Iran Affairs

Iran Travel information

If you're thinking of visiting Iran, below are some recent articles on travel to Iran:

Simon James writes:

So there am I, for the first two weeks in Iran, smiling profusely and all the while telling the locals to get stuffed.

Some more articles and blog entries about travelling to Iran:

This fellow decided to carry a cross on his back across Iran (... and so did this fellow):

The entire time we were there, we did not receive one negative word or reaction. All we heard was, "You are welcome in Iran, and your cross is welcome here." We were overwhelmed at the wonderful love, kindness, and hospitality shown to us.

More information:

I was hoping to learn what the country was actually like; I wanted to know how it would feel to be an American in Iran. -- The Other Iran - New York Times

Iran is, without any doubt at all, the warmest, politest, most hospitable country that I have ever been in - almost shamingly so. -- Grand Salaam, Conde Nast Traveller - May 2000 British Edition

Everyone was so kind to us and when it came time to say goodbye this morning we felt both sad to go and happy we’d made new friends. Iran is full of hospitable and generous people... - TravellingTwo: Biking Across Iran

I often walked the streets alone in the evening. I was the subject of curious stares (many young Iranians--nearly half the population is 15 or younger--are just now getting their first look at Western tourists) but no hostility. If anything, Americans often receive most-favored-nation status. -- Eight Days in Iran, By Bill Heavey, The Washington Post

It is one of the many paradoxes of the Islamic Republic of Iran that this most virulent anti-Israeli country supports by far the largest Jewish population of any Muslim country. -- Life of Jews Living in Iran

Iran really is one of the best countries we have visited and certainly one of the most surprising and interesting. It is not at all like I had imagined and the people are amazing. -- Half the World, Halfway across Iran - Esfahan

Gesine Cheung writes:

Esfahan was our next destination after Shiraz. They say this is the jewel in this country; and I would have to agree...I have to say I really loved visiting Iran, and will definitely be back to see the parts that I missed. -- Can someone tell me where is the Axis of Evil?

and,

Iran may not be at the top of the list for most American tourists, and the collective memory is seared with images of the US Embassy takeover of 1979. But the intrepid few who have come so far rave about the warm reception and their constant surprise that the popular perception of Iran in the West barely resembles anything they experience here.For 'Trip of a Lifetime,' Americans Try Sunny . . . Iran?

and,

Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, one of the first ten women rabbis in the history of Judaism, will co-lead the delegation, becoming the first woman rabbi to visit Iran -- Jewish rabbi leads historic FOR peace delegation to Iran

A Jewish delegate said he had been told to be careful: “They might shoot you if they find out you’re Jewish.” He was amazed to see Jews worshipping openly and walking down a street in Tehran wearing their yarmulkes. He wasn’t shot, but was mobbed by the worshippers at a synagogue who were delighted to find a Jew among us. -- Iran is not the enemy

Westerners are conditioned to imagine Iran as a joyless place. "Isn't it illegal to laugh in public there?" an acquaintance in New York had asked. -- Travel and Leisure magazine

Rick & Kathy's second trip to Iran.

Much more here and here

Iran is Not the Enemy

Ellen Francis, an Episcopal priest and sister of the Order of St. Helena, writes:

Iran is Not the Enemy

The “axis of evil” has no relevance for me when I think of Iran, a country I’ve found to have a human, loving, hospitable face throughout 40 years of encounters. I lived in Iran between 1968 and 1978, and started returning again, this time with peace delegations, in 2005. It is one of the great joys of my life to see the layers of misunderstanding and fear gradually fall away from those who visit Iran today for the first time . . .

Read more>>

IR-2 centrifuge photos and US news coverage of Natanz

The New York Times has an article about recent photos from Iranian media that display components of Iran's nuclear centrifuges. Among all the techical mumbo-jumbo, the real message of the article is that Iran's nuclear program is a threat.

For example, in referring to Natanz, the New York Times writes:

It is a place of secrets that Iran loves to boast about, clouding the effort's real status and making Western analysts all the more eager for solid details.

This "place of secrets" is actually subject to 24-hour IAEA monitoring. There's nothing being "clouded" but the NY Times still sees fit to imply that the "real status" of Iran's nuclear program is some big mystery.

Oh, and the presence of Iran's defense minister in the photos is touted as reason for suspicion...nevermind that the US and Israel have repeatedly threatened to launch a military attack on this facility, making it a perfectly legitimate matter of concern to Iran's defense establishment.

This is the funniest paragraph about this "secret" and "mysterious" facility:

Nuclear analysts said the tour in general opened a window into a hidden world previously known only to the Iranians and a few international inspectors.

That's kinda like saying the nuclear program is known to the Iranians and practically anyone else in the world, since the "few international inspectors" regularly report their findings to the IAEA Board of Governors, on which sits representatives from the US as well as few other nations.

The NY Times then concludes the fear-mongering with:

Some analysts saw the centrifuges as a continuing enigma. Ultimately, Iran could use them for good or ill, for lighting cities or destroying them.

Well, yes. But the same could be said about the centrifuges in Brazil, Argentina, Canada, and soon, Namibia and Uganda. In fact, that's the whole reason why IAEA monitoring exists, isn't it? And Iran's centrifuges are being monitored exactly as they should be, aren't they?

Barbie Liberation and Iran

So the blogosphere and media is all awash with reports of how Iranian authorities have expressed displeasure at Barbie dolls -- thus reviving the same story as reported back in 2002 almost word for word. One idiot has even opined that Barbie dolls will "liberate" Iran.

Now why on Earth would Iranian authorities find Barbie objectionable when the "Talking Teen" version in 1989 said such "liberating" things like "Math is hard...Lets go shopping!" -- which led to the creation of the Barbie Liberation Front

Well I guess reviving a 5-year old story is better, to keep people's minds off of, you know, important news stories that they'd rather ignore, like about how the US Defense Department and US media are cooperating in pushing propaganda to Americans:

The most incredible aspect of the NYT story is that most of the news organizations which deceived their readers and viewers by using these "objective" analysts -- CBS, NBC, Fox -- simply refused to comment on what they knew about any of this or what their procedures are for safeguarding against it.

Daniel Pipes and his Islam-bashing ethnic war agenda

The New York Times has an article about how the Debbie Almontaser, a founder of an Arabic-language school was forced out of her job by pro-Israeli agents who falsely accused her of being a violent extremists. The role of Daniel Pipes is mentioned prominently in seeking to exclude muslims from positions of social or political authority in the US.

This is of course not new. Daniel Pipes and his ilk have long harboured fears about the potential influence that Muslims may have as their numbers increase in the US. Using smears and false accusations, he essentially seeks to label any assertive Moslem as among the "bad" muslims, who are "engaged in a soft jihad" and are "not fully enthusiastic about this country and its mores, its culture". Note of course that if anyone asks whether pro-Israeli Jews are as "fully enthusiastic about this country" they would immediately be accused of promoting an anti-semitic fallacy of "dual loyalty". But apparently, thinks he's been appointed as the arbiter of people's "enthusiasm" about this country.

What's more, there is absolutely nothing to indicate that Debbie Almontaser lacks any such enthusiasm. No, rather, according to Pipes, the mere plan to teach Arabic itself was the cause to suspect her. Furthermore, he admits that he deliberately appealled to Islamophobia by drawing a comparison between this school in Brooklyn and the "madrassahs" that in some countries have sometimes been used to indoctrinate Taliban kids:

Conceptually, such a school could be “marvelous,” Mr. Pipes wrote, but in practice, it was certain to be problematic. “Arabic-language instruction is inevitably laden with Pan-Arabist and Islamist baggage,” he wrote, referring to the school as a madrassa, which means school in Arabic but, in the West, carries the implication of Islamic teaching.

Given how little Mr. Pipes knew about the school at the time, the word was “a bit of a stretch,” he said in a recent interview. He defended its use as a way to “get attention” for the cause.

The United States is made up a variety of ethnic groups - Jews, Chinese, Irish, etc. This has always been the case. There are lots of positive sides to this -- it is one of the things that makes it a great country (and why you can find good food here!) But there's also a negative side, as these groups start to compete with each other and start to form "us" versus "them" views of the world. This too is old hat: the Blacks v. Jews conflict in New York's ghettos goes back a while.

Ethnic lobbyists have long sought to influence policymaking in their favor -- whether in domestic arena or in the international arena. See for example "Foreign Policy and Ethnic Interest Groups: American and Canadian Jews Lobby for Israel" by David Howard Goldberg (Greenwood Press 1990) Writing in the National Interest, Former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger once said that in the absence of the Cold War which served as a uniting force, ethnic lobbying groups would gain greater influence over US foreign policy and redefine "American interests" to suit their own agendas. Samuel Huntington also suggested the same.

Daniel Pipe's role in promoting the Iraq invasion is a case in point of such a phenomenon. As a professional trouble-maker who is (self-)appointed to agitate on behalf of an ethnic group, Pipes has no equal -- whether he's supporing arming Saddam, then supporting invading Iraq; whether he's encouraging students to inform on college professors who he deems to be anti-Israeli, or whatever. As the article in the NY Times says, American politicians are so scared of being labelled "anti-Semitic" that Pipes and his ilk essentially get their way. The Arabs and Muslims, being newer arrivals and from a greater variety of backgrounds, have not been able to challenge and counter-balance these folks quite effectively -- yet. Naturally, Pipes fears the day when the politicians looks around and see Muslim voters, and so he's been pushing the "disloyal muslim" stereotype.

Puking for Jesus - inside the crazy CUFI church

Rolling Stone has an interesting article ("Jesus Made Me Puke" by Matt Taibbi, May 01, 2008) that takes an "inside" look at the church run by Pastor Hagee, the Christian-Zionist warmonger and Bush confident, who is widely supported by the pro-Israelis and was invited to speak at the AIPAC conference and has called for an apocalyptic US war with Iran.

He handed me a bag.

"In the name of Jesus, I cast out the demon of handwriting analysis!" shouted ["Pastor"] Fortenberry.

Handwriting analysis? I jammed the bag over my mouth and started coughing, then went into a very real convulsion of disbelief as I listened to this astounding list, half-laughing and half-retching.

"In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, I cast out the demon of the intellect!" Fortenberry continued. "In the name of Jesus, I cast out the demon of anal fissures!"

Cough, cough!

When you read this stuff, remember: these are the batshit crazy lunatics that are shaping US foreign policy.

And they have the nerve to say that the Iranians are "irrational".

Darius Grand Hotel on Kish

The NY Times has a profile of the Dariush Grand hotel in Kish, and its owner Mr Hosein Sabet ("A Passion for Persia, Disneyland and Dolphins" by Nazilla Fathi, April 24, 2008).

I have not seen the dolphins, but I have stayed at the Dariush Grand. It was a nice hotel, and Kish in general reminded me a lot of a planned community in Southern California. The hotel's Persepolis motif was interesting but after a while, it was just too much -- too overwhelming. A motif is supposed to be a light touch - not bash you over the head. And frankly I am not one of those nationalist types who gets all hot and bothered about the Persian Empire. There's a difference between being proud of the past, and being stuck on the past.

In any case my real complaint was about the author's insistence that "Religious authorities have shown no interest in the country’s pre-Islamic heritage."

It is certainly true that there was a backlash in the early days of the revolution against remnants of Iran's pre-Islamic history. A lot of that was due to the Shah's attempt to legitimize his rule by associating his regime with that history -- see for example his tastless and embarrasing 2500 Anniversary celebrations in which he declared to Cyrus the Great's (empty) tomb "Sleep Well for We are Awake!".

Despite that, to say that the current authorities in Iran have "no interest" in Iran's pre-Islamic past is simply not supported by the facts. Not only are the pre-Islamic sites such as Pasargade and Persepolis managed and maintained, but new discoveries are being made such as the Red Snake wall. Efforts have been to place Iran's monuments on the UNESCO World Heritage sites list too -- Pasargade was placed on the list in 2004, and the most recent item on the tenative list is the Kara kelisa (Black Church) in Azerbaijan, which isn't even an Islamic monument.

Its about time reporters stopped reporting as if we're still in 1981. Almost 30 years have passed from the revolution. Get over it.

Islamophobia-training for state police forces?

This rather funny and yet disturbing editorial by a purported Pennsylvania state police officer about the content of "training mandated by Pennsylvania's Municipal Police Officers Education and Training Commission (MPOETC)" intended to understand "the real threat of radical Islam" brings up oh so many questions, specifically, how did the NeoCons get involved with training the Pennsylvania state police forces? And, is drilling this sort of luntatic far-right ideological political nonsense really an appropriate way to train cops on the beat?

Understanding this threat is a complicated quest that still evades the United States, even after 9/11. Waled Phares, senior fellow and director of the Future Terrorism Project at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies is credited in the 2008 MPOETC with the following 2005 quote: ''Jihad is not benign, and the West's denial of that fact was terribly ironic … The United States was paving the way for its own defeat, by blurring its vision, confusing its mind, and moderating its reactions to the early danger signs, not to mention the terrorist strikes to come. It was clear that the nation turned a blind eye to the historical definition of jihad, the one that would really come to matter.''

It seems not much has changed. As the self-serving political pragmatism of the 2008 presidential campaign diverts America's eye from the continually approaching ball of jihad, cops on the beat are being trained to understand radical Islam's vision of extending ''sovereign Islamic rule and religion over the entire globe.''

Part of what Pennsylvania's municipal police officers are learning is to comprehend the edicts affirming ''the supremacy of Islam.'' Radical Islam, according to MPOETC, assumes the authority to ''nullify, abolish, or do away with'' previously established religions and systems of government, establishing Islamic rule based on the Koran and the ''example of Muhammad.'' Officers are learning about ''Muhammad's Doctrines of War,'' and the concept of the ''Call to Islam,'' a prerequisite to a Muslim attack on a nation of infidel enemies. Osama Bin Laden's ''Letter to the American People'' of 2002 contained such a ''Call to Islam,'' which, according to radical Islam, gives subjects three choices: Accept Islam as your religion; refuse to accept Islam, but pay a tax and assume status as a second-class citizenry under Islamic rule; or be subject to attack, bringing forced submission to Islamic law, or death.

As the American public tunes in, or tunes out, the rhetoric of presidential politics, Pennsylvania's municipal police officers are being enlightened on the rhetoric of some of the A-list of radical Islam. There's Ayatollah Khomeini's vision of Islamic world dominance, the Sunni mindset of the Hamas Charter, the Shiite spin from the Hezbollah point of view, and the Palestinian Authority's calls for the destruction of America. In a class all its own is the visionary impact of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's encouragement to radical Islamists everywhere: ''Imagine a world without Israel and the United States, it can happen.'' Police are reminded of Iran's quest for developing nuclear technology -- strictly for civilian use.

Iran: same old, same old

As we're waiting for Bush to finish off his last days in office, the Bush administration continues to play the same broken record about how the Iranians are responsible for the mess in Iraq and repeating the now thoroughly-discredited claim that Iran is giving EFPs to the IRaqis (despite the fact that EFP factories have been found in Iraq) -- followed by yet another in a long, long line of predictions from pro-Israeli sources of an imminent Iranian nuclear threat.

Ahmadinejad and 9/11 conspiracy theories

While speaking at a conference at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, former Prime Minister of Israel and chairman of the conservative Likud Party, told an audience that the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks were good for Israel.

On April 16, the Israeli newspaper service Ma'ariv quoted Netanyahu as saying, "We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq." He added that those events "swung American public opinion in our favor."

There was an immediate and furious damage-control effort by the Israeli PR machine, claiming that the statements were "taken out of context" etc. etc. because right after the 9/11 attacks, there was an huge emphasis by the Israelis on the view that 9/11 had nothing to do with US support for Israel and instead the US was only attacked because of the "clash thesis" based on the notion that "they hate our freedom" -- and anyone who dared suggest that we should look into the root causes of the attack was anti-American. Mearheimer and Walt addressed this very issue in their book on the Israel Lobby. They were pilloried for such views, as was the 9/11 Commission which drew a connection between 9/11 and US-Iraeli relations.

Netanyahu's comments seemed to give credence to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's views that 9/11 was a "suspect event" which was manipulated as a pretext for the US to assist its allies. At an April 16 rally in the city of Qom, Ahmadinejad asserted that the United States has used the 9/11 attacks as an excuse to invade Afghanistan and Iraq—wars that have killed millions of people in the name of colonial domination.

However, Al-Qaeda spokesman Zawahiri objected to all this and said that Ahmadinejad's suspicions about the origins of the 9/11 attacks are intended to deprive Al-Qaeda of the credit for attacks.

Based on public opinion polls, it seems that about just under one-half of the American population believes in some sort of 9/11 conspiracy.

There are a lot of really nutty conspiracy theories about 9-11: that no Jews were killed, that the planes were unmanned, etc. But the idea of a conspiracy isn't as crazy at it may seem. Historically, countries have resorted to manufacturing terrorist incidents and faking attacks on themselves so as to have pretexts for wars. Plenty of examples exist in US history too. W we know that at least in one case (Operation Northwood) high-level defense officials in the US considered faking terrorist attacks on US soil in order to attack Cuba.

Personally, I think it may be quite possible, judging from the pattern of "blunders" in stopping the 9/11 hijackers, that some people in power wanted the 9/11 attack to happen. We do know for an absolute fact that the prior World Trade Center bombing was allowed to happen even though an FBI informer named Emad Salem who was active among the bombers had secretly offered to replace the bomb with a non-explosive material. So, at the very least, I cannot say for a fact that there was no conspiracy.

Another Israeli spy scandal?

Another alleged spy was caught secretly providing intelligence on US nuclear weapons systems to an Israeli intelligence official.

This is the part that I find funnier than hell:

Prosecutors say the Israeli called Kadish on March 20 and told him to lie to federal law enforcement agents who were investigating possible espionage.

"Don't say anything. Let them say whatever they want. You didn't ... do anything. ... What happened 25 years ago? You didn't remember anything," the man allegedly told Kadish in Hebrew.

Anyway, I wonder if the NY Times will resort to its usual use of euphemisms and refer to this as yet another case of "information trading" rather than spying, just as how they refer to torture as "harsh interrogations".

This is of course hardly the first case of Israeli agents operating against US interests, as widely reported.

So, this is the country that Senator Clinton has sworn fealty to and promises to "defend"?

Nuclear uranium enrichment programs around the world

Just as a follow-up to my previous post about how the US has been forced to back down from pushing a worldwide ban on nuclear enrichment, I thought it would be interesting to note that in addition to Brazil and Argentina, and Uganda, now Namibia has also decided to build uranium enrichment plants.

Death of a Journalist

If only he had been killed in Iran...then, the NY Times and the Washington Post would have been throwing fits in multiple editorials, and the "think tanks" in Washington would have been holding televised discussion groups, and CNN would have done a special program.

But since this reporter was killed by the Israelis, none of that will happen.

Just as before.

And before.

And before . . .

Bush screws up yet again as US forced to drop opposition to nuclear enrichment.

Reuters reports that the US has dropped proposed ban on the sale of enrichment technology:

Nations seeking enrichment capacity see sales curbs as a possible manoeuvre to dominate profitable markets, or want to be immune to cutoffs in supply amid international tensions fanned by Iran's nuclear activity, which has drawn U.N. sanctions

So basically, the "international tensions" fanned by the Bush administration over Iran has actually backfired and convinced yet more countries of the need to have their own enrichment program in order to be immune from such sanctions.

This is hardly a surprise, of course. I wrote back in Nov 2005 that the US was trying to rob Iran and other developing countries (such as Uganda) of their nuclear rights:

Under the guise of non-proliferation, the EU and the US are not only undermining the grand bargain between nuclear-armed and non-nuclear armed states that is the NPT; they also want to create an underclass of nuclear energy have-nots, concentrating what could become the world’s sole major source of energy in the hands of the few nations that have granted themselves the right to it.

And this was obviously to anyone who actually bothered to exercise some slight critical judgment, as reported elsewhere:

Some developing nations are skeptical of the intentions of the five original nuclear states and are reluctant to give up the option of enriching uranium. Developing nations say they don’t want to give up their rights to uranium enrichment and don’t trust the United States or other nuclear countries to be consistent suppliers of the nuclear material they would need to run their power plants.
- New Global Nuclear Order; Los Angeles Times October 15, 2006

Almost all the new and prospective entrants in the enrichment business appear anxious to establish their credentials as having existing technology in place. Driving this process, in part, is the perception that all countries will soon be divided into uranium enrichment "haves" (suppliers) and "have-nots" (customers) under various proposals to establish multinational nuclear fuel centers and fuel-supply arrangements. Lining up to enrich Uranium, International Herald Tribune, Sept 12 2006.

Incidentally, the Nuclear Supplier's Group efforts to limit the sale of nuclear technology constitutes a violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. According to the NPT's Article IV, states are OBLIGATED to share nuclear technology and information (even on their nuclear text explosions) with non-nuclear weapons states:

All the Parties to the Treaty undertake to facilitate, and have the right to participate in, the fullest possible exchange of equipment, materials and scientific and technological information for the peaceful uses of nuclear energy

If the US insists on so blatantly violatings its end of the NPT bargain, why should anyone else observe the NPT?

Uganda to enrich uranium? But certainly not Iran?

Apparently, the Ugandans have the notion that they're allowed to use their own natural uranium deposits to run their own nuclear power plants too -- silly people. Don't they know that Bush owns the entire world's knowledge of uranium enrichment and can decide all by himself who is allowed or not allowed to have the technology? Argentina and Brazil seem to have similar silly ideas but Bush doesn't seem to mind them -- despite the unquestionable fact that both sought nuclear weapons in the past, and may still do so according to their own government officials, and have been far less cooperative with IAEA inspections.

Newsweek repeates Bush propaganda line about Iran's nuclear program

In an article about a public opinion poll of Iranians' political views, Jonathan Tepperman of Newsweek couldn't help but inject a bit of discreditd Bush administration propaganda at the very end:

Given that Iran has the world's second-largest oil reserves—and thus no need for alternative energy—it's pretty clear what it wants that nuclear fuel for.

Yes, Iran has "no need for alternative energy" declares Newsweek -- nevermind that the same Bush administration officials were making the exact opposite argument a few years ago:

Lacking direct evidence, Bush administration officials argue that Iran's nuclear program must be a cover for bomb-making. Vice President Cheney recently said, "They're already sitting on an awful lot of oil and gas. Nobody can figure why they need nuclear as well to generate energy."

Yet Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and outgoing Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz held key national security posts when the Ford administration made the opposite argument 30 years ago.

It is amazing how the media insists on repeated this Bush administration propaganda meme after it has been discredited so often. Do you suppose any of the editors at Newsweek ever bothered to check this claim before printing it? Would they have allowed such a biased and non-factual claim about Israel to get printed so easily? If this is what passes for the famed American "journalistic objectivity" and professionalism, is it any wonder that people have a growing negative view of the US.

Pro-War propaganda and the Bush administration

As a follow-up to my previous post about how the US Defense Department was using news analysts to promote pro-war domestic propaganda, this is a good time to remind everyone that the media was knowingly complicit in the promotion of pro-war propaganda as noted in an earlier article in Salon.com

And for viewers that night who didn't get a strong enough sense of just how obediently in-step the press corps was with the White House, there was the televised post-press conference analysis. On MSNBC, for instance, "Hardball's" Chris Matthews hosted a full hour of discussion. In order to get a wide array of opinion, he invited a pro-war Republican senator (Saxby Chambliss, from Georgia), a pro-war former Secretary of State (Lawrence Eagleburger), a pro-war retired Army general (Montgomery Meigs), pro-war retired Air Force general (Buster Glosson), a pro-war Republican pollster (Frank Luntz), as well as, for the sake of balance, somebody who, twenty-five years earlier, once worked in Jimmy Carter's White House (Pat Caddell).

And the media is following the same propaganda promotion effort with respect to Iran too, as noted by the Columbia Journalism Review in an article entitled "Lost Over Iran: How the press let the White House craft the narrative about nukes", which I recommend. It states that some experts and analysts have been questioning the Bush administration claim that Iran was seeking to build nukes... but "What's striking is how rarely such questions were asked by members of the press."

I also recommend reading CJR's previous article about how the allegations of the "Iranian EFPs" in Iraq. Their article debunking Bush's EFPs-from-Iran claims was interesting reading too. McClatchy indeed does a great job questioning Bush too, as the CJR notes.

NY Times: "Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand"

The New York Times has an article entitled Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand about the "defense expert" pundits that commonly come on the major news channels in the US, are actually secretly spokesmen for the Pentagon and part of a domestic propaganda operation:

"Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found...

Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves. But collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants.

In turn, members of this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when they suspected the information was false or inflated. Some analysts acknowledge they suppressed doubts because they feared jeopardizing their access.

A few expressed regret for participating in what they regarded as an effort to dupe the American public with propaganda dressed as independent military analysis."

People who are in the PR business refer to this as the use of "cutouts". Cutouts are a network of middlemen, seemingly unconnected with the source of the propaganda, who basically act as if they're independent journalists and experts. This is a very old and standard technique of propaganda distribution. In Selling War: The British Propaganda Campaign Against American "Neutrality" in World War II, Nicholas Cull shows how journalists like Dorothy Thompson, Walter Winchell and Edgar Ansel Mowrer were secretly cultivated by British intelligence operative in order to help promote American participation in WWII on the side of Britain.

That the Pentago should use the same "cut-outs" technique as part of a domestic propaganda operation to make the Iraq war look favorable should therefore come as no surprise. As I have written previously, this is how the US government controls public opinion. Government domestic propaganda in the US is 1- without any legal control, and 2- more influential and insidious than outright repression and censorhip in controlling public opinion:

That is how the system of censorship mainly works in the US - you don't have to silence people by throwing them in jail, you simply drown out their voices and overwhelm their views. This is a common way of doing things - it is not a conspiracy theory. This is the reason why the government spends so much money on PR, for example. (Of course, PR in this sense is really a euphemism for domestic propaganda.)

BTW - when the NY Times says that the news networks themselves didn't know that these people were Pentagon propagandists, don't believe it for a second. The networks either knew it for a fact, or didn't care either way. They weren't innocent dupes.

The Economist on Iran's nuclear program -- a simple analysis of nuclear coverage

The Economist has come out with one of their standard Bush-propaganda pieces about Iran's nuclear program, dripping with snide innuendo and half-truths as usual. I thought it would be fun to poke fun at them and Economist editor Peter David's belief that they've got us all fooled into thinking that the Economist is actually a reliable news source. In fact it is no better than the Weekly Standard and the other Far Right rags we read here in the US, and its reportage on Iran's nuclear program promotes the standard Bush administration memes.

Spinning out nuclear talks
Apr 17th 2008
From The Economist print edition

Is there still time for a miracle?

MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD, Iran's ebullient president, enjoys a boast. He particularly likes to crow on what he calls national nuclear day: the anniversary of the first production two years ago of low-enriched uranium to fuel yet-to-be-built civilian nuclear reactors. (That is Iran's description; others suspect weapons intent.)

In this single paragraph, we are presented with no less than three Bush administration memes:
First, the usual demonization of Ahmadinejad and efforts to link Iran's nuclear program to him, when in fact he has very little say over Iran's nuclear program (which started long before he was elected into office.) So we see terms like "crow", "boastful", "trumpeted" -- all in one place. This effort to reduce international conflict down to the identity/character of a single guy who is then painted as being "bad" or "evil" is a characteristic of the US administration -- it fits into Good Guy - Bad Guy narrative they like to sell to the world.

Second, note the reference to the "yet-to-be-built" reactors. The meme, in case you missed it, is that Iran is making enriched uranium for nuclear fuel when it doesn't have any reactors to use the fuel -- and so obviously Iran must be making enriched uranium for nukes -- in short, Iran's enrichment program is weapons related. However, the fact is that Iran needs 50,000 centrifuges for a nuclear fuel program -- not the 6000 it has just now barely started to operate. So while it is true thatIran doesn't (yet) have nuclear reactors (it has announced plans to construct additional reactors) it doesn't really have a fully operating nuclear enrichment program yet either and Iran is still developing BOTH. And, the current enrichment program only makes Low Enriched Uranium -- which can't be used for bombs.

The third meme is one of "weapons intent" -- the Bush administration strongly criticized the IAEA and attempted to topple ElBaradei from office when he reported that Iran's nuclear activities had no relation to a weapons program --- so instead the Bush administration has resorted to accusing Iran of having the "intent" to make nukes --- which, conveniently for Bush, the IAEA inspectors can never disprove. Note that any country can be be accused of having the "intent" to make nukes. Japan, Lichtenstein, Egypt, Taiwan, S. Korea etc. all could right now "intend" to make nukes (and the last three were caught violating IAEA safeguards too.) So this is a nonsense accusation, which the Economist simply repeats with relish.

So last week Mr Ahmadinejad trumpeted that work had started on 6,000 new fast-spinning centrifuge machines, beyond the 3,000 already up and running, at Iran's uranium-enrichment plant at Natanz. Shortly, says his foreign minister, there will be new diplomatic proposals to mollify critics of these nuclear plans. Yet the gambit may be a sign that not all things nuclear are going Iran's way.

This is another Bush administration meme, which is ultimately intendedt to defeat any suggestion that the US and Iran should come to an accomodation (specifically, by the US agreeing to multinational enrichment on Iranian soil) The meme is interestign because it is contradictory: On one hand they engage in SCAREMONGERING by claiming that Iran is making wild advances (thousands of centrifuges! oh my!) as it rushes forward to build nukes. But since this would also strengthen the argument that Iran's nuclear program is a fait accompli, they also also resort to DOWNPLAYING Iran's technical advances in order to suggest that the program is not a fait accompli and so there's still room for the US to stop Iran's nuclear program.

So far it has brushed off three sets of UN Security Council sanctions, imposed for its refusal to suspend enrichment. The publication in December of parts of a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) from America's spies, which said Iran ended its weapons programme in 2004, left Iran jubilant, while still denying wrongdoing. It also complicated efforts by six countries (America, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China) to keep Iran in the nuclear dock. Yet the hardest part of weapons-making—getting enough highly enriched uranium, spun in centrifuges just like those at Natanz, or plutonium—goes on regardless, in plain sight.

How dare they "still deny wrongdoing"! In fact, the NIE said that Iran stopped a weapons program in 2003, not 2004. And in fact, as the Russians pointed out, there was never any evidence that Iran had a nuclear weapon program in 2003 either. And in fact, there's absolutely no reason to take the NIE at face value at all -- the previous NIE asserted with great confidence that Iran had an on-going nuclear weapons program in 2005, and another NIE claimed that Iraq had WMDs. But regardless, the Right has not been happy with the NIE, and so they like to cast aspersions on it by suggesting that the release of the NIE was wrong thing to do and that it was somehow wrongly exploited by Iran to its advantage, and more importantly, that the NIE's conclusion that Iran had no nuclear weapons program is plain wrong since Iran's enrichment program must automatically deemed to be weapons-related.

But earlier this year the IAEA received a pile of intelligence from America and others. This and its own snooping suggest military links to the nuclear programme, secretive procurement efforts, high-explosive testing useful in triggers for nuclear bombs, and design work on a missile cone able to carry a nuclear warhead.

Much is yet to be authenticated, but last month the IAEA's chief inspector took the unusual step of briefing members of its 35-nation board, including Iran, on the detailed allegations.

Ah, now were reaching the "Alleged Studies" meme. "Alleged studies" is what the IAEA head Mohammad ELBaradei called them -- because they're "alleged" by the US, though the Bush administrations' propaganda machine has tried oh so hard to attribute the claims to the IAEA, and to bolster their credibility by suggesting that the IAEA has independently found evidence that somehow prove the claims. They're doing this because they want oh so desperately the distract attention from the fact that these "alleged studies" claims all really come from the so-called "Laptop of Death" which is obviously a fake much like the Yellowcake from Niger documnts that were used against Iraq.

Iran dismisses these as “baseless”. Yet this week it called off a meeting with the head of the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei, who was set to press for answers. Iran may hope a new diplomatic initiative will distract attention from a shady past. Unless co-operation is forthcoming, however, the next IAEA report, due for publication next month, will be sharply critical.

The Economist suggest that Iran's "calling off" a meeting is somehow evidence of the validity of the US allegations. They're trying to portray Iranians as silly people who, having been "caught" off guard by the US allegations, are all in a twitter, "calling off" meetings right and left. In fact the meeting was simply rescheduled, and this is a normal event in world affairs.

And how do we know that this up-coming IAEA report will be "sharply critical"?? Because the Economist and the rest of Bush's media machine have characterized every single IAEA report as being "sharply critical" of Iran -- regardless of what the report actually said. The previous report by the IAEA, issued in Feb 2008, which specifically stated that it had clarified all of the oustanding issues with Iran as agreed by the Nov 2007 agreement, was also mischaracterized as being "sharply critical" and somehow damning of Iran.

Meanwhile, Iran hopes to convince the world that pressing for suspension of enrichment is pointless. Two retired American diplomats, William Luers and Thomas Pickering, agree. They propose instead helping Iran's enrichment effort, in a sort of joint venture, in the hope that inspectors may keep better track of the uranium that way. But teaching Iran the (militarily useful) enrichment skills it still lacks hardly seems the way to build confidence that its nuclear work is peaceful. In any case, though Iran suggests it is racing ahead, the first 3,000 centrifuges at Natanz have not worked that well. The new ones can spin up to three times faster but will be tricky to operate.

We're back to the meme that there should be no accomodation (scaremonger/deny "fait accompli") with Iran. See above for the details.

Between the NIE report, which reduced any temptation by America to bomb Iran's nuclear
facilities, and these technical problems, may there be time for diplomacy?
For two years Mr Ahmadinejad has turned down a raft of incentives from the six in return for suspension: advanced civilian nuclear technology (including reactors, but not technologies that can be easily abused for weapons-making) Russian enrichment of Iran's uranium; buffer stocks of safeguarded nuclear fuel to guard against supply disruptions; support for Iran to join the World Trade Organisation, and for a conference on regional security. Even the enrichment suspension need not be for ever.

This is the "diplomacy doesn't work" meme. The editors of the Economist of course realize that overt support for a US attack on Iran won't go over well -- its not popular -- so they disguise the "we should bomb Iran" meme by recasting it as the "Diplomacy hasn't worked" meme. They go into great detail in explaining the incentives offered by the US/EU-3 which they play up -- but they take care to avoid mentioning the one reason why Iran would quite logically reject these offers (Iran would still be reliant on outside sources of enriched uranium an non-binding promises of delivery to power it economy, when it has every legal right to have its own enrichment program just like any other country in the world.)

Meanwhile Israel, most threatened by Iran's rockets and claimed nuclear prowess, has just had its first “strategic dialogue” with Britain; talks with America have intensified. Despite the diplomatic activity, for Israel the clock still ticks.

Now we come to Israel as being "threatened" by Iran meme -- have you noticed that Israel is always the "threatened" party and never the "threatening" party? Note the "clock still ticks" phrase -- it means that the Israelis are counting down to bombing Iran, and naturally since according to the Economist, they're "threatened" then the economist is simply pre-emptively legitimizing such an attack. In this meme, using military force against Iran's perfectly legal, economically-justified, civilian, IAEA-monitored nuclear program is legitimized.

So, in summary, here are the memes (I think you can spot them in other coverage by the Bush administration's mouthpieces such as the Economist)

1- Crazy, scary Ahmadinejad is in charge of Iran's nuclear program and wants to get nuclear weapons.

2- Iran's enrichment program is intended to make nukes (no matter what the IAEA report actually says and the fact that the IAEA has never found any actual evidence of the weapons program alleged.)

3- The NIE was wrong in saying that Iran stopped a nuclear weapons effort in 2003 since the continuing enrichment program is necessarily weapons-related.

4- There should be no accomodation with Iran by, for example, accepting Iran's offer to implement a multinational program for nuclear enrichment. There should be no enrichment in Iran, period.

5- Time for "diplomacy" is running out, and when it does, "threatend" Israel is entitled to attack Iran.

Bush's anti-terrorism legal problems

So remember when the Bush administration was trumpeting the arrest of "terrorists" who wanted to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago?

Well, the case has ended in a mistrial -- for the second time -- on the charges. Turns out the only real evidence against the accused consists of statements elicited by a government agent who had been planted among them.

“In a lot of these cases, the government has really oversold what it’s got,” said Jenny Martinez, an associate professor of law at Stanford who was involved in the Jose Padilla terrorism case. “They’ve held these huge press conferences at the beginning that set up these expectations that the government cannot fulfill.” ... “Politics played too important a role in this prosecution,” Professor Winick said. “We should follow our normal prosecution pattern, which is to gather the evidence.”

Gather evidence? How quaint! No, nowdays we just waterboard people.

Meanwhile the government is giving another go at Prof. Sami Al-Arian.

Buy This Book: So Wrong for So Long by Greg Mitchell

So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits--and the President--Failed on Iraq (Paperback)
by Greg Mitchell (Author), Joseph L. Galloway (Foreword), Bruce Springsteen (Preface)

In early 2003, Greg Mitchell was one of the few mainstream journalists to seriously question the stated reasons for invading Iraq. In the years since, he has repeatedly challenged the media to probe the conduct of the war and its toll on our troops.

Now, after five years of war, he traces the conflict -- from the "runup" to the "surge" -- and the media's coverage of it, in this important collection of commentaries with significant new additions: an original introduction and dozens of pages of fresh material that unify the essays.

If a free press is the watchdog of democracy, then Greg Mitchell must be the watchdog of the watchdogs, tracking the performance of the media at Editor & Publisher, the influential magazine of the newspaper industry. Over the past five years, in his widely read column, "Pressing Issues," he has repeatedly been ahead of the curve in intensely scrutinizing both the president and the press--and the controversies swirling around Donald Rumsfeld, Pat Tillman, "Scooter" Libby, Ann Coulter and numerous other figures.

His book is a unique history of the entire war--and as topical as today's headlines. Whether writing early warnings that anticipated a long and bloody war, analyzing Stephen Colbert's in-his-face mockery of George W. Bush, or imagining the president confessing his sins to Oprah Winfrey, Greg Mitchell explores how we got into the war in Iraq--and why we just can't seem to get out. With tens of thousands of American troops still in Iraq, debate over the war continues to rage on TV news and across editorial pages. Against this backdrop of controversy, Greg Mitchell is the rare journalist who has seen it all with clear eyes. In So Wrong for So Long, he can finally tell the whole story.

Israel pushes for Iran war, lurks in shadows.

Avigdor Lieberman, the Iran-hating warmonger who had made it his business to demonize Iran has apparently lost his speaking platform when the Israelis closed down his "Ministry for Strategic Affairs".

Perhaps this is an indication of the return of some sanity among the war-obsessed kooks in Israel. But I for one am skeptical, since other Israeli ministers seem quite happy to rant and rave.

So, rather than an indication that saner heads have won the day in Israel, I suspect the Israelis are now just taking their own advice by playing down their unmitigated desire for an US attack on Iran, so as to avoid responsibility for the consequences -- leaving it to their agents in Washington to push for an attack on Iran instead.

Writing in the Forward, Ori Nir reported that Jewish community leaders have urged the White House to refrain from publicly pledging to defend Israel against Iran:

"Jewish activists are concerned that 'there would be [a scenario] just like with Iraq: the idea that somehow the Jewish community and the neoconservatives have dragged the United States into a conflict with Iran,' said Martin Raffel, associate executive director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs...'And if things go badly and our people are killed, then who is to blame?'"

Yeah, "somehow" the pro-Israeli lobbyists and NeoCons, who made it their single-minded obsession to push the US into invading Iraq, were accused of dragging the US into that war. God forbid that the same people be accused of the doing the same thing with respect to Iran, even when they're pushing for a war on Iran with similar maniacal vehemence. Somehow they could end up being blamed when the dead bodies start to come home.

More links of interest:

Pro-Israel group polls on Iran strike
JTA 11/20/2007

Pro-Israel group polls on Iran strike

British Marines seized by Iran -- a lie exposed, again.

Remember when the Iranian seized a boatload of British Marines in the Persian Gulf back in March 2007, when US and British media referred to the incident as an "abduction" or "hostage-taking"? Well, like always, you can't believe everything you read. The Times is only now reporting...

Fifteen British sailors and Marines were seized by Iran in internationally disputed waters and not in Iraq's maritime territory as Parliament was told, according to new official documents released to The Times.

The Britons were seized because the US-led coalition designated a sea boundary for Iran's territorial waters without telling the Iranians where it was, internal Ministry of Defence briefing papers reveal...

The media coverage of this incident would make a great case study about the role of the media in international affairs. Those of you who are looking for a topic for a paper should take note.

Naturally, it should come as no surprise whatsoever that the Brits were lying through their bad teeth (both to the world and to their own Parliament) about this event when they were screaming about how the poor innocent marines were supposedly "taken hostage" by those dirty lying Iranians while they were supposedly in "international waters". This was exposed as a lie in July 2007 when the map presented by the Brits turned out to be .... "inaccurate"And, remember that this "revelation" comes right after the Bush administration was caught lying about their own little encounter with the Iranians near the Hormuz Straits too, when promoited a heavily edited videotape of the incident that falsely attributed the voice of the "Filipino Monkey" to the Iranians.

But in fact, despite today's "revelation" by the Times, almost immediately after the incident Amb. Craig Murray pointed out on his blog that there was no internationally-agreed border there and that Iran had the legal right to seize intruders in their claimed waters .

However, the more interesting question is why Craig Murray was easily ignored by the media, which instead decided to promote various convoluted conspiracy theories about why the Iranians would supposedly do such a dastardly act. The fact that the Iranians had the legal right to seize intruders on their claimed waters was never presented by the media as a potential explanation. The Iranians' claims were simply dismissed off-hand, the UK claims were accepted as the truth - as usual.

And now, you can bet that the media will generally ignore the recent "revelation" by the Times too.

Investing in Iran

PRESS RELEASE APRIL 13, 2008 First Persia Equity Fund Ltd today announced the re-opening of the First Persia Equity Fund from April 13 to June 18, 2008. The First Persia Equity Fund is the World’s only Iran country fund authorised for foreign investment in Tehran’s booming (+3.9% year-to-date) stock market by the Iranian Government. Set up in July 2007 with an initial capital of 34 million Euros, the First Persia Equity Fund has established an enviable track record, rising by 2.5% since inception, one of the few long only equity funds launched anywhere last summer to still be in positive territory. The First Persia Equity Fund portfolio has also outperformed the main Tehran index, the TEPIX, in every month since it started trading. Mr Fazlollah Moazzami, Chief Investment Officer of the Fund, commented “Based on current year multiples of 4 or 5 times, dividend yields of 12-14% and earnings growth of 15-17%, the Tehran stock market offers some of the most compelling valuations in the Emerging Market space”. Stephen Austen, Director of the Fund, added “The privatisation programme in Iran offers some extraordinary opportunities for medium term investors to gain attractively priced exposure to some of the most exciting sectors in the region such as Petrochemicals, Banking, Mining, Steel Production and Refining”. The Fund is managed in Tehran by Mehr Cayman Limited, a new investment boutique focussed on the facilitation of foreign investment in the full range of asset classes in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The First Persia Equity Fund is licensed by the Iranian Ministry of Finance under the Foreign Investment Protection and Promotion Act (FIPPA) framework under which foreigners’ title to the underlying assets is guaranteed by the Iranian Government and access to foreign currency upon exit is underwritten by the Central Bank of Iran

"Profound skepticism" on Iran's role in Iraq

Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post says that the Bush administration's latest rationalization for staying in Iraq -- claims about Iran's role in Iraq -- should be greeted with profound skepticism:

When they assert that the Iranian government is intentionally arming anti-American fighters, they should be asked to back up the claim. As mideast expert Juan Cole recently told Gary Kamiya of Salon: "There's no proof for that, and whenever the U.S. Army is pressed for evidence, they always back off." Simply proving the existence of Iranian weapons in enemy hands is not enough, incidentally -- considering how widely available they are on the black market.

Indeed, anything government officials say should be treated with profound skepticism. However, when it comes to Bush, considering his track record, everything he says should simply be assumed to be a blatant lie.

However, don't expect the media to follow Froomkin's advice. They will continue to mouth Bush administration propaganda about "Iranian meddling" until it becomes conventional wisdom through mere repetition.

Zionists support Evangelical warmonger nutcase

Just in case anyone tries to deny this later in the future:

The signers of this letter have been chairmen of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, and we appreciate and respect Pastor Hagee’s dedicated efforts and those of Christians United for Israel.

- Harold Tanner

- James Tisch

-Mort Zuckerman

- Mel Salberg

- Lester Pollack

- Shoshana Cardin

- Ken Bialkin

New York, April 8, 2008

It should be noted that Mort Zuckerman is the editor-in-chief of U.S.News & World Report. He is also chairman and copublisher of the New York Daily News.

Multinational Enrichment on Iranian soil redux

The Independent "reveals" that former US government personnel have occasionally held talks with Iranian authorities over Iran's nuclear program. Not really much of a "revelation" as these sorts of meetings are common, but anyway the talks have included Pickering, one of the authors of an article in the NY Review of Books which suggested multinational enrichment on Iranian soil as a way out of the current deadlock with the US.

The article claims that any such deal won't be accepted by either the Bush administration or Ahmadinejad. While they're right about the Bush administration -- since the entire nuclear issue is just a pretext anyway and not the real motivation behind Bush's anti-Iran stance. However, the author of the article seems to forget that it was Ahmadinejad himself who suggested the option of multinational enrichment on Iranian soil during his speech to the UN.

Of course, the Bush administration will find a way of torpedoing any such deal, just as they did with the Paris Agreement negotiations. Here's my prediction: the US will initially simply oppose any such deal, but when it becomes apparent that the deal is going forward, they'll pretend to get on board, only to impose such onerous and humiliating conditions on any such deal as to make it insulting an inpalatable to the Iranians (note the references in the end of the Independent article about requiring Iran to agree to "punitive actions" to be taken against it.) That way, they'll force the Iranians out of the deal, whilst also shifting the blame for the breakdown of the deal ionto them. This is part of their strategy of continually moving the goalposts that they used in the Paris Agreement, designed to prevent a settlement of the nuclear issue, which forced the EU to find a face-saving way out of the agreement by making an pathetic offer to Iran that violated the explicit text of the Paris Agreement, as I have mentioned before.

"Linking" Iran to Iraq - Rumsfeld's memos are still with us.

I haven't blogged for a while because basically the US approach to Iran has been repeating a single note, like a broken record player, as Bush draws out his final days in office. Take the recent claims -- asserted without any evidence provided -- that Iran is sending weapons into Iraq etc.

Remember when . . .

Ten months before the US aired formal proof of Iranian involvement in funding Iraqi insurgents, then-Secretary of Defense warned in secret Pentagon memos that Iran should be the "concern of the American people" and he issued explicit instructions to the military.

"[L]ink Iraq to Iran," Rumsfeld wrote in one of thousands of "snowflakes" -- short memos distributed throughout the Pentagon during his tenure.

Kidney transplants in Iran and the US

The Cato Institute recommends that the United States consider adopting the Iranian system of a legalized marketplace for kidney transplants:

The contrast in the policies of the two countries is reflected in the stark differences in the number of patients on dialysis, waiting for a kidney, and subsequently dying. In the United States alone, 341,000 patients suffering from ESRD were dialysis-dependent in 2005—triple the number in 1988.12 Current estimates vary, but that number is expected to grow to between 400,00013 and 520,00014 by 2010 and to approach 525,000 to 700,000 by 2020. Today, in the United States, more than 73,000 people are waiting for a kidney transplant from a deceased donor, and by 2010, the waiting list is expected to grow to nearly 100,000.17 In Iran, the waiting list for kidneys was eliminated in 1999, 11 years after the legalization of organ vending, and for the past 8 years, Iran has had no waiting list for kidneys.18 By contrast, since 1999 more than 30,000 U.S. patients with kidney failure have died waiting for an organ that never arrived.

"Harsh interrogations" memo farce

The New York Times and other major US media outlets are reporting about the release of a legal memo from the Bush administration that claims US presidents are immune from international legal probitions on the use of torture on detainees.

What's sad yet funny is how the NY Times and the other media outlets so assiduously avoid using the word TORTURE in their reports and instead use the euphemism of "harsh interrogation techniques."

Now, suppose an Iranian legal document had been exposed that authorized the use of similar techniques on prisoners -- do you suppose the NY Times would be similarly recalcitrant in using the "T" word?

And this is hardly the first time that the US government has declared itself to be above international law. Just recently, for example, the US Supreme Court ruled that the US is not actually bound by the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, adopted in 1963 and now joined by 171 nations including the US which was a prime architect of the treaty

According to this treaty, foreign nationals who are arrested in another country must be told without delay that they have a right to contact a diplomat – a consular officer -- from their home country. However, several Mexicans who were arrested in the United States were not provided this right (one of them is Ernesto Medellin who has been sentenced to death in Texas.)

The Mexicans took their case to the World Court, which ruled that the US must provide consulor access -- but the US Supreme Court has said that the World Court ruling has no effect in the US.

Of course, when Americans are arrested overseas, the US has vigorously insisted on strict compliance with the Convention -- but the same has not been true when foreigners have been arrested in the US.

Now, had an American been sentenced to death in Mexico (which has no death penalty, actually) and who had been refused consular access, what do you suppose would have happened?