Iran Affairs

Vaez, Ferguson on the Tehran Research Reactor fuel

The New York Times published an op-ed by Ali Vaez and Charles Ferguson entitled "An Iranian offer worht considering" in which then say that Ahmadinejad's offer to cease 20% enrichment in exchange for receiving fuel for the Tehran Research reactor is worth exploring.

They say that "running out of the 20 percent-enriched uranium it needs to operate the reactor, and that appears to be making it amenable to compromise", and that "There is also the concern that Ahmadinejad’s offer may be empty rhetoric." but they never state the obvious question: why did the US prevent Iran from acquiring the fuel in the first place? This was not a reactor that technically could in any way be used to make nukes, and was always under full IAEA monitoring anyway. If the US hadn't blocked the say of fuel for it, Iran would not have resorted to enriching to 20% in the first place.

Iran "JUST SIX MONTHS AWAY" from nukes ... again...

There are certain things in life that happen with such regularity that though unpleasant themselves, are nevertheless such a normal part of life that you would sorta miss them when if don't happen (like the approach of Winter, IMHO.) Amongst these things one must count on yet another "Iran six months away from nukes" story, especially one featuring David Albright whose job seems to be meticulously counting up them uranium atoms in Iran to lend credence to yet another bit of well-worn fearmongering screed about Iran's nuclear program. And the really interesting thing is that despite the fact that I keep having birthdays, and my hair keeps getting thinner, this "six months" deadline never seems to actually end, as repeated predictions of an Iranian nuclear weapon come and go, leaving me to wonder if the reporters live in some alternate Peter Pan-ish "NeverLand" where time has no meaning.

Nicholas Kristoff lies about Ahmadinejad in the NY Times

In his summary report on his interview with Ahmadinejad, Nicholas Kristoff seems to get two key points quite deliberately wrong (See: A Few Words With Iran’s President, September 21, 2011)

Kristoff writes:

"Most important, he repeated an offer made in a Washington Post interview this month to stop all nuclear enrichment if the West would supply nuclear fuel enriched to a 20 percent level. He insisted that Iran will happily give up its enrichment processing if it can get this enriched uranium for “cancer treatment medication.” ... 

This sounds very much like an incipient deal that Mr. Ahmadinejad initially welcomed two years ago but was later scotched by the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. ...Is this a real offer to stop all enrichment? I don’t know, but it’s worth it for the West to pursue it — without easing sanctions in the meantime. One question is how the West could verify an end to enrichment. "

This is a blatant mischaracterization of the explicit statement by Ahmadinejad who on no occasion -- not in the interview with Kristoff, and not in the interview reported by the Washington Post cited by Kristoff -- offered to "give up its enrichment," nor did he ever "offer to stop all enrichment." In fact the text of both interviews show clearly that he offered only to stop only the enrichment to 20% but was firm about 3.5% enrichment. And indeed, one has to wonder why Iran was ever denied the opportunity to purchase the fuel required for the TRR in the first place when the reactor poses no threat of weapons proliferation (and so Iran was thus forced by the US to engage in the higher-level enrichment) - but Kristoff doesn't bother delving into that issue any further whilst mischaracterizing Ahmadinejad's assertions.
 
Krisoff also seems to forget how the uranium swap deal really ended up "dead" - it wasn't because of any opposition by the Supreme Leader, it was beause the US  pulled the rug out from under the very same deal that Obama had explicitly endorsed in letters to the Turks and Brazilians just days before, by suddenly adding a further demand that Iran cease all enrichment. Of course, since then there has been an effort to re-write history and erase that particular little fact - that Iran was willing to send out its uranium but the US prevented that deal from occurring - because it would expose a fact that I've been saying all along: the nuclear issue is entirely pretextual and the US does not want to see it resolved because as Elbaradei noted, the US is really after something else: regime change.
 
In any case the deliberate and in-your-face mischaracterization of Ahmadinejad on this point by Kristoff, and his misrepresentation of the overt history of the breakdown of the uranium swap deal, is simply ridiculous.

UPDATE: a veteran Iran-watcher replied to my post by stating that Kristoff was just sloppy, not wrong, in choosing his wording about ceasing enrichment, and furthermore that "With regard to the previous deal, it has always appeared that AN was clearly in favor but was unable to follow through. So when he makes the same offer in 2011, it is not ridiculous to wonder if he could actually produce if put to the test."

My reply to him:

The 2011 deal was different from the 2009 deal in that Iran had acquired some level of confidence by the involvment of the Turks and Brazilians that it would not be cheated, and there were new and explicit provisions in the deal that mollified the opponents (ie: that the uranium would continue to belong to Iran and would be returned if there was no fuel delivery.) In any case whether Ahmadinejad could have followed through or not on the second deal was never tested since the US killed the deal, and not Iran.

Kristoff's article repeatedly asserts that AN offered to "give up its enrichment", "stop all enrichment",  and to put an "end to enrichment"  - when something so crucial is misstated three times, that's not just sloppiness (and if it is, then Kristoff is an illiterate who shouldn't be writing about such things.)

Tom Friedman's conversion on the Israel Lobby, and Iran

So that cretin Tom Friedman has had a conversion on the road to Damascus, now writing that the "powerful Israel lobby" is holding Obama "hostage" to Israel. Huzza Huzza! Much celebration from various bloggers followed as they wrote about the negative influence of the israel lobby on the US attitude towards the Palestinian bid for recognition at the UN. Problem: will these bloggers also recognize the malevolent role of the Israeli lobby on shaping US policies with respect to Iran?

See, until relatively recently, there was no such thing as the pro-Israel lobby. This was one of those things that was simply not mentioned in polite society, and if you did mention it, you were classified amongst the neoNazis etc. Years ago when I started writing about Iran-US affairs (in 1996)  I checked a database of PhD doctoral dissertations offered by ProQuest to see if anyone had written anything about the pro-Israel lobby - and found exactly 1 dissertation which covered AIPAC to any detail. After all, I think it was Keenan who quipped that "lobbying was like a night flower - it blooms best in the dark."

It was only after the Iraq war that it became acceptable to say the words "Israel lobby." In a sense, the Israel lobby was one of the biggest losers of a war that they pressed for mightily, because it exposed them. The "outing"  and exposure of the Pro-Israeli lobby is one of the consequences of their vehement, maniacal push for the US invasion of Iraq and the resultant catastrophe there.

Of course, the same lobbyists have since tried their hardest to disassociate themselves from the mess in Iraq and vehemently deny pushing the US into invading that country. And predictably, they're maniacally pushing for a US attack on Iran too, while again trying to hide their role. (It is one of the ironies of the pro-Israel lobby that they deny their own influence one minute while boasting about it the next minute: who can forget AIPAC official Steven Rosen's boast that he could have 70 Senators sign his dinner napkin in an hour? Sadly for Rosen, he was cut loose from AIPAC when the FBI caught him allegedly taking secret Iran-related documents from Larry Franklin. And incidentally, Rosen's co-conspirator has since gone on to state openly that American Jews are pushing for a US war on Iran.)

Walt and Mearsheimer's book on the Israel Lobby made it OK to criticize Israel's influence over US politics too; after all they are the cream-of-the-crop in the foreign policy intelligencia (who themselves faced many problems in getting their book and article published in the US, and I have it on good authority that they both have acknowledged that they will never ever be given a government position as a result of writing that book.) They joined the ranks of more and more American Jews who became vocal critics of AIPAC and Israel's role in shaping US policies, and even though they still face a lot of pro-Israel pressure to get them to shut up, the pro-Israel activists are simply fighting a rear-guard action.

Note however that Walt & Meirsheimer wrote specifically in their book that "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."

And that's where the problem still is, despite Tom Friedman's sudden conversion. Notice there's no mention of the role of the Israel lobby on influencing Iran policy in Friedman's article. Others who wrote and commented on the Friedman piece also failed to notice this. In general there doesn't seem - yet - to be a willingness to extend the recognition that yes, there exists a pro-Israel lobby that has perverted and undermined US policy with respect to Palestine, to Iran. Iran policy is still a third rail.

 

Milani the avazi

You have to give credit to Ahmadinejad to the extent that the bare mention of his name seems to induce conniption fits in some people. Indeed, the bile-spitting and vituperation specifically associated with his visit to the UN reaches comedic proportions with Abbas Milani's article, "10 Questions for Ahmadinejad",  demanding that the media should force Ahmadinejad to "answer for his actions" - which apparently include the claim (by Milani) that some clerics in Iran were Nazi sympathizers way back in the 1930s, before Ahmadinejad was even born!

As an aside, I should point out that many people looked favorably on the Nazis -- in the Middle East, it wasn't just the Grand Mufti but also Reza Shah of Iran -- all of whom simply wanted to see another power rise up to challenge British colonial rule & not because they were particularly enamoured with National Socialism. And  Hitler certainly had his admirers outside of the Mideast too! The previous Duke of Windsor, King Edward VIII, was a Nazi symphathizer who visited Hilter a few times and gave him the "Seig Heil" salute (he was sent off into exile, supposedly because he loved a divorced woman.) And there was President George Bush's grandfather Prescott who was busying doing business with the Nazi, as was IBM. I won't even bother mentioning the Zionists who were cooperating with the Nazis either.

Anyway back to Milani - apparently natural phenomenon, like the fact that the Zayendeh Rud river in Isfahan regularly dries up - are also one of Ahmadinejad's "actions" for which the media should hold him responsible, as is the drying up of the Oromieh salt lake. You see, Ahmadinejad secretly controls the world's weather patterns and water resources, and could single-handedly fix these issues with a wave of his wand if he wanted to do so.

And then the economic comparisons with Turkey! Hate to break the news to you Milani, but since the revolution, the life of Iranians has improved on every socio-economic measure  -- access to clean water, healthcare, literacy, paved roads, electricity, etc. Now, if there wasn't a war with Saddam (backed by the US) and sanctions, perhaps things would have been even better. In fact, today Iran's Human Development Index is slightly above Turkey's (Iran = .702, Turkey = .679)

In Farsi, we have a term for people like Milani: avazi. If these people represent the "opposition" is it then any wonder why no one wants to join the opposition? They're scarcely any better than the bogeymonster Ahmadinejad they're riled up against.

Then there is Reza Marashi, the former US State Department official, who now is supposedly also part of the opposition, I guess. He writes that diplomats - not just journalists - should raise Human rights with Ahmadinejad. Course, the fact that the very same US State Department was, FOR EXAMPLE, not so long ago instructing its diplomats to try to shift the blame for the gassing of the Kurds at Halabja off of Saddam and onto Iran doesn't seem to faze Marashi as he boldly simply assumes that America has the sort of moral credibility left to lecture anyone about human rights. I don't know if Marashi has actually ever set foot in Iran himself, but I can assure him that millions of Iranians are not as quick as he is to forget their history, and see nothing but blatant, stomach-churning hypocricy in all this grandstanding about human rights. All your finger-wagging about human rights isn't going to fix anyone's human rights in Iran or anywhere else, but instead just contributes to the demonization of Iran that serves the interests of those who want to bomb the same people whose human rights you claim to care about, Marashi.

Ali Gharib takes the bait on Iran "nuclear intelligence"

Ali Gharib writes about a report on US nuclear intelligence on Iran issued by the Atlantic Council which, as he quotes, concludes that US intelligence on Iran is "better and worse" than on Iraq. And when you hear such nonsense as "better and worse" then your ears should perk up for some bullshit coming your way.

First the claim that the "distortion" (aka lying) that accompanied the Iraq war can't happen under Obama is moronic. Not only can it happen, it has been happening. In fact, this Atlantic Council report itself is an example of the distortion when, for example, it claims there are "shortfalls" in the intelligence on Iran's nuclear program - why? just because the intelligence hasn't been able to concluded anything other than that there is no evidence of a nuclear weapons program? That's a "shortfall"? Must be, because Barbara Slavin is then quoted as saying there's still time to "dissuade Iran."  Notice the built-in assumption in that statement that Iran is up to no good and should be "dissuaded." Dissuade Iran from exactly what, Barbara? She doesn't make clear.

If Iran is to be "dissuaded" from a civilian nuclear program, she doesn't mention why. In fact Barbara Slavin never makes any sort of distinction between a legitimate, legal and overt nuclear program (the only thing Iran has ever been found to have) and a nuclear weapons program. She's part of the general trend towards painting Iran as a vague, general "threat" that has to be dissuaded, in part by a deliberate obfuscation between nuclear weapons and nuclear energy programs. And THAT is precisely the sort of "distortion" mongering that gets us into wars.

I won't even bother getting into Ali Gharib's bald-face assertion that "Iran raises such strong suspicious particularly because so many various aspects of its program have been clandestinely developed and only revealed either by foreign governments or by Iran because of pressure" because it is simply not factual. It ignores for example that much of the supposedly "clandestine" activity Iran was engaged in was either not required to be reported anyway, or was the direct result of illegal US pressure intended to deprive Iran of her nuclear rights.

All in all Ali Gharib simply buys into the unstated assumption in this report that Iran is the duplicitous actor whose intentions must be ferreted out, while the US is acting in good faith as some sort of objective fact-finder (without regard to inconvenient facts such as that the US has on several occasions undermined nuclear compromises with Iran because - as verified by Elbaradei - the US is more interested in regime change and is using the nuclear issue as a mere pretext. Oh no, THAT is never even mentioned because while it is OK to question Iranian "intentions" about the nuclear program, US intentions should be assumed to be simply pure as the driven snow and certainly not motivated by anyting other than establishing the "truth" about Iran's nuclear program!)

"Reza Khalili" and the fake EMP threat from Iran

The self-described CIA spy "Reza Khalili" has been writing all sorts of complete rubbish about Iran lately but he really jumps the shark when he writes about an impending Iranian EMP attack on the US. Oh well, it is just the defense business using Iran to sell weapons. So I guess now "Khalili" has been paid off by the same folks who are pushing for this in Congress.

Aside from the ridiculousness of the idea that Iran is about to launch an intercontinental ballsitic nuclear missile to explode over the US to cause an EMP pulse, a lightining strike puts out much more EMP than a nuclear bomb.