Iran Affairs

New York Times loves anonymous government sources on Iran

[UPDATE: Again Glenn Greenwald says it nicely:

What evidence is there that the Iranians reported this facility to the IAEA only because they learned that the U.S. had discovered the facility?  For that matter, what evidence is there that the Iranians ever realized this at all?  Whether Iran reported the facility voluntarily or only because they were forced to do so by virtue of having been "caught" is a self-evidently relevant fact to all of this, and yet the claims of anonymous officials on this question are uncritically assumed to be true without any skepticism, demands for evidence, or consideration of alternative views....

 Provocative, unproven claims -- ones that will obviously inflame war passions among a significant segment of the population -- are passed on with no evidence and little questioning.  Dissenting voices are excluded (other than a fleeting, token quote from the Iranian President buried in the middle).  And overnight, an extremely fear-inciting and sensationalistic case against Iran was cemented as unchallengeable wisdom across the political spectrum.  ]

A  reader brought to my attention: Columbia Journalism Review has an article entitled "Eyes wide shut on Iran" on the media's coverage of the news of a second, unbuilt uranium enrichment plant in Iran. It shows that the NY Times relies almost exclusively on anonymous government sources for its Iran-related bashing, just as it did in the build-up to the Iraq war, as FAIR pointed out 2 years ago.

This quote from the CJR article was too funny to pass up:

On Saturday, The New York Times offered on its front page a long, behind-the-scenes reconstruction of what it called “three dramatic days of highly sensitive diplomacy and political maneuvering” that the Obama administration had conducted after it learned of the letter that Iran had sent to the International Atomic Energy Agency describing the new nuclear plant. The story, we were informed, was “based on interviews with administration officials and American allies, all of whom want the story known to help support their case against Iraq.” No allies were cited, however. Instead, the article relied entirely on anonymous US officials. Here’s my attribution tally:

a senior administration official
a second senior administration official
administration officials
senior intelligence officials
the officials
the official
White House officials
American officials
a senior administration official
the officials
a senior official
American officials
the officials
a senior administration official
the administration official
a senior administration official
administration officials
one administration official
senior administration official

I wondered how many officials this actually added up to.

Read more from the Columbia Journalism Review here.

Meanwhile, remember what FAIR said about the NY Times' penchant for using anonymous government sources:

The similarity between the current New York Times reporting hyping an Iran threat and the paper's credulous prewar Iraq reporting are not coincidental. Gordon was co-author, along with disgraced reporter Judith Miller, of two of six stories singled out in the paper's May 26, 2004 apology for faulty Iraq reporting, including the Times story that falsely touted the now-famous "aluminum tubes" as components of an Iraqi nuclear weapons program.

The paper's mea culpa, in the form of an editors' note, explained some of the editorial shortcomings that resulted in publishing misleading and embarrassing reports: “Editors at several levels who should have been challenging reporters and pressing for more skepticism were perhaps too intent on rushing scoops into the paper.... Articles based on dire claims about Iraq tended to get prominent display, while follow-up articles that called the original ones into question were sometimes buried." Where are the editors who should be "pressing for more skepticism" this time around?

Acton, Borger wrong on Iran's second enrichment facility

This article is going to be about debunking Borger and Acton's articles about the second enrichment facility. Acton argues that Iran was in violation of its safeguards agreement by not reporting this facility to the IAEA sooner, and Borger simply parrots a whole lot of bullshit from the US government without question.

From the start, lets get something clear about the Borger article: Commercial satellite photos of this site show 1-that it was not "built underground into a mountain" and is instead located on a hilltop, and 2-far from being "secret" or "hidden", it was pretty obvious from satellite imagery, and 3- it was not heavily guarded at all (the surface-to-air missiles intended to protect the site aren't even installed yet.) In short, it wasn't the Lair of Doctor Evil as the US media portrayed it.

View Larger Map

Gareth Porter has another article published by Inter Press should be contrasted with the propaganda exuded by Julian Borger in the Guardian. Unlike Borger, who seems to simply parrot the US stance, Porter raises raises some pertinent questions about what the US really knew about the additional enrichment facility near Qom, and concludes that US officials were deliberately portraying the new enrichment facility in more menacing terms than the actual intelligence assessment, and the claim that Iran was "forced to come clean" is unsubstatiated.

So let me clear up some other things:

1- Iran didn't "confesss" to the site as Borger claims, because Iran never denied it in the first place. The claim that Iran only "came clean" because it knew that the US already knew about the site, which was otherwise intended to remain a secret, is simply not backed by any evidence. It is just as likely that the US used the opportunity presented by Iran's disclosure of the site as an opportunity to put a negative spin on Iran's compliance with its safeguards, by trying to portray Iran as having forcibly "confessed" to something secret.

2- Borger's says that the enrichment facility was started in 2006, supposedly at which time Iran had agreed to implement the "Modified" version of its safeguards agreement which require informing the IAEA of plans to build a site as soon as construction started, rather than the standard "180 days before introduction of nuclear material into the site" deadline, and so Iran was in violation of its safeguards even if it withdrew from them later:

The Iranian argument is that under IAEA safeguards, as long as no uranium hexafluoride is fed into centrifuges, the plant is not nuclear, and therefore Iran has no obligation to notify the IAEA until six months before uranium is introduced.

But western officials point out that at the time this enrichment plant appears to have been started, in 2006, Iran had an agreed obligation to notify the IAEA as soon as construction began on any new nuclear facility.

However, Borger is plain wrong on this point. So lets get the timeline straight:

From 1974 on, under the terms of Iran's safeguards agreement with the IAEA, Iran was only required to declare nuclear sites to the IAEA 180 days before the introduction of nuclera material into the site. As part of a good faith gesture during the Paris Agrement negotiations with the EU-3, Iran voluntarily and conditionally implemented a "Modified" version of its safeguards (as well as suspending enrichment and implementing the "additional protocol" which allows more stringent inspections) from to November 2004 to Aug 2005, when Iran announced that it would resume enrichment. Though Iran did not formally advise the IAEA specifically that they also would withdraw from implementing the subsidiary arrangements until 2007, it was clear that when Iran resumed enrichment in 2005, the subsidiary arrangements were also no longer considered to be binding by Iran.  So, in short, if Iran started construction on this site in 2006, it was AFTER Iran essentially withdrew from the provisional implementation of the Paris Agreement concessions which included the Modified Subsidiary Arrangements, in August 2005.

You see, Iran had always made it crystal clear that it suspension of enrichment and other concessions including implementation of the Modifieid safeguards was to be a temporary and non-binding gesture, pending the EU-3's submission of their proposals. The negotiations and the suspension of enrichment were supposed to go on for about 6 months as the EU3 prepared a package of proposals for Iran that would recognize Iran's right to enrichment, as the Paris Agreement explicity stated. But lacking cooperation from the US, the EU-3 dragged it out for 2 years, having rejected Iran's call to speed up the talks in Feb 2005 and many other occasions. By Fall 2005, the US had ignored Iranian offers to open its nuclear program to joint US participation (Kevin Morrison, "Iran Offers to Let US Share in its Nuclear Programme," Financial Times, 16 March 2005.) and the EU-3 had violated the Paris Agreement by continuing to demand that Iran give up enrichment permanently, and so Iran withdrew from implementing such good faith gestures.  

3- The next issue is about that Iran's claim that it can withdraw from the Modified safeguards because it never ratified the agreement, and so it remained non-binding. James Acton has a ridiculous article in which he scoffs at this Iranian claim, by saying

Iran justified its action by saying that the modification to Code 3.1 had not been ratified by the Majlis.

The problem with this argument is that, like every other state, Iran did not ask its parliament, the Majlis, to ratify its original Subsidiary Arrangements! To claim that a modification to these arrangements requires ratification is therefore absurd.

Moreover, Iran—like every other state—modifies its Subsidiary Arrangements regularly, without asking for parliamentary ratification. For example, as the size of its enrichment plant at Natanz has grown, Iran has (reluctantly) agreed to various improvements in safeguards. These improvements required modifications of the Subsidiary Arrangements, but Iran did not ask the Majlis to ratify them.

But Acton seems to be missing a brainlobe. First of all, Iran's safeguards agreement in 1974 did in fact say that it would enter into force when "Iran’s statutory and constitutional requirements for entry into force have been met." (See Article 25 of Infcir 214, 13 December 1974.) Of course, the safeguards agreement is not the same thing as the subsidiary agreement (which is a subset of the safeguards agreement, the details) but it does show that Iran did not implement the subsidiary agreement without some form of constitutional procedure. And given Iran did not ask Parliament to ratify the original subsidiary agreement way back in 1974 under very different political circumstances and regime, that doesn't mean it could never ever require such a thing ever again. Similarly, the fact that Iran did not regularly require ratification of changes to its safeguards agreement does not establish some sort of binding precedent on Iran. It could very well be that Iran did require the new subsidiary arrangements to be ratified. This is especially true when you consider the fact that the Iranians had made it EXPLICITLY clear that their implementation of other good faith gestures during the Paris Agreement negotiations, were temporary, conditional and non-binding, and Iran's parliament was very much involved in the negotiations (having passed a law obligating Iran to restart enrichment if the EU-3 continued to drag their heels by attempting to indefinitely lengthen Iran's temporary suspension of enrichment.)

But here we get to the bigger point: Iran is being daily threatened with bombardment, which the threat itself constitutes a blatant and basic violation of international law. To say that Iran must nevertheless abide by the strict meaning of the subsidiary arrangements and disclose the location of all of its intended nuclear sites is essentially asking Iran to draw up a bombing list for the US and Israel, which is ridiculous. You can't violate international law on one hand, then complain about Iran's technical violations of a subsidiary arrangement.

500,000 page views!

I rarely check the statistics on this blog mainly because I am not sure how things are quantified (what exactly is a page view?) but in any case I am now approaching 500,000 page views which sounds significant. I have about 700 page views per day lately, maxed out at 1200 for a while when I debunked the NY Times "reporting" on the Iran IAEA report.

Thing is, since my most recent posts all appear in full on the "front page" I don't know if my page views stats can be compared to other blogs whose homepage consists of only partial posts & which require users to actually click on a post heading before reading the full post (so they get two page views.) As for comments; about half of my 800 posts have comments posted, which I suppose is a good thing but again I don't know what benchmarking applies to all of this. However, regardless, I just wanted to say thanks to my readers. (Most popular post, btw, is the one debunking the "Iranian boys arm crushed for stealing bread" myth.)

The Iran "secret, hidden, clandestine" nuclear facility meme

I recommend John Knefel's article on Huffington Post where he ridicules the US media's coverage of Iran's perfectly legal disclosure of a second, yet-to-be built, enrichment plant near Qom, and their claim that Iran was somehow caught doing something bad by disclosing this facility in accordance with its safeguards agreement:

It sure sounds like the media is congealing around this new meme like the unthinking wad of lard that they are. And thankfully, the same horrifying tactics that gave us Catastrophe Iraq! are on full display yet again, for fun.

Obama should make like Nixon, "go to China" on Iran.

The Leveretts argue in an op-ed in the New York Times that Obama should follow Nixon's example when he forged relations with China, and do the same with Iran:

INSTEAD of pushing the falsehood that sanctions will give America leverage in Iranian decision-making — a strategy that will end either in frustration or war — the administration should seek a strategic realignment with Iran as thoroughgoing as that effected by Nixon with China. This would require Washington to take steps, up front, to assure Tehran that rapprochement would serve Iran’s strategic needs.

That's all very nice and stuff. But it overlooks some fundamental issues. Before Nixon went to China, he had to push away the pro-Taiwanese lobby that was quite powerful in Washington. For Obama to go to Iran, he has a much more formidable lobby to deal with -- the Israelis - and there is absolutey no chance in hell that Obama has what it takes to get past them (as their killing-off the appointment of Charles Freeman to the National Security Council proved, as if you needed any more evidence.)

Like I keep saying: the United States is not in control of its own foreign policy. If you're looking for them to come around and wake up and pursue a policy that makes sense, forget it. Move on.

2010: Decade of the fall of America

With the new year (2010) approaching, I am thinking of how this decade started with a lot of hype and lies promoted by the media and self-interested groups who were scaremongering for profit...specifically, about the Y2K bug that was supposed to wipe put humanity etc etc.

I remember I used to work of a certain cable news organization in 1999-2000. We were all told that we had to be in our offices on New Year's Eve 1999/2000 because of all the stories that had been published for a while then, about the Y2k bug. Planes were expected to fall out of the sky, nuclear missiles were expected to launch themselves, reactors were expected to blow up, cats and dogs living together...

At precisely 12:01 on Jan 1 2000, nothing happened. Nada. Zilch. Not a hairclip went missing because of the Y2K bug. All the pundits, all the talking heads, all the experts, all the editorials and articles...all of them were shown plain wrong. Lawyers had prepared class action lawsuits ready to be filed, governments had prepared emergency plans, companies had backed up their data, etc....all for nothing.

It was all hype.

Then came the war on Iraq and all the hype and bullshit about WMDs that went with that. More of the same.

Democracy was proven to be a sham. It was proven that people could be led around and brainwashed so easily. Every single check and balance in the American constitutional system was shown to be a fraud too. We went to war without the least knowledge of why we're going to war. THere were no WMDs in Iraq. We knew it. Congress failed to act as a check on the executive (in fact, it was an enabler.)  Our media failed to expose the executive's lies (and they were enablers too.) The so-called "Watchdog of Demcoracy" was not just asleep but a participant in selling the big lie. And so 8 years later, no one can state with certainty why US troops are still in Iraq, or why they went there in the first place (because WMDs was certainly not the reason.)

The election system fell down too -- hanging chads, anyone?

And then Capitalism fell down. You want practical proof? GO to http://maps.google.com , click on "Show search options" and then select "real estate" from the menu.

Select any neighborhood in a largish-city on the map -- like Santa Clara, California-- and click on "for sale" on the left margin.

See those dots? THose are houses for sale.

Now, click the "foreclosure" option too.

See those dots? That's how many houses are in foreclosure. Compare to regular sales.

And remember that we just spent trillions bailing out our largest corporations, thanks to the Chinese.

And that mass surveillance, torture, indefinite detention, and the use of secret evidence against detainees is now legal in the US of A -things that 20 years ago would have been unimaginable. Here, now, happening. US moral credibility now shot totally to shit.

That's the great Zeroes decade. When the last nail was driven into the coffin of American exceptionalism. We're stuck in an endless, pointless war far away, and bridges are falling down from lack of maintenance at home, while our public drinking water literally causes skin burns due to pollution put there by corporate greed, while the average CEO earns more in a day than the average worker earns per year.

This is probably what Rome felt like in the end.

Iran and the effort to limit uranium enrichment technology

Over the past few years a number of proposals have been made regarding the establishment of multinational fuel cycle centers. The idea of a multilateral approach to the fuel cycle is not new and goes back as far as 1946.

The Bush Administration non-proliferation initiative

In February 2004, President Bush proposed several new measures "to combat the proliferation of Weapons of mass destruction", including the imposition of new restrictions on the spread of enrichment and reprocessing (ENR) technology to additional countries, on the grounds that such sensitive fuel cycle technology can be used to produce fissile material for nuclear weapons. Under President Bush's proposal, nuclear technology suppliers would refuse to provide such technologies to any country that did not already possess full-scale, operating enrichment or reprocessing facilities. He also proposed that suppliers ensure reliable access to nuclear fuel for countries that renounce enrichment or reprocessing, as an incentive for countries not to acquire such technologies.

The Global Nuclear Energy Partnership supposedly has similar aims, to offer reliable nuclear fuel services as a viable alternative to the acquisition of sensitive fuel cycle technologies. Iran has been offered "legally binding nuclear fuel supply guarantees" if it agrees to suspend enrichment related and reprocessing activities until "international confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear programme is restored."

Some argue that President Bush's ENR proposal conflicts with the key bargain of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) that promised states forswearing nuclear weapons “the fullest possible exchange of equipment, materials and scientific and technological information for the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.” Since then, Bush administration's has modified this proposal in order to accommodate the interests of Canada, which wants to build uranium enrichment plants to export enriched uranium fuel for nuclear-power plants, albeit possibly only under a "black box" arrangement that does not transfer technical knowhow.

Iranian reaction

Iran argues that such restrictions on the acquisition of enrichment technology would constitute a breach of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the IAEA Statute and the Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement, which require non-discriminatory sharing of nuclear technology.

Manouchehr Mottaki, was the Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs appointed by President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. During the Iranian presidential election, 2005, he was the campaign manager of Ali Larijani, the Right-wing politics-Conservatism candidate, and said that the West's demands for Iran to "surrender its inalienable right to fully master nuclear technology" constituted "nuclear apartheid". In subsequent statements in February 2006 he insisted that "Iran rejects all forms of scientific and nuclear apartheid by any world power", and asserted that such "scientific and nuclear apartheid" amounted to "an immoral and discriminatory treatment of signatories to the Non-Proliferation Treaty", and that Iran has "the right to a peaceful use of nuclear energy and we cannot accept nuclear apartheid". His words were later echoed in a June 2006 speech by Iran's deputy chief nuclear negotiator Javad Vaeedi, in which he claimed that "developing countries are moving towards destroying technological apartheid".

Iran has offered to accept international participation in its nuclear program, and to operate its enrichment facilities as a consortium with foreign governments, as long as the program is conducted on Iranian soil. This idea has been endorsed by Western and American experts. This proposal was rejected by the Western countries, led by the US, who insist that there should be no enrichment at all in Iran.

International reactions

It has been suggested that the U.S. proposal has led some countries to develop enrichment capabilities, in part based on 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. Some have suggested that fears that such proposals are "thinly veiled attempts to revoke their 'inalienable right' to peaceful nuclear technology . . . may even be spurring more countries to pursue nuclear enrichment technology, in hopes that they can achieve significant capability before any new international agreement solidifies and locks them out of the club." Others argue that "proposals to create national or international monopolies on the nuclear fuel cycle are very unlikely to be acceptable," especially if punitive sanctions or the threat of military intervention are used to enforce restrictions on access to fuel cycle technologies. According to one report, "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."

According to a 2004 analysis by the Center for Nonproliferation Studies,

"Many NPT state parties, particularly those from the Non-Aligned Movement

(NAM), have already stated their opposition to President Bush’s proposals to restrict enrichment. In their view, precluding states from developing enrichment and reprocessing capabilities contradicts an important tenet of the NPT-that is, the deal made by the nuclear weapon states (NWS) to the non-nuclear weapon states (NNWS). Article IV of the NPT states that NNWS have the inalienable right to develop research, production, and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, a right intended to provide an incentive for NNWS to give up the pursuit of nuclear weapons. The Bush proposals, however, introduce another element into the nonproliferation regime by segmenting countries into those that can engage in enrichment and reprocessing and those that cannot. Since most states with fuel cycle capabilities are from the developed world, it is clear that the target group of the proposal is the developing world."

Similar past proposals to restrict enrichment have caused deep divisions between NPT signatory states, as developing countries have consistently rejected efforts to place additional limits on the fuel cycle. The Final Document of the United Nations General Assembly resolution S-10/2 which was adopted at the 27th plenary meeting of the tenth special session on 30 June 1978 stated in paragraph 69: "Each country's choices and decisions in the field of peaceful uses of nuclear energy should be respected without jeopardizing its policies or international cooperation agreements and arrangements for peaceful uses of nuclear energy and its fuel-cycle policies".

This position was reiterated in the 1980 NPT Review and Extension Conference and has been consistently reiterated in every Review Conference since then, including the 1995 Review Conference and in the Final Document of the 2000 NPT Review Conference. The Final Document of the 10th Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly in 2002 also reiterated that non-proliferation measures should not be used to jeopardize the inalienable rights of all States to have access to and be free to acquire technology, equipment and materials for peaceful uses of nuclear energy, and that each country's choices regarding nuclear fuel cycle policies should be respected.

"Diplomacy has failed" with Iran...?

THe NeoCons and the warmongers keep saying that "Diplomacy has failed" with Iran when it comes to negotiations over Iran's totally legitimate, absolute and inalienable right to enrich uranium.

Here are the facts: The so-called "diplomacy" used with Iran has consisted of (illegal) demands that they give up their righ to use their own technology and resources to make their own nuclear fuel, whilst threatening (again, illegally) to bomb them. If it has "failed" it is simply because it was meant to fail. No matter how many concessions Iran makes, no matter how many extra-legal IAEA inspections it allows, no matter how many limits and restrictions is offers to put on its nuclear program (as it done in the past) it will only lead to more demands for more concessions. Why? Because like I said, the plan is not to ensure that Iran has a "transparent" enrichment program that can't be used to make nukes (such is the case right now.) The plan is to 1-deprive Iran (and then, the rest of the developing world) of uranium enrichment know-how, thus creating a monopolistic cartel of nuclear fuel providers, and 2- ensuring Israel's domination over the Mideast. 

So don't get fooled by all the "Iran refuses talks" or "diplomacy has failed" rhetoric.  

Polls: Iranians support Ahmadinejad and their nuclear program

A reader was kind enough to send me this:

 

I don't know if you are already aware but 2 new Iran surveys have been published on the subject of the nuclear program and also the June election. Both appear to vindicate your assessment. They were conducted by the World Public Opinion polling agency in the United States.

 

http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/

 

http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/sep09/IranNuc_Sep09_quaire.pdf

 

http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/sep09/IranUS_Sep09_quaire.pdf

Some of they key points:

Regarding Iran’s nuclear program, please tell me which of the following courses of action you prefer for Iran:

To develop both atomic bombs

and nuclear power.................................................38%

To only develop nuclear power..............................55

To have no nuclear programs...................................3

Don’t know ..............................................................3

Refused ....................................................................1

 

And when asked about their confidence in their President, this is what the results were:

How about the President?

A lot of confidence................................................ 64%

Some confidence....................................................21

Not much confidence ...............................................5

No confidence at all .................................................6

Don’t know ..............................................................2

Refused ....................................................................2

Media propaganda on Iran's nuclear site

Glenn Greenwald on the media's coverage of the recent "exposure" of the (not really) "Secret!" Iranian enrichment facility in Qom:

Despite all the rhetoric about Iran getting caught red-handed -- it was Iran itself which notified the IAEA of this facility; the facility is far from operational; and there's no evidence that it contains or even can produce weapons-grade material.  Until there's an IAEA inspection -- which Iran said it would permit -- it's impossible to know the true purpose and capabilities of this facility, which is the cause for the Chinese's skepticism and should cause skepticism among every thinking person, beginning with the American media.  Can anyone point to any such skepticism anywhere?  Listening to the media coverage, one would think that Iran just got caught sitting on a secret atomic bomb.

Meanwhile, Iran's representative to the IAEA has expressed surprise at the anti-Iran propaganda onslought:

Salehi also expressed bemusement over the harsh international reaction to the new plant, insisting that 'whatever we did was within the legal framework and in line with all IAEA regulations.'

These, he said, stipulated that any nuclear plant should be brought to the attention of the IAEA six months before going operational.

   'In the case of the new plant, we did it even more than a year (before the operational phase),' he said, indicating that the plant would not become operational before the end of 2010.

   'We are really surprised about the international reactions - there is no basis for them,' he added.

Iran's "second, secret" enrichment plant?

(UPDATE: Read former UNSCOM weapons inspector Scott Ritter's account of what's really going on behind this news of a "secret" Iranian nuclear facility:

So when Obama announced that "Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow", he is technically and legally wrong....It should be underscored that what the Qom facility Obama is referring to is not a nuclear weapons plant, but simply a nuclear enrichment plant similar to that found at the declared (and inspected) facility in Natanz.

UPDATE: Read Steven Walt, who essentially makes the same points as Ritter:

According to the Washington Post, Iran notified the IAEA on September 21 that it was constructing a new pilot enrichment plant. Assuming that it has not already introduced nuclear material into this facility (and Tehran says it hasn't), Iran is therefore in compliance with the NPT's Comprehensive Full Scope Safeguards Agreement, which requires it to notify the IAEA six months before nuclear material is introduced into any new facility.) 

There are news reports that Iran has told the IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei of the existence of a second nuclear facility of some sort. The news reports, quoting anonymous sources, say it is in fact a uranium enrichment facility. Obama and friends are claiming that Iran is "violating rules" by having such a facility, etc. The overall tone of the reporting is that Iran has somehow "admitted" to doing something wrong by building such a facility. In fact, by disclosing this facility, Iran is ABIDING BY the rules.

Here's some facts to keep in mind: assuming this is in fact an enrichment facility, under the terms of Iran's safeguards agreement with the IAEA, Iran is only required to inform the IAEA of the existence of a nuclear facility 180-days prior to the introduction of nuclear material into the facility.

Specifically, the Subsidiary Arrangements General Part in force with Iran since 1976 contains a standard text which calls for provision to the IAEA of design information on a new nuclear facility no later than 180 days before the introduction of nuclear material into the facility.

(As a good will gesture during the ill-fated "Paris Agreement" negotiations with the EU-3, Iran temporarily agreed to provide information more quickly, but has gone back to enforcing only the strict requirements of this agreement and no more once the EU-3 violated the Paris Agreement by demanding that Iran abandon enrichment entirely. The IAEA says that Iran can't go back on the agreement, Iran says since it never formally ratified the agreement, it can. This continues to be a source of conflict between Iran and the IAEA, which has asked Iran to not stick to the 180-day rule. So while there's a dispute as to the timing required disclosures, the fact remains that this is a non-operational site that has been disclosed by Iran as it is supposed to be, and not a "secret" weapons site. as the media makes it sound.)

In other words, Iran may be perfectly within its right NOT to have declared the facility earlier. Meanwhile the IAEA has asked Iran to allow IAEA access to the facility, according to CNN. So contrary to what Obama says, Iran is not "breaking rules" and his use of such deliberatly misleading language proves that Obama is another Bush.

However, if this turns out to be a non-nuclear facility --- such as the facility where they design and manufacture centrifuges but don't actually use nuclear material in them --- then Iran is not obligated to inform the iAEA of the facililty AT ALL even though the US has been using the IAEA to force Iran to disclose this potential bombing target (and that's perhaps what Iran has done in this report.)

This is good time to point out that Iran's enrichment program was never a secret and Iran had even invited IAEA experts to visit its uranium mines in the mid-1990s, long before the controversy over its allegedly "hidden" enrichment program.

UPDATE: Reuters says that this is pilot enrichment plant which is still under construction, and according to the IRanian information provided to the IAEA, no nuclear material has been introduced into the facility. So it isn't even operational. It is just a construction site. How dangerous and threatening can the media and right-wing blogs make a construction site sound, do you suppose? We'll see.

UPDATE:

US officials say Iran's nuclear plant is no secret to them, Los Angeles Times.

Iran nuclear site not a secret: Ahmadinejad, CBC.ca

So we're agreed then?

Armageddon of Capitalism?

Today while working out at the gym, I saw CNBC interviewing "investing legend" Julian Robertson, who said that it would be "almost Armageddon" if the Chinese stopped buying US debt.

What does it saw about capitalism that the largest (after one of two remaining) underwriters of the US economic system are the .... Communists?

Former US embassy hostage support US-Iran engagement

John Limbert, a former US embassy hostage in Tehran, has apparently written a book supporting US-Iran engagement and negotiations and has set up a discussion on Facebook for you to join. In Negotiating with Iran: Wrestling the Ghosts of History, Limbert says that Iran's long history as a nation has to be respected, and

“If all you do is carry the grievance and say, ‘My grievance is more than your grievance,’ you’re never going to be able to have a discussion.”  

I haven't read the book but I assume it is a more thorough statement of an article he wrote for USIP in 2008.

I found Limbert to be quite interesting way back in 1982 when he wrote that the West had to accept that the 1979 revolution was a reality with deep social roots in Iran that wasn't going to go away, and that wishful thinking should not be a substitute for observing facts  -- though no one listened and there was and still is consistent speculation for the last 30 years about the immediate demise of the IRI, a perfect example of wishful thinking substituting for facts, which incidentally continues with this "Green Movement" thing IMHO.

(I particularly like this statement:

The life of most of the Iranian people was already determined by the regulations of Islam. Wearing the veil (chador) was not an imposition for the majority of Iranian women who already did so.

Most people simply don't want to accept this FACT.)

All of this is of course very nice and welcome -- Bruce Laingen, another former hostage, also wrote about the need for the US and IRan to get along, many, many, many years ago. So, why hasn't it happened?

The bottom line -- and something that US diplomats simply don't want to conceed -- is that the US is not in control of its own foreign policy when it comes to the Mideast and Irran. Israel is. Plain and simple. Until the US gets rid of this ball-and-chain, nothing's going to change and it doesn't really matter who is president in Iran or the US.

IAEA spying on Iran

Though it should hardly be news to anyone that weapons inspectors are used as intelligene operatives, the indefatigable Gareth Porter has an excellent article on how the IAEA inspections process is being used to gather intelligence about Iran's conventional (non-nuclear) weapons programs, specifically about Iran's missiles:

The IAEA has offered to "discuss modalities that could enable Iran to demonstrate credibly that the activities referred to in the documentation are not nuclear related, as Iran asserts, while protecting sensitive information related to its conventional military activities".

But the senior IAEA official interviewed by IPS made it clear that such modalities would not preclude access to the documentation on the Shahab design.

Iran's enemies, especially the United States and Israel, are eager for intelligence on the design of the Shahab-3's re-entry vehicle.

Here's a fact: According to the explicit terms of Iran's safeguards agreement, the sole purpose of IAEA inspections is to account for nuclear material and ensure that none has been diverted for military use -- and that's all:

The Agency shall have the right and the obligation to ensure that safeguards will be applied, in accordance with the terms of this Agreement, on all source or special fissionable material in all peaceful nuclear activities within the territory of Iran, under its jurisdiction or carried out under its control anywhere, for the exclusive purpose of verifying that such material is not diverted to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.

Every single IAEA report on Iran has consistently stated that there's no evidence of diversion of nuclear materials in Iran for non-peaceful uses. Furthermore, regarding the "alleged studies," the  IAEA has also said in the Feb 22, 2008 report that it has no "credible information" that they involved the use of nuclear material:

However, it should be noted that the Agency has not detected the use of nuclear material in connection with the alleged studies, nor does it have credible information in this regard.

So, by demanding access to missile research documents etc., the IAEA is operating well outside of its legal jurisdiction. Furthermore, by acting as an intelligence source for Western powers, the IAEA is further violating the safeguards agreement with Iran:

The Agency shall take every precaution to protect commercial and industrial secrets and other confidential information coming to its knowledge in the implementation of this Agreement...

The Agency shall not publish or communicate to any State, organization or person any information obtained by it in connection with the implementation of this Agreement, except that specific information relating to the implementation thereof may be given to the Board of Governors of the Agency...

But according to Porter, despite this meeting this obligation of confidentiality, this is what's been really going on at the IAEA:

The IAEA secretariat is well known to be a major source of intelligence on Iran for the United States and Israel. In the 1990s, 10 of the 35 members of the US mission to the United Nations in Vienna were Central Intelligence Agency personnel, according to the 2007 book The Italian Letter, by journalists Peter Eisner and Knute Royce.

Ambassador Soltanieh told IPS that the IAEA safeguards department, to which the Iranians pass much sensitive information, has repeatedly leaked that information - usually out of context - to journalists for stories portraying the Iranian nuclear program in a menacing light.

"Leakage of confidential information is a matter of serious concern," said Soltanieh. "In many cases, we give information to inspectors and soon it is in the media."

By shifting the burden of proof onto Iran and requiring that Iran prove it does NOT have a nuclear weapons program, they're deliberately forcing Iran to compromise its conventional miitary secrets. The IAEA has no authority to make such demands whatsoever.

Attacking Iran's nuclear program is NOT "PRE-EMPTIVE"

Kayhan Berzegar, writing from Tehran in the latest issue of the World Policy Journal, points out that Iranians are united in their support for their nuclear program:

Though from American shores it may seem as if Iran’s recent election tumult speaks of deep divisions in society and politics, there is one policy issue on which public opinion remains nearly unanimous: the nuclear program. Among the Iranian political elite, there is a clear internal consensus—in the run-up to the recent elections, even President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s reformist challenger, Mir Hossein Moussavi, professed his support for the nascent program.

I have two quibbles with this article though:

1- I objec to the repeated references to an Israeli attack on Iran as being "pre-emptive". I don't know why it is that every Israeli attack is always automatically labelled as "pre-emptive". Under international law, an attack is only truly preemptive if it is defensive, proportional measure against an immediate threat. The necessity for forcible reaction must be "instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation".

Attacking a CIVILIAN, IAEA-MONITORED, NON-WEAPONS PRODUCING nuclear energy site does NOT constitute a "pre-emptive" attack. It is rather a blatant aggression and would constitute a crime of war and a violation of the UN Charter.

So could we please stop automatically qualifying an Israel attack on iran as "pre-emptive" in nature?

2- The article does not consider the fact that the whole nuclear weapons proliferation issue raised by Washington against Iran is simply a pretext for the monopolization of the nuclear fuel cycle, and so Iranian concessions which include intensive monitoring of their nuclear program will never be accepted by Washington since Washington's goal is not simply to deprive Iran of nuclear weapons but also the capability to make nuclear fuel -- which also explains why repeated Iranian compromise offers that would have addressed any legitimate concern about weapons proliferation were simply ignored, and why US Sec of State Clinton has plainly declared that Iran does not have the right to have the full nuclear fuel cycle.

Iran nuclear conflict: The true context

Finally! A news article from a Western sources that acknowledges that the nuclear issue is really not about weapons but a larger conflict between developing and developed nations over the control of the nuclear fuel production technology:

Nuclear conference criticizes Israeli nukes
By GEORGE JAHN (AP) – Sept 18, 2009

VIENNA — Overriding Western objections, a 150-nation nuclear conference on Friday passed a resolution directly criticizing Israel and its atomic program for the first time in 18 years. Iran hailed the vote as a "glorious moment."

The result was a setback not only for Israel but also for the United States and other backers of the Jewish state, which had lobbied for 18 years of past practice — debate on the issue without a vote. It also reflected building tensions between Israel and its backers and Islamic nations, backed by developing countries...

But Islamic nations insist that Israel is the true danger in the Middle East, saying they fear its nuclear weapons capacity. Israel has never said it has such arms, but is universally believed to possess them.

The Muslim countries enjoy support from the developing world, which is critical of the U.S. and other nuclear weapons nations for refusing to disarm, and suspects that developed nations are trying to corner the market on peaceful nuclear technology to their disadvantage.

I have LONG said that the conflict over Iran's nuclear program is not about "nuclear weapons" but part of a larger conflict between the developing and developed states over the attempts by some countries to monopolize nuclear fuel production technology -- the sole energy source of the near future -- for their own advantage, under the guise of fighting "proliferation".

I have also long criticized the media for buying into and promoting the "nuclear weapons proliferation" framework which the issue is presented by the developed nations, without paying equal attention to the "developed/developing nation" context of the conflict.

So, it is nice to see some articles that address that issue -- though I doubt very much that this report will make it to the cover of the NY Times or will be picked up by the major news publications.

Iran nuclear negotiations double-speak

According to Reuters, Sec of State Clinton has demanded that Iran must "ease fears over its nuclear program or risk greater isolation" and,

"We have made clear our desire to resolve issues with Iran diplomatically. Iran must now decide whether to join us in this effort," Clinton said, adding that there could be profound consequences for failure to act.

The news reports are parroting her verbatim like the good parrots they are, but lets not for a moment forget what this rhetoric of "easing fears" and "resolving issues" really means, as Clinton herself made clear already:

You do not have the right to full enrichment and reprocessing cycle under your control.

Umm...yes, they do. However YOU do not have the right to threaten Iran and blackmail them into giving up an inalienable, absolute, unquestionable, sovereign right.

If they get away with this, they can similarly demand that Iran give up Tabriz too. It is that fundamental.

Iran can build bombs ... in theory... so could Madagascar?

I'm in a rush today but regarding the continued hype about a supposedly "secret" IAEA report: simply put, I recommend two blog entries by Steve Hynd at Newshoggers:

1- Hyperventilating About The Iran Nuclear "Threat"

2- The Secret Annex That Isn't (Update: Reuters Gets IAEA Denial Of AP Report)

IAEA denies "secret" Iran nuke report

Just last week the IAEA complained about how time and time again misinformation about Iran's nuclear program is distributed by unidentified sources to the media -- and here we are again, with the IAEA denying yet another false report on how Iran is supposedly about to make a nuke.

Jewish groups push for US war on Iran, after pushing for war in Iraq.

American Jewish groups now openly boast of pushing for sanctions on Iran, which they consider to be a first step towards a build-up to the war they've always longed for:   

A day of advocacy in Washington last week and a rally in New York next week mark major efforts by the American Jewish community to push the issue of Iran’s nuclear program to the forefront and increase the general sense of urgency to end it. (See page 29.)

Members of the northern New Jersey Jewish community joined more than 300 other Jewish leaders from around the country who met with legislators in Washington Sept. 10 to thank them for supporting the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act of 2009 and drum up support among those who had not yet signed on. The measure would penalize companies that help Right Iran import or produce refined petroleum.

There was a time, when the Iraq war had turned sour, that pro-Israeli and Jewish groups in the US showed some shame and tried to pretend like they weren't the ones pushing hard for a war in Iraq. They made a point of trying to hide their faces while also pushing their unmitigated desire for a US-Iran war.

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 because:

"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?'' " (emphasis mine)

Yes, "somehow" they're to blame for the consequences of their own lobbying. "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 somehow 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, because naturally that would be an "anti-Semitic" thing so say...but in the meantime, they'll keep campaiging for a war on Iran anyway

I think Walt-Mearsheimer put it best in their book, The Israel Lobby:

Although it makes good strategic sense for the United States and Iran to pursue a grand bargain, and although there is plenty of suport for that policy inside and outside of America, it is unlikely to happen anytime soon. Israel and the lobby will almost certainly try to thwart any efforts to seriously engage Iran before they get started, as they have consistently done since 1993...If the United States does launch an attack, it wll be doing so in part on Israel's behalf, and the lobby will bear significant responsibility for having pushed this dangerous policy. And it would not be in America's national interest.

Scrapping missile defense = joke

The news says that Obama is scapping the missile defense systems plans for Poland that were ostensibly to be placed there to counter a (totally non-existent) Iranian nuclear missile threat, but which actually threatened Russia -- in return for promises of cooperation by Russia in passing sanctions on Iran.

Funny thing is, the missile defense systems never worked, a minor detail that the news leaves out. 

"Stand for Freedom in Iran" is an Israeli - NeoCon - MEK front group

Richard Silverstein exposes the "Stand for Freedom in Iran" organization which has called for a demonstration on Sept 24 in NY when Ahmadinejad is scheduled to visit the UN:

[A]t first glance it appears that Stand for Freedom is nothing more than a pro-reformist group advocating Iranian democracy... As with all things related to Iran or Israel, you have to delve a little deeper to discover who the sponsoring organizations are...

What’s interesting about this list is the fairly mainstream (but solidly pro-Israel) groups like the UJA Federation and JCRC alongside labor unions and civil rights/minority organizations.  The Iranian group, according to the leader of a national Iranian-American organization I consulted, is a hawkish neo-con group that favors regime change and a secular Iran.  One of the other Iranian groups is a front for the People’s Mujahadeen, an anti-regime radical sect that is listed by the U.S. Treasury as a terrorist organization.  All of this is a deliberate strategy of the Conference [of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations] and the Israeli foreign ministry to transform the Iran-Israel conflict in the minds of Americans from a messy distant bilateral confrontation between two extreme Middle Eastern countries into a multilateral campaign by gay rights, feminists, labor activists and minorities opposed to Iran’s extreme Islamist regime.  It’s a fairly clever strategy though quite transparent on deeper inspection.

Finally, a word about the last group on the list.  The Conference of Presidents, perhaps knowing of its ideologically partisan pro-Israel reputation has disguised its involvement behind the newly minted National Interagency Taskforce on Iran.  It is essentially a front for the Conference, though it may actually be composed of some agencies and organizations affiliated with it, for all I know."

Iranian visa applicants squeezed for intelligence in US Dubai consulate

Here's an interesting article book about Dubai (which I have not read) that reportedly states the CIA is using their Dubai consulate to obtain intelligence about Iran from Iranian visa applicants -- most of whom are ultimately turned away without a visa:

The CIA stepped in to prevent the United States from closing a consulate in the Persian Gulf city-state of Dubai, arguing that it was a gold mine of human intelligence from Iran....Iranians applying for U.S. visas in the United Arab Emirates city of Dubai are “monitored, interrogated and, sometimes, recruited into spying on their own government” by Iran specialists and Farsi speakers working for the CIA or other American agencies, the book says. 

Nothing is surprising about this -- not only is this is standard procedure in the intelligence business ("Walk-ins" like visa applicants are a source of low-level, questionable intelligence all over the world, as are "journalists") but the Iranians are well-aware of US intelligence operations out of Dubai:

[T]he CIA enlisted scientists, physicians, university professors, clergymen, artists, athletes, and dress designers for its plot....these people were invited to the United States in groups of 10-15 people, with visas issued for them in Dubai in the shortest possible time, and according to their professions, they participated in scientific seminars and toured various states, and when they returned home they were asked to write "analyses" of the situation inside Iran.

I'm only mentioning this because it reminded me of Reuel Marc Gerecht's laughable book, Know Thine Enemy, in which he claimed that as a low-level CIA officer in the American Embassy in Turkey, part of his job was to squeeze Iranian visa applicants for intelligence before showing them the door without a visa. Gerecht was quoted (along with yours-truly) in another article about US intelligence operations in Dubai as saying : 

"I'd let hundreds of desperate Iranians languish in Turkey. People who'd given me insights never found in books. I'd watched mothers with children drop to their knees and beg for my help," he wrote. "They didn't want money, just a little kindness, a visa out of their personal hell ... [they met] a sympathetic man waiting in a warm room full of food, coffee, tea, alcohol and cigarettes. A US official who'd politely strip them of all their memories and every corpuscle of information and then reopen the street-side door."

Of course, as you know Gerecht (whose book, frankly, proves him to be a sex-obsessed lunatic, which is probably why he remained a low-level operative) went from the CIA to join the NeoCon pro-Israeli, Iran-bashing cabal at the AEI with the likes of Daniel Pipes and Ledeen.

How much of a "goldmine" was this intelligence, really? Personally I doubt it had much value per se, not only because the IRanians were aware of it but because I suspect the interest by the CIA in keeping the consulate open is probably more due to the fact that the "intelligence" they get is just convenient, cheap and easy to obtain since the CIA officer only has to sit on his ass rather than actually do anything risky or expensive, and the visa applicants would presumably be cooperative and easily manipulated. Et voila! Something for nothing, the pretense of achievement without actual effort -- the dream of every self-promoting bureaucrat.

But more interestingly, the fact that the CIA portrays walk-ins as a "goldmine" source of intelligence on Iran is really telling about their actual lack of any decent intelligence on Iran, something which has been widely and repeatedly conceeded. And if you remember, Rafsanjani claimed in 1989 that  the Iranians wiped out a CIA intelligence network in Iran -- and the US later admitted to that too. Why risk that again?

Washington Post's blatant hypocricy over human rights on display

As some of you know, I have (on Facebook) criticized calls from American-Iranian organizations for including the issue of human rights in the supposed US-Iran talks that are supposedly going be held soon -- not that I don't consider the issue of human rights to be important, but because 1- I don't think this is the right forum for raising such issues (as neither side is in a position to lecture the other, and doing so would only politicize and delegitimize the issue of human rights.) and 2- I also think that demanding such issues to be included in the talks because they will simply pose another burden and obstacle to the US-Iran talks (which explains why some parties are keen on including them.)

In line with that I was amused by a Washington Post editorial that demanded the US include the issue of torture of detainees by Iran in the talks. Judging from the comments on the Washington Post site, I was hardly the only one who saw the blatant hypocricy in that position. I think Glenn Greenwald puts it best though:

The Washington Post thinks the U.S. should vigorously object to Iran's "obvious lack of due process" as a central part of these negotiations.  What would be the purpose of doing that?  Creating a jovial mood for the negotiations at the outset by provoking a massive group laughing fit?

(I should also mention that I don't think that the talks are meant to be real or go anywhere. Dennis Ross has already made it clear that he sees talks as being a perfunctory PR move & simply meant to justify more coercive policies down the road.)

That being said, I should also point out that the fact that the Washington Post (and others) are hypocritical when it comes to human rights should not distract from the importance of human rights concerns in Iran or elsewhere.

Israeli lobbyists pressure US university campuses

Tikun magazine has an article by a couple of academics who describe the function of pro-Israeli pressure groups on American university campuses:

The tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth. The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views, the substitution of political correctness for analysis, and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those that it favors.

We should all find alarming that what is taking place in the academy today is an extension of what takes place on Capitol Hill and in the corridors of (real) power. What is at stake is the process of representation, which shapes memory, disposition, and arguably -- in the long run at any rate -- the policy process itself. Many of the same tactics are being used in both situations; and they share the aim to monopolize legitimacy by tarnishing all criticism and questioning it as inherently illegitimate and malevolent.

The most interesting part is their description of rhetorical techniques used by these groups -- specifically, repeating unfounded accusations and insinuations, while avoiding substantive debate:

The Hasbara Handbook: Promoting Israel on Campus, which is distributed to campus activists by organizations like Stand With Us (e.g., click "Guides for Activists" on www.middle-east-info.org), explains that it is often better to score points than to engage in actual arguments, and offers an explanation for how, in its own words, "to score points whilst avoiding debate." Point-scoring, the Hasbara Handbook explains, "works because most audience members fail to analyze what they hear. Rather, they register only a key few points, and form a vague ‘impression' of whose argument was stronger." Part of the strategy is to recycle the same claims over and again, in as many settings as possible. "If people hear something often enough," the document points out, "they come to believe it."

Yes, indeed people come to believe what they hear repeatedly, without much examination. This is widely known to psychologists as the "truth effect" -- and I wrote about its application to Iran previously:

Repetition increases our familiarity with a claim. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, a feeling of greater evidence that the claim is true begins to accompany the growing familiarity. This effect of repetition is known as the "truth effect." (Max Sutherland, Advertising and the Mind of the Consumer - available on Amazon)

Why the Islamic Republic Has Survived?

Prof. Ervand Abrahamian asks Why the Islamic Republic Has Survived?

The real answer lies not in religion, but in economic and social populism. By the early 1970s, Iran had produced a generation of radical intelligentsia that was revolutionary not only in its politics—wanting to replace the monarchy with a republic—but in its economic and social outlook...

In the three decades since the revolution, the Islamic Republic—despite its poor image abroad—has taken significant steps toward fulfilling these promises. It has done so by giving priority to social rather than military expenditures, and thus dramatically expanding the Ministries of Education, Health, Agriculture, Labor, Housing, Welfare and Social Security. The military consumed as much as 18 percent of the gross domestic product in the last years of the shah. Now it takes up as little as 4 percent...

In three decades the regime has come close to eliminating illiteracy among the post-revolutionary generations, reducing the overall rate from 53 percent to 15 percent.[1] The rate among women has fallen from 65 percent to 20 percent. The state has increased the number of students enrolled in primary schools from 4,768,000 to 5,700,000, in secondary schools from 2.1 million to over 7.6 million, in technical schools from 201,000 to 509,000, and in universities from 154,000 to over 1.5 million. The percentage of women in university student populations has gone up from 30 percent to 62 percent. Thanks to medical clinics, life expectancy at birth has increased from 56 to 70, and infant mortality has decreased from 104 to 25 per 1,000. Also thanks to medical clinics, the birth rate has fallen from an all-time high of 3.2 to 2.1, and the fertility rate—the average number of children born to a woman in her lifetime—from 7 to 3. It is expected to fall further to 2 by 2012—in other words, Iran in the near future will achieve near zero population growth....

The Islamic Republic has bridged the chasm between urban and rural life in part by raising the prices of agricultural goods relative to other commodities and in part by introducing schools, medical clinics, roads, electricity and piped water into the countryside. For the first time ever, villagers can afford consumer goods, even motorbikes and pickup trucks. According to one economist who, on the whole, is critical of the regime, 80 percent of rural households own refrigerators, 77 percent televisions and 76 percent gas stoves. Some 220,000 peasant families, moreover, have received 850,000 hectares of land confiscated from the old elite. They, together with the some 660,000 families who had obtained land under the earlier White Revolution, form a substantial rural class that has benefited not only from these new social services but also from state-subsidized cooperatives and protective tariff walls. This class provides the regime with a rural social base.

The regime has also tackled problems of the urban poor. It has replaced slums with low-income housing, beautified the worst districts and extended electricity, water and sewage lines to working-class districts. As an American journalist highly critical of the regime’s economic policies admits, “Iran has become a modern country with few visible signs of squalor." What is more, it has supplemented the income of the underclass—both rural and urban—by generously subsidizing bread, fuel, gas, heat, electricity, medicines and public transport. The regime may not have eradicated poverty nor appreciatively narrowed the gap between rich and poor but it has provided the underclass with a safety net. In the words of the same independent-minded economist, “Poverty has declined to an enviable level for middle-income developing countries.”

 

IAEA Conceals Evidence that "Alleged Studies" documents are forgeries

Gareth Porter writes at IPS that the IAEA has been falling down on its duties to fairly investigate whether the "alleged studies" documents presented by the US to incriminate Iran are forgeries. If you remember, these "alleged studies" documents were supposedly obtained by the US from the so-called Laptop of Death, which supposedly show that IRan had a nuclear weapons program until 2003. Incidentally, the latest IAEA report stopped using the term "alleged studies" and instead uses the term "possible military dimensions" -- because they're trying to give more credibility to the documents. 

Anyway, Porter writes:

The International Atomic Energy Agency says its present objective regarding Iran is to try to determine whether the intelligence documents purportedly showing a covert Iranian nuclear weapons program from 2001 to 2003 are authentic or not. The problem, according to its reports, is that Iran refuses to help clarify the issue.

But the IAEA has refused to acknowledge publicly significant evidence brought to its attention by Iran that the documents were fabricated, and it has made little, if any, effort to test the authenticity of the intelligence documents or to question officials of the governments holding them, IPS has learned.

The IAEA seems to be trying to downplay forgery issue, and is demanding that Iran respond to the "substance" of the claims made in the documents rather than acknowledge the questionable nature of the documents themselves:

[T]he IAEA has portrayed Iran as failing to respond adequately to the "substance" of the documents, asserting that it has focused only on their "style and format of presentation."

In fact, however, Iran has submitted serious evidence that the documents are fraudulent. Iran’s permanent representative to the United Nations in Vienna, Ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh, told IPS in an interview he had pointed out to a team of IAEA officials in a meeting on the documents in Tehran in spring 2008 that none of the supposedly top-secret military documents had any security markings of any kind, and that purported letters from Defense Ministry officials lacked Iranian government seals.

The IAEA has never publicly acknowledged the problem of lack of security markings or official seals in the documents, omitting mention of the Iranian complaint on that issue from its reports. Its May 26, 2008, report said only that Iran had "stated, inter alia, that the documents were not complete and that their structure varied."

But as Porter points out, it was precisely the "style and format" of the forged "Uranium from Niger" documents that proved that they were fraudulent, so the IAEA is exercised a double standard by demanding that Iran respond to the "substance" of the allegations rather than the form and style of the documents.

The IAEA’s apparent lack of concern about the absence of security markings and seals on the documents contrasts sharply with the IAEA’s investigation of the Niger uranium documents cited by the George W. Bush administration as justification for invading Iraq in 2002-2003.

In the Niger case, the agency concluded that the documents were fabricated based on a comparison of the "form, format, contents, and signature" of the documents with other relevant correspondence, according to IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei’s March 7, 2003, statement to the UN Security Council.

More facts on the Argentine Jewish center bombing cases

Regarding the bombings of the Jewish centers in Argentina, you may come across references to the "Mokhari scandal" without much more elaboration. Here's what that refers to:

The Mystery of the Iranian Hairdresser
Jayme Brener

02/15/99
The Jerusalem Report
Copyright (C) 1999 The Jerusalem Report; Source: World Reporter (TM)

Nahrim Mokhtari insists in an interview that she was not part of the terrorist
ring behind the attacks against the Israeli Embassy and the AMIA center in
Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires

Nahrim Mokhtari, A 42-year-old Iranian woman, is a suspect in the two
terrorist bombings in Buenos Aires, which claimed a total of 115 lives, and
has even been formally accused of participating in one. But Mokhtari, who has
been described as a prostitute with connections in the higher realms of
Argentine politics, is not in jail and may soon be free to leave Argentina.

Taken into custody on December 4 after being lured back to Argentina from
Europe, she was released, under a ban on leaving the country, in early
January. Mokhtari, who claims she makes her living as a hairdresser and
translator, denies all connection with the blasts at the Israel Embassy in
1992 and the AMIA Jewish community building in 1994. In fact, she said in an
interview at her current residence, a third-rate hotel in downtown Buenos
Aires, she has "many Jewish friends."

Continued police restrictions on Mokhtari's movements are causing
considerable embarrassment to the Argentine Justice Ministry officials, who
admit they don't have sufficient evidence to press charges that she was part
of an Iranian terrorist cell.

Chain-smoking, wide shadows under her eyes, Mokhtari, who came to Argentina
from Iran in 1988 and left two months after the 1992 attack, spoke to The
Report in broken Spanish, sprinkled with Farsi, French and English. She was
picked up at Buenos Aires's Ezeiza Airport, en route from Switzerland to
Uruguay, where she claims she was tricked into traveling by two men posing as
meat exporters who offered her a job as a Farsi translator. The men turned out
to be agents of Side, the Argentine secret service.

Mokhtari's court-appointed counsel contends that the Iranians have nothing to
do with the blasts and that anti-Semitic Argentine police officers, perhaps
working with an Arab terror group, are the most likely suspects, at least in
the AMIA case. They say Mokhtari was arrested to deflect attention from the
case against the police. Pedro Brieger of the University of La Plata, a
leading Middle East expert, is one of numerous political analysts who support
this theory. "I don't see any evidence of an Iran -ian connection," he says.
But AMIA's lawyer, Luis Dobniewsky, insists that Mokhtari "must remain in
custody, to fill in all the blanks" in the still-unsolved crimes.

The suspicions against Mokhtari are based largely on the testimony of her
friend Wilson Roberto dos Santos, a Brazilian male prostitute who, a few days
before the AMIA bombing, told the Israeli, Brazilian and Argentine consulates
in Milan, Italy, that a terror blast was about to take place in Buenos Aires.
Questioned later by Argentine police, dos Santos fingered Mokhtari, saying she
was a prostitute who had been used by the Iranians to infiltrate Argentine
political circles. Dos Santos later recanted, claiming he had fabricated the
whole story in order to make some money by selling the account to the media.

Weak as it is, the Brazilian's story is the best piece of evidence against
Mokhtari - particularly after an eyewitness who said he saw her on Pasteur
Street, near the AMIA center, shortly before the blast, could not identify her
properly.

Efforts to link Mokhtari with car dealer Carlos Telledin, in prison since 1995
in connection with the purchase of the Renault Traffic van that apparently
carried the AMIA bomb, have not succeeded. There had been reports that she
worked in a Pasteur Street brothel owned by Telledin's wife, but the brothel
closed in 1986, before Mokhtari first arrived in the country.

Still, many questions remain unanswered. Among them: How did Mokhtari
accumulate almost $100,000, including $40,000 spent on a European trip with
dos Santos, and $60,000 that still remains in a Swiss bank account? And if
some of the money came from non-terrorists in Iran , as she claims, who sent
it to her and why? How close was she to politicians linked to President
Carlos Menem, like Senator Jorge Yoma and the late Rep. Ferdinando Pedrini,
who helped her obtain an Argentine passport? And, above all, how could dos
Santos have known about the AMIA bombing in advance?

Off the record, some of those who support Mokhtari's claim of innocence say
that she could have "made touch" with an Islamic terrorist connection while
living in Buenos Aires or traveling in Europe with dos Santos. Others see a
red herring: "It's strange that Side's agents captured her just when Menem's
inner circle is involved in a scandal about illegally exporting arms to
Croatia during the Yugoslavia civil war," says one of her two defense
counsels. "And all the clues in the AMIA case point to Buenos Aires police
officers."

The following are excerpts from The Report's conversation with Mokhtari.

The Report: Did you participate in the bombings?

Nahrim Mokhtari: Absolutely not. I've got many Jewish friends and I have
nothing to do with terrorists. Otherwise, how could I agree to come back to
South America?

Did you know about the accusations before you were detained?

No. I usually don't read newspapers nor watch TV in France, where I was
living. I even renewed my Argentine passport in Belgium, with no problems. I
think that Side was tracking me for several years and, oddly, they decided to
pick me up now.

Why did dos Santos denounce you?

I don't know. If anybody in this case has something to do with terrorism, he
is the man. How could he know about the bombings? He worked with many
Iranians and Iraqis, who got him visas to Argentina. He also had good
contacts in the Argentine and Brazilian secret services. He has three fingers
missing. Why not think that they were cut off by the Iranians, as a
punishment? It's a common practice in my country.

Did you meet Argentine politicians working as a prostitute?

Never. I'm a hairstylist. But I used to go to Cafe Casablanca, near the
Congress in Buenos Aires, where I met many politicians. But they never helped
me get Argentine citizenship. I got it by myself.

Several Buenos Aires police files deal with your involvement in street fights
with other women.

That has nothing to do with prostitution.

Why did you come to Argentina in the first place?

Four of my brothers died in the war against Iraq and I wanted to leave the
country. It was easy to enter Argentina, where I planned to get a visa to
Canada.

How did you meet dos Santos?

A teacher at the Spanish-language school introduced him as someone who could
help get a visa to Canada.

You became his lover?

No. He had a wife and children in Brazil and was living with a boyfriend in
Buenos Aires. But I agreed to travel with him to Europe, where he was supposed
to make the contacts for the Canadian visa.

Why did he accuse you?

Maybe he got angry because I denounced him to the police and to several
consulates, when he stole $20,000 from me in Europe. I'm also a perfect
scapegoat - Iranian , female, alone.

How did you save so much money?

Working as a hairstylist. My family in Iran also sent me some money.

Did an Iranian diplomat offer to help you after the detention in Buenos Aires?

They sent someone, who suggested that I go back to Teheran.

Would you do that, if you are no longer a suspect?

Never.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------�----- 
 Closed down for complaining about Argentina's unsolved bombings?
Jayme Brener

02/15/99
The Jerusalem Report
Copyright (C) 1999 The Jerusalem Report; Source: World Reporter (TM)

A maverick Jewish radio journalist who charges the Argentinian government with
covering up police complicity in terrorism has been shunted off the air. He
blames Jewish leaders and Israeli embassy officials, as well as the country's
Jewish interior minister, for silencing him.

The journalist, Herman Schiller came to national prominence in 1986, when he
attacked Jewish leaders for their silence about the 1976-1983 military
dictatorship that killed thousands of its opponents, among them many Jews.

For the last three years, Schiller, 60, broadcast a popular program on Radio
Jai (pronounced hai - Hebrew for "alive"), Latin America's only 24-hour all-
Jewish radio station. He denounced the government for intentionally
misdirecting the investigation of the 1992 and 1994 Buenos Aires bomb attacks
against the Israeli Embassy and a Jewish community building, which together
killed 115 people. "They try to focus on the Iranian track, while all the
clues lead to our own police," says Schiller.

He also denounced Jewish leaders for going along with President Carlos
Menem's Islamic-connection theory. "Maybe Iran or some Middle Eastern
terrorist organization could have financed both attacks, but until now Buenos
Aires police officers have been the main suspects. The government doesn't
want a serious investigation because this could expose its own innards," says
Schiller. And last January, in Israel, Schiller signed a protest against the
visit of Minister of Interior Carlos Corach (himself a Jew), who heads the
investigation. of the attacks and belongs to Menem's closest circle of
friends.

"That was more than enough," said Schiller, in a phone interview. "Pressure
started when I came back. First, the owner of Radio Jai, Miguel Steuerman,
reduced our air time. Then, toward the end of last year, he closed my
program."

Steuerman has said he cut the show for "market reasons." Counters Schiller: It
was the most popular on the station.

Jayme Brener / Sao Paulo

Creating "Rogue States"

Excerpt of an old article in my files...

An anachronistic policy

Michael T Klare

 07/01/2000

Harvard International Review

The origins of the Rogue Doctrine can be traced to the final weeks of 1989, when General Colin Powell commenced a search for a new, postSoviet military doctrine. Recognizing that the threat of a US- Soviet clash had lost all plausibility in the wake of the Berlin Wall's collapse, Powell sought to construct a new threat scenario that would justify the preservation of America's superpower capabilities in a world with no Sovietlike opponent. Working closely with General Lee Butler, then Director of the Strategic Plans and Policy Directorate (J- 5) of the Joint Staff, Powell conceived of a strategy in which regional threats, not the monolithic threat of the Soviet Union, would govern US military planning in the years to come.

 In constructing this strategy, Powell was fully aware that identifying a credible successor to the USSR was essential if the Pentagon was to avert a major military downsizing at the hands of Congress. Within days of the Wall's collapse, many members of Congress and other prominent figures began talking of a substantial "peace dividend" that would be made possible through a sizable reduction in US military spending. Fearful that precipitous congressional action would also deprive the Department of Defense of any sense of strategic coherence, Powell sought to establish a new strategic paradigm that could be used to argue against deep cuts in military spending and at the same time imbue the armed forces with a new sense of purpose.

The Bush precondition on Iran talks is alive and well under Obama

George Perkovich, one of my favourite talking heads on Iran who is just so funny, is back in yet another one of those silly one-sided and totally biased CFR interviews, this time promoting the meme that Iran is the one who refuses to negotiate over its nuclear program. What they mean by "refuse negotiations" is that Iran refuses to give up enrichment. This is a meme which has been often repeated in the media lately, branding IRan as the 'inflexible' one for refusing to give up enrichment, rather than the US being the inflexible one for continuously demanding (quite illegally) that Iran give up enrichment.

The oh-so-funny Perkovich goes as far as to make this laughable assertion:

In fact, the Bush administration showed up for talks with the Iranians on the nuclear issue in July 2008. William Burns, the undersecretary of state, was there. We've broken that ice, but the reality is that the Iranians haven't negotiated.

Actually, George, as you know full well, Burns was specifically instructed by the Bush administration NOT to negotiate and instead reassert the same old preconditions on talks. As the Washington Post reported:

Burns, State's third-ranking official, will not negotiate with the Iranians nor hold separate meetings...Instead, Burns will advance the White House's position that serious negotiations can begin only after Iran suspends uranium enrichment.

In fact the Iranians have repeatedly offered negotiations and compromises on their nuclear program, which have been consistently ignored. Even ElBaradei said so too. But the US has steadfastly refused to even acknowledge this and has instead flatly demanded that Iran should first abandon its inalienable, sovereign, unquestionable, absolute right to enrich all the damn uranium it damn well pleases.

This "first give in, then we'll talk" strategy was a hallmark of the Bush administration's approach to Iran. It was widely criticized. As I have written before, according to one biographer, Bush's Vice President Cheney imposed these sorts of preconditions on talks for a reason:

Cheney would play "rope-a-dope" with foreign governments that he wanted to see toppled, by agreeing to talk to the foreign governments whilst at the same time also imposing preconditions on talks that were meant to make it impossible for talks to happen, all the while waiting for an opportunity to engage in regime change.

 The Obama administration was supposedly going to "change" all that and drop preconditions on talks. However, it seems that even under the Obama administration, this precondition is alive and well, except that it has been morphed into "Iran refuses to negotiate" rather than "Iran refuses to give up enrichment." So Obama pretends to be ready to negotiate before Iran gives up enrichment, but pre-imposes the condition that any negotiations must conclude with Iran giving up enrichment. Net effect: the same as the Bush administration's policy.

More and more, it appears quite obvious that the Obama administration's policies with respect to Iran as a whole are not changing at all: the same sanctions, the same threats of military force, the same refusal to acknowledge legitimate compromise solutions put forth by Iran, the same illegal demands that Iran give up her rights.

Justic (sic) Iranian-style -- anti Iran atrocity propaganda

Remember the hate-mongering slanderous photos sent worldwide by email supposedly  showing a "Starving boy whose arm was crushed for stealing bread in Iran"??? That one is STILL floating out there, getting passed along by credulous and stupid people who don't make the slightest effort to check the truth of the story -- for example by doing a simple Google search and reading sites such as Snopes.com which long ago debunked that myth.

And now, I have received a new photo (below) allegedly showing "Iranian justic" (sic) consisting of a "dissident student demonstrator" about to be executed by receiving a bullet to the back of the head. It is obvious to me from that this photo isn't from Iran, based on the uniform of the "Republican Guard" (actually, Iranians have "Revolutionary Guards" and Iraq had Republican Guards) and the general dress of the crowd shown in the photo, and bunch of other details (the accompanying email text claimed that the "student demonstrator" being executed was one "Hussein-Ali AbuBakr" which was worth a giggle.) I am willing, in fact, to bet US$1000 that this occurred in an Arab country that has great relations with the US, and has embassies and trade representatives in Washington DC and buys US arms. (If you lose the bet, you're honor bound to send me cash using my paypal donation button on the upper left.) So go on, prove me wrong. Post your views and information about this photo in the comments section below.

   This sort of thing should remind everyone that perceptions matter -- and there are forces and people out there who are deliberately intent on shaping your perceptions of Iran by lying and manipulating your emotions. Many years ago I remember reading an article about how the MEK cooperated with Saddam Hussein in making movies supposedly showing Iranians torturing Iraqi POWs -- except that the same "dead" Iraqi POW was seen in later sequences of the movie dressed as an Iranian soldier. The producer of the movie was an Italian, if I remember right, and there was even a law suit.

This is known as atrocity propaganda. It is pretty common:

During WWI, the British falsely accused the Germans of manufacturing commemorative medallions to celebrate the sinking of the Lusitania (which the Brits had themselves placed in danger by using the ship to smuggle weapons from the US.) I recommend reading an interesting little book entitled "Falsehoods in Wartime" about atrocity propaganda of WWI , and "The First Casualty" --both classics. Then there was the whole "dead babies torn from incubators" lie. As John MacArthur, author of The Second Front, has documented, during the build-up of the first Persian Gulf War in 1990, the US falsely accused the Iraqis of Kuwaiti pulling babies out of hospital incubators and leaving them to die on the floor. They even brought the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador, who was posing as "Nurse Nayireh", to testify before the Congressional Human Rights Caucus as a eyewitness to the alleged atrocity. Her teary testimony on TV figured prominently in the pro-war rhetoric at the time, but the whole thing was actually a stunt manufactured by the PR firm of Hill & Knowlton, hired by the Kuwaitis and acting with the connivance of Congressmen Lantos and Porter who were the "chairmen" of the Caucus. Not a single US reporter bothered to check out her claims, and when exposed, neither she nor H&K were prosecuted for the crime of lying to Congress because the Congressional Human Rights Caucus is technically NOT really part of the US congress (it is simply a front -- an association of politicians, which holds meetings made to resemble official Congressional inquiries.) Nayireh was therefore not testifying under oath -- all these facts were of course lost on most people who were outraged by her false testimony about dead babies, and never mentioned in the US press at the time.  (PS: ever wonder who created, printed-up and distributed all those "We Support Our Troops" bumper-stickers and lapel pins?)

So in short: Yes, you will be lied to. No, you can't trust your own eyes. Use your brains before you believe anything, question motives and agendas.

Was Russia's Artic Sea Carrying Missiles to Iran? NOPE.

So Simon Shuster of TIME has an article by this title: Was Russia's Artic Sea Carrying Missiles to Iran -- which is dripping with innuendo and speculation, and not a single one of those incovenient little things that reporters are supposed to report on...what were they called again? Oh yeah - Facts.

Like, the FACT I mentioned before: that Iran and Russia are separated by only a few miles on the Caspian Sea and so there is no reason to go aaaaallllllllllllllllllll the way from the Artic to Algeria to send missiles to Iran. But I guess since most American's couldn't find the Caspian Sea on a map anyway, TIME probably figures hey, why bother mentioning it at all? Somewhere, something happened, TIME can't be bothered to actually figure it out so lets just say Iran was behind it. Presto! You got yourself some sales.