us now that Iran is on the cusp of producing a nuclear weapon. Heaven preserve us. Yet we reporters do not mention that Shimon Peres, as Israeli Prime Minister, said exactly the same thing in 1996. That was 16 years ago. And we do not recall that the current Israeli PM, Benjamin Netanyahu, said in 1992 that Iran would have a nuclear bomb by 1999. That would be 13 years ago. Same old story.
In fact, we don't know that Iran really is building a nuclear weapon. And after Iraq, it's amazing that the old weapons of mass destruction details are popping with the same frequency as all the poppycock about Saddam's titanic arsenal. Not to mention the date problem. When did all this start? The Shah. The old boy wanted nuclear power. He even said he wanted a bomb because "the US and the Soviet Union had nuclear bombs" and no one objected. Europeans rushed to supply the dictator's wish. Siemens - not Russia - built the Bushehr nuclear facility.
And when Ayatollah Khomeini, Scourge of the West, Apostle of Shia Revolution, etc, took over Iran in 1979, he ordered the entire nuclear project to be closed down because it was "the work of the Devil". Only when Saddam invaded Iran - with our Western encouragement - and started using poison gas against the Iranians (chemical components arriving from the West, of course) was Khomeini persuaded to reopen it.
All this has been deleted from the historical record; it was the black-turbaned mullahs who started the nuclear project, along with the crackpot Ahmadinejad. And Israel might have to destroy this terror-weapon to secure its own survival, to ensure the West's survival, for democracy, etc, etc.
For Palestinians in the West Bank, Israel is the brutal, colonising, occupying power. But the moment Iran is mentioned, this colonial power turns into a tiny, vulnerable, peaceful state under imminent threat of extinction. Ahmadinejad - here again, I quote Netanyahu - is more dangerous than Hitler. Israel's own nuclear warheads - all too real and now numbering almost 300 - disappear from the story. Iran's Revolutionary Guards are helping the Syrian regime destroy its opponents; they might like to - but there is no proof of this.
The trouble is that Iran has won almost all its recent wars without firing a shot. George W and Tony destroyed Iran's nemesis in Iraq. They killed thousands of the Sunni army whom Iran itself always referred to as "the black Taliban". And the Gulf Arabs, our "moderate" friends, shiver in their golden mosques as we in the West outline their fate in the event of an Iranian Shia revolution.
No wonder Cameron goes on selling weapons to these preposterous people whose armies, in many cases, could scarcely operate soup kitchens, let alone the billions of dollars of sophisticated kit we flog them under the fearful shadow of Tehran.
Bring on the sanctions. Send in the clowns.
© 2012 The Independent
Robert Fisk is Middle East correspondent for The Independent newspaper. He is the author of many books on the region, including The Great War for Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
From http://consortiumnews.com/2012/01/12/herding-americans-to-war-with-iran/ ...
Herding Americans to War with Iran
January 12, 2012
Exclusive: The murder of a fifth Iranian scientist on the streets of Tehran had all the earmarks of an Israeli-sponsored assassination. The killing also worsened tensions at a moment when the momentum toward war with Iran seems unstoppable, reports Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
For many Americans the progression toward war with Iran has the feel of cattle being herded from the stockyard into the slaughterhouse, pressed steadily forward with no turning back, until some guy shoots a bolt into your head.
Any suggestion of give-and-take negotiations with Iran is mocked, while alarmist propaganda, a ratcheting up of sanctions, and provocative actions - like Wednesday's assassination of yet another Iranian scientist - push Americans closer to what seems like an inevitable bloodletting.
Even the New York Times now acknowledges that Israel, with some help from the United States, appears to be conducting a covert war of sabotage and assassination inside Iran. "The campaign, which experts believe is being carried out mainly by Israel, apparently claimed its latest victim on Wednesday when a bomb killed a 32-year-old nuclear scientist in Tehran's morning rush hour," Times reporter Scott Shane wrote in Thursday's editions.
Though U.S. officials emphatically denied any role in the murder, Israeli officials did little to discourage rumors of an Israeli hand in the bombing. Some even expressed approval. Brig. Gen. Yoav Mordechai said he didn't know who killed the scientist but added: "I am definitely not shedding a tear."
The latest victim, Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, was the fifth scientist associated with Iran's nuclear program to be killed in the past four years, with a sixth scientist narrowly escaping death in 2010, Fereydoon Abbasi, who is now head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization.
As might be expected, Iran has denounced the murders as acts of terrorism. They have been accompanied by cyber-attacks on Iranian centrifuges and an explosion at a missile facility late last year killing a senior general and 16 others.
While this campaign has slowed Iran's nuclear progress, it also appears to have hardened its resolve to continue work on a nuclear capability, which Iran says is for peaceful purposes only. Iranian authorities also have responded to tightening economic sanctions from Europe and the United States with threats of their own, such as warnings about closing the oil routes through the Strait of Hormuz and thus damaging the West's economies.
Target: USA
Another front in Israel's cold war against Iran appears to be the propaganda war being fought inside the United States, where the still-influential neoconservatives are deploying their extensive political and media resources to shut off possible routes toward a peaceful settlement, while building support for future military strikes against Iran.
Fitting with that propaganda strategy, the Washington Post's editorial page, which is essentially the neocons' media flagship, published a lead editorial on Wednesday urging harsher and harsher sanctions against Iran and ridiculing anyone who favored reduced tensions.
Noting Iran's announcement that it had opened a better-protected uranium enrichment plant near Qom, the Post wrote: "In short, the new Fordow operation crosses another important line in Iran's advance toward a nuclear weapons capability.
"Was it a red line for Israel or the United States? Apparently not, for the Obama administration at least. In a television interview Sunday, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said: 'Our red line to Iran is: do not develop a nuclear weapon.' He asserted that Tehran was not trying to develop a weapon now, only 'a nuclear capability.' The Revolutionary Guard, which controls the nuclear program, might well take that as a green light for the new enrichment operation."
While portraying Panetta as an Iranian tool, the Post suggested that anyone who wanted to turn back from an Iran confrontation was an Iranian useful fool. The Post wrote:
"The recent flurry of Iranian threats has had the intended effect of prompting a new chorus of demands in Washington that the United States and its allies stop tightening sanctions and instead make another attempt at 'engagement' with the regime. The Ahmadinejad government itself reportedly has proposed new negotiations, and Turkey has stepped forward as a host.
"Almost certainly, any talks will reveal that Iran is unwilling to stop its nuclear activities or even to make significant concessions. But they may serve to stop or greatly delay a European oil embargo or the implementation of sanctions on the [Iranian] central bank - and buy time for the Fordow centrifuges to do their work."
The Post's recommended instead "that every effort must be made to intensify sanctions" and to stop Iranian sale of oil anywhere in the world. In other words, continue to ratchet up the tensions and cut off hopes for genuine negotiations.
A Vulnerable Obama
The escalating neocon demands for an ever-harder U.S. line against Iran - and Israel's apparent campaign of killings and sabotage inside Iran - come at a time when President Barack Obama and some of his inner circle appear to be looking again for ways to defuse tensions. But the Post's editorial - and similar neocon propaganda - have made clear that any move toward reconciliation will come with a high political price tag.
Already, a recurring Republican talking point is that Obama's earlier efforts to open channels of negotiation with Iran and other foreign adversaries proved his naivete and amounted to "apologizing" for America. Obama also has faced resistance within his own administration, especially from neocon-lites such as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
For instance, in spring 2010, a promising effort - led by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Brazil's then-President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva - got Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to agree to relinquish Iranian control of nearly half the country's supply of low-enriched uranium in exchange for isotopes for medical research.
The Turkish-Brazilian initiative revived a plan first advanced by Obama in 2009 - and the effort had the President's private encouragement. But after Ahmadinejad accepted the deal, Secretary Clinton and other U.S. hardliners switched into overdrive to kill the swap and insist instead on imposing harsher sanctions against Iran.
At the time, Clinton's position was endorsed by editors at the Washington Post and the New York Times, who mocked Erdogan and Lula da Silva as inept understudies on the international stage. If anything, the Post and Times argued, the United States should take an even more belligerent approach toward Iran, i.e. seeking "regime change." [See Consortiumnews.com's "WPost, NYT Show Tough-Guy Swagger."]
As Clinton undercut the uranium swap and pushed instead for a new round of United Nations' sanctions, Lula da Silva released a private letter from Obama who had urged the Brazilians to press forward with the swap arrangement. However, with Washington's political momentum favoring another confrontation with a Muslim adversary, Obama retreated and lined up behind the sanctions.
Over the next nearly two years, the sanctions have failed to stop Iran's work on enriched uranium which it claims is needed for medical research. Israel, the neocons and other American hardliners have responded by demanding still more draconian sanctions, while promoting anti-Iran propaganda inside the United States and winking at the murder of Iranian scientists inside Iran.
In this U.S. election year, Israel and the neocons may understand that their political leverage on Obama is at its apex. So, if he again searches for openings to negotiate with Iran, he can expect the same kind of nasty disdain that the Washington Post heaped on Panetta on Wednesday.
The Carter-Begin Precedent
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Likud leaders appear to fear a second Obama term - when he'd be freed from the need to seek reelection - much as their predecessors feared a second term for President Jimmy Carter in 1980. Then, Prime Minister Menachem Begin thought that Carter in a second term would team up with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in forcing Israel to accept a Palestinian state.
Begin's alarm about that prospect was described by Israeli intelligence and foreign affairs official David Kimche in his 1991 book, The Last Option. Kimche wrote that Begin's government believed that Carter was overly sympathetic to the Palestinians.
"Begin was being set up for diplomatic slaughter by the master butchers in Washington," Kimche wrote. "They had, moreover, the apparent blessing of the two presidents, Carter and Sadat, for this bizarre and clumsy attempt at collusion designed to force Israel to abandon her refusal to withdraw from territories occupied in 1967, including Jerusalem, and to agree to the establishment of a Palestinian state."
Extensive evidence now exists that Begin's preference for Ronald Reagan led Israelis to join in a covert operation with Republicans to contact Iranian leaders behind Carter's back and delay release of the 52 American hostages then being held in Iran until after Reagan defeated Carter in November 1980. [For details, see Robert Parry's Secrecy & Privilege or Consortiumnews.com's "The Back Story on Iran's Clashes."]
Today, Obama's relationship with Netanyahu seems as strained as Carter's relationship with Begin was three decades ago. And already many American neocons have signed up with Obama's Republican rivals, including with GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney whose foreign policy white paper was written by prominent neocons.
So the question now is: Will the President of the United States take his place amid the herd of cattle getting steered into the slaughterhouse of another war?
[For more on related topics, see Robert Parry's Lost History, Secrecy & Privilege and Neck Deep, now available in a three-book set for the discount price of only $29. For details, click here.]
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment