Sahimi on Abright and ISIS

Dr. Sahimi has a nice article at Antiwar.com taking apart David Albright's role in promoting hysteria about Iran's nuclear program.

I have voiced some of the same concerns re: Albright and ISIS. Namely, that whenever the media want a good scare quote, they run over to Albright who diligently calculates how "close to the bomb" Iran is based on theoretical calculations about its uranium stockpiles, never making quite clear that Iran's LOW-ENRICHED uranium CANNOT be used to make bombs, and furthermore that Iran cannot create highly-enriched uranium without kicking out the IAEA inspectors among other things. Those nuances are always left out by Albright. After many years of watching ISIS and Albright, there is absolutely no doubt left in my mind that they are NOT objective but are pushing an PR agenda, fulfilling the same pundit role other supposed "nuclear specialists" like Gary Milholin's "Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control" were during the build-up to the Iraq war. This conclusion was firmly established in my mind when I listend to Corey Hinderstein, formerly of ISIS, repeatedly claim in an interview that it was Iran that had "violated" the Paris Agreement (when in fact it was the EU.)

In fact, one of the issues that Sahimi does not mention is Albright's role in scaremongering over Iran's Parchin weapons complex. Albright practically created a furore over Parchin, promoting all sorts of speculation about how the facility "could be" used to make nukes, based on absolutely no evidence whatsoever (ISIS simply claimed that Parchin would be a "logical candidate" for such nuclear weapons research -- and that's all.) Just read this and count the number of "may be" and "could be" statements. What it boils down to is nothing more than baseless scaremongering with no real evidence to back any of it up -- and yet ISIS has no problem issuing such reports.

The Iranians resisted permitting IAEA inspections at Parchin since the IAEA is not entitled to go to conventional weapons facilities, and no evidence was presented to the IAEA Board by ISIS or the US to support the claim that Parchin was actually an undeclared nuclear facility which should have been subject to inspections either (in which case the IAEA Board could demand 'special inspection' to be performed.) However, Iran eventually relented and permitted IAEA inspectors to visit the site (even though Iran was legally never obligated to do so -- another fact that ISIS always conveniently leaves out of its reports) and predictably, the IAEA said that it had found nothing to warrant the baseless speculation promoted oh so hard by Albright and ISIS.

So, what does ISIS do? Do they retract their statements? Does the media look more critically at Albright and wonder if he's legit or not after having been proven oh-so wrong about Parchin? No. Instead, Albright's ISIS issue a press release claiming that the IAEA inspections were insufficient and there had to be yet more inspections there. Basically, all Albright is doing is finding construction sites in Iran, speculating that how the site "could be" related to nuclear weapons work, then demanding IAEA inspections of that site based on nothing more than his own speculation. This process can go on as long as there are construction sites in Iran -- of which there are many, of course. In other words, it was just another case of moving goal posts, intended to constantly demonize Iran and keep Iran under suspicion without any actual evidence to back up any of it.

Booga Booga!

Comments

[Amir P.]

Well, another reason for pushing IAEA to inspect Parchin is to get a clue about what is going on in there! That is to find out what types and in what capacity conventional weapons are being made. This is a major piece of intelligence one needs before attacking a country, right?