Israel's Iran Itch--Roger Cohen NYT (commentary by William O. Beeman)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/17/opinion/israels-iran-itch.html/?comments#permid=20

OP-ED COLUMNIST

Israel's Iran Itch

By ROGER COHEN

Published: August 16, 2012 198 Comments

Commentary by William O. Beeman 

• William O. Beeman
• Minneapolis

I applaud and approve of Roger Cohen's message in this essay, but I am disappointed that he appears to accept the idea that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. In fact, there is no evidence whatever anywhere that such a nuclear weapons program exists. No intelligence estimate by the United States, Europeans, the United Nations or even Israel has demonstrated this.

Moreover, although individual Iranian politicians and officials have had harsh words for Israeli policies, and have expressed opposition to Zionism (as has the anti-Zionist movement in Israel itself), there has never been any governmental pronouncement calling for Israel's destruction. The myth of Iran's government calling for Israel to be destroyed is so widely promulgated now that no one every actually investigates it. It is a total falsehood.

There are 19 other non-nuclear weapons states who are signatories to the Nuclear Non-proliferation treaty who enrich uranium in the same way, and in greater quantities than Iran. Some, such as Japan and Brazil have declared that they will manufacture nuclear weapons if the need arises--something that Iran's leaders, such as spiritual leader, Ali Khamene'i have flatly renounced multiple times. Of course they are never questioned.

Iran is no danger to anyone. However, it is a convenient bogey man and whipping boy to burnish the credentials of political leaders who don't mind stooping to demagoguery to shore themselves up at home.

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NEW YORK — Hmm, it’s August, things are quiet, time for another wave of hysteria over an imminent Israeli attack on Iran. We’ve seen this movie for a decade — Israel’s “red line” on the Iranian nuclear program has proved of spandex-like elasticity.

Damon Winter/The New York Times

Roger Cohen

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(I sometimes imagine the size of the explosion if all the words devoted to the Iranian nuclear program since 2000 were placed in a large container and detonated.)

Israeli newspapers are full of reports that home-front preparedness is inadequate. Only 53 percent of Israelis, they say, have gas masks. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has just appointed Avi Dichter, a former head of Shin Bet — the Israeli equivalent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation — as the new home-front minister to address these concerns.

Dichter, by the way, has joined a host of former security and intelligence chiefs in saying that for Israel to lead an offensive against Iran would be a “total mistake.”

Wise words; but they have done nothing to dampen the attack-looming chatter of these summer doldrums, with the U.S. election less than 100 days away. One theory in Jerusalem is that the run-up to Nov. 6 is a good moment to attack because President Obama, despite his misgivings, would have no choice but to get behind the Jewish state or lose votes.

Netanyahu is doing nothing to dispel the rumors. Why should he? They provide leverage for tougher Iran sanctions and have no downside for Israel other than creating an impression that, on Iran, it has cried wolf.

Consider this recent post on the International Herald Tribune’s Latitude blog from Shmuel Rosner, the political editor of the Jewish Journal: “I got home Monday evening to find in my mailbox an official reminder: Did we have enough gas masks for the whole family?”

Rosner continues: “These days, Israeli media outlets are competing with one another to run scare stories: Are there enough shelters in Jerusalem for all residents? Does the new text-message missile alert system work properly?”

The Netanyahu government is happy enough with this state of fear: It seeks uncertainty. It takes a rightly skeptical view of the talks on Iran’s nuclear program between Iran and the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany. These have gone over familiar ground — Iranian offers to stop enrichment to 20 percent and eliminate its stockpile of such uranium against a lifting of sanctions and recognition of its right to enrich to a much lower level — without moving the ball.

Let’s get real: A deal in a U.S. election year is out of the question. Obama will not do it. He is not going to hand the Republicans ammunition on a plate.

Moreover, the Iran led by the Brezhnevian Ayatollah Khamenei is incapable of clear decision-making. It is a nation in the image of its noisy president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (remember him?): a lot of bluster over not much. It is given to what James Buchan has called “lachrymose intransigence.” Khamenei is a septuagenarian supposedly standing in for the Prophet. The average age of his wired population is 27. Try getting that system to function.

As Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace told me, a deal is unthinkable because “the possibility of ever aligning Israeli psychology, Iranian ideology and the American political calendar is infinitely remote.”

So what should Israel do? Israeli security is incompatible with an Iran armed with a nuclear weapon that says it is bent on the destruction of the Jewish state: That, given history and psychology, is the reality of the situation.

But a unilateral Israeli attack on Iran today would be disastrous. It unites Iran in fury; locks in the Islamic Republic for a generation; gives a substantial boost to the wobbling Assad regime in Syria; radicalizes the Arab world at a moment of delicate transition; ignites Hezbollah on the Lebanese border; boosts Hamas; endangers U.S. troops in the region; sparks terrorism; propels oil skyward; rocks a vulnerable global economy; triggers a possible regional war; offers a lifeline to Iran just as sanctions are biting; adds a never-to-be-forgotten Persian vendetta to the Arab vendetta against Israel; and may at best set back Iran’s nuclear ambitions a couple of years or at worst accelerate its program by prompting it to rush for a bomb and throw out International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors.

Such damage may not amount to an existential threat to Israel — the phrase is overused. It would be a devastating strategic error.

Don’t do it, Bibi.

I do not say this lightly. All the talk of gas masks reflects real Israeli fears, even if they are artfully stoked. Israel must keep in mind that no U.S. president can accept the current Iranian regime going nuclear: Obama has been explicit about this.

Iran is not enriching uranium, as it claims, for a power plant of epic dysfunction. But nor has it yet united the various elements needed to make a bomb. If it ever makes the decision to do so, I expect the U.S. military response to be swift and devastating. The wise choice for Israel is therefore patience.

You can follow Roger Cohen on Twitter at twitter.com/nytimescohen.

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on August 17, 2012, in The International Herald Tribune.

Tea Party Economic Madness and the Romney/Ryan Ticket

To listen to the Tea Party supporters of the Ryan/Romney ticket we might as well be electing Gordon Gekko as President. Greed is good, they pontificate and have the most naive idea of economics ever promulgated on the American public. Their idea seems to be that every dollar should only be taxed once, as if it got a little stamp on it when first earned (whenever that is) and thereafter would never be taxed again. You pay it to someone for a good or service, and bingo! no tax on that dollar, because it was already taxed when the buyer first received it. A fourth grader can see that this is idiotic if there is to be a functioning economy, but I have heard this again and again on the talk shows this past weekend applied to the capital gains tax (which Ryan would reduce to zero) and the the inheritance tax (which he would also reduce to zero). 

The anti-tax crazy Grover Norquist simplistically defended this by saying "most Americans agree with this principle." Well Duhh. If you ask Americans whether their inheritance or investments should be taxed, what do you think they will answer? Economic policy is not a popularity contest. If it were no one would pay any taxes ever. 

It is already the case that the rich reduce their capital gains income to near zero through legal legerdemain. Now they want it made simple and explicit. No paying accountants and lawyers to game the system, just don't charge them anything at all. "Only the little people pay taxes!" -Leona Helmsley

Paul Ryan is a liar

When Paul Ryan expresses concern for the deficit and for our national economy, he is belied by his own actions. Below, thanks to Chris Hayes of Up with Chris Hayes is a list of his votes in Congress over the past few years. Apparently Ryan's "Budget Plan" and his concern over financial matters only matters when he needs Tea Party support or wants to get President Obama out of office. How can we believe that he would ever follow his own precepts based on his past record?

William O. Beeman--Mitt Romney’s Jerusalem Speech Panders to the Right-Wing (New America Media)

http://newamericamedia.org/2012/07/mitt-romneys-jerusalem-speech-panders-to-the-right-wing.php#

Mitt Romney’s Jerusalem Speech Panders to the Right-Wing

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New America Media, Op-ed, William O. Beeman, Posted: Jul 30, 2012

Mitt Romney’s foreign policy speech to the Jerusalem Foundation in Israel on Sunday qualified him to be President—of Israel. His observations were as remarkable for what he didn’t say as for what he did. They could have been written by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, for they parallel his thinking almost exactly, and they were sharply at odds with current U.S. policy toward the region.

Mr. Romney didn’t mention the Palestinians (although he later made an invidious comparison of Palestinians to Israelis that was deemed racist by Palestinian officials), nor did he offer any remarks on the settlements in the West Bank—arguably Israel’s most pressing problem. Indeed, he explicitly called for Americans not to engage in any criticism of Israel at all, since Israelis seemed to be capable of self-critique.

What Mr. Romney did do in his talk was primarily to lambaste Iran.

He trotted out a laundry list of accusations against Iran, virtually all of which have been discredited fabrications or shown to be wildly exaggerated caricatures of Iranian thought and behavior. Among these was the hoary old accusation that Iranians had threatened to “wipe Israel off the map”—a fabrication so well known that it has its own Wikipedia page. He also repeated the old saw that Iran is the “chief State supporter of terrorism,” an unsupported assertion left over from the Bush administration. He also cited the discredited claims that the Iranian government supplied weapons used to attack Americans in Iraq—something the U.S. military tried desperately to prove with absolutely no success.

He said, “When Iran’s leaders deny the Holocaust . . .” branding them as Holocaust deniers. Iran’s leaders, in fact, have never denied the Holocaust. To be sure, they have questioned its causes and results in ways that are inaccurate, but they never denied that it happened. There was even a widely applauded popular film in Iran dealing with the Holocaust and an Iranian historical figure who saved Jews from being killed.

Of course, no one denies Iran’s dismal domestic human rights record—something that should be of concern to the whole world—but Mr. Romney barely touched on this one legitimate accusation of wrongdoing on the part of the Iranian government.

These broad swipes at Iran would be just garden-variety neoconservative palaver if it weren’t for the additional steps Mr. Romney took in advancing a case for armed conflict against the Islamic Republic—steps that were both reckless and ignorant. The case is based on the favorite neoconservative hobby-horse: Iran’s nuclear program.

Mr. Romney hinted broadly that the United States would support a military strike against Iran. This would not be to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon as is current U.S. policy, but rather to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capacity. This is code for shutting down or destroying Iran’s entire nuclear development program.

Mr. Romney seems unaware of the complexities of the Iranian case. Iran is signatory to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) along with all other states with nuclear development, except for Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea. The treaty grants all signatories the inalienable right to develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. Iran is engaged in uranium enrichment to provide fuel for nuclear generation of electricity. However, Iran is not alone in doing this. Nineteen other world states who are signatories to the NPT do so as well, and at least two, Japan and Brazil, have stated openly that they are prepared to manufacture nuclear weapons if the need arises. Even if there were any proof that Iran had a nuclear weapons program, they are far from producing even nuclear reactor fuel. Mr. Romney said, cagily, they are “five years closer” to producing a nuclear weapon—but those attacking Iran have been saying this every year since 1990, and Iran is no closer.

The history of nuclear development in Iran also involves the United States directly. The U.S. government urged the Iranians to start their program in 1970 as a move toward modernization. The nuclear facilities they are now developing are a direct outgrowth of those mutually approved plans.

The complexity of this issue is apparent to the Obama administration, which is why diplomacy has been urged by every foreign policy adviser as a means of creating confidence and settling misunderstandings and differences between Iran, the United States and its allies. Brute force designed to damage Iran’s nuclear facilities has been decried as dangerous and useless by American and Israeli military and intelligence officials.

The most ironic part of Mr. Romney’s speech came toward the end when he stated: “If you want to hear some very sharp criticisms of Israel and its policies, you don’t have to cross any borders. All you have to do is walk down the street and into a café, where you’ll hear people reasoning, arguing, and speaking their mind. Or pick up an Israeli newspaper – you’ll find some of the toughest criticism of Israel you’ll read anywhere. Your nation, like ours, is stronger for this energetic exchange of ideas and opinions.”

If Mr. Romney had taken this observation to heart and showed even a modicum of nuance in his remarks, he might have appeared statesmanlike. As it was, his speech was little more than a screed of right-wing slogans designed to please his Israeli host, and the Americans who support the most extreme right-wing policies of the Israeli government. His need to pander may go even further. Part of his live audience in Jerusalem was Israeli-supporter, billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who is bankrolling Mr. Romney’s campaign with unlimited amounts of money.
 
William O. Beeman is Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota. He has lived and worked in the Middle East for over 40 years. He visited Iran last November, and Israel in June of this year. He is the author of The “Great Satan” vs. the “Mad Mullahs”: How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other. (University of Chicago Press, 2008)

Mitt Romney in Israel

Mitt Romney's recently broadcast speech in Israel is a shameful pastiche of accusatory  lies and half-truths about Iran, echoing the very worst, discredited misinformation. This is pandering to the right wing of both Israel and the United States on a new level. Not even the most rabid right-wing politicians in the United States have dared to trot out an attack with such completely blatant chicanery. This talk is practically calling for a military attack on Iran. In fact, Romney has all but pre-authorized such an attack, while implying that the United States wouldn't necessarily participate. So, a President Romney would egg on an Iranian attack without taking responsibility for pulling the trigger or involving the U.S. This is both reckless and cowardly. He curiously references and praises many members of the Israeli Press and their criticism of the Israeli government, and the balance such dialog brings to politics there. Too bad he couldn't reflect the same balance in his own assessment of Israeli right-wing attacks on Iran. Indeed, he goes on to say that the United States shouldn't criticize Israel at all.

Best,

Bill Beeman
University of Minnesota

Porter--Israel Pins Bombing on Hezbollah to Get EU Terror Ruling (IPS)

http://www.ipsnews.net/2012/07/israel-pins-bombing-on-hezbollah-to-get-eu-terror-ruling/

Israel Pins Bombing on Hezbollah to Get EU Terror Ruling

Analysis by Gareth Porter Reprint | 

http://www.ipsnews.net/2012/07/israel-pins-bombing-on-hezbollah-to-get-eu-terror-ruling/

 

Commentary by William O. Beeman: An Israeli tour bus was bombed in Burgas, Bulgaria. Since that time Israel has been trying to demonstrate that Hezbollah and by extension the Iranian government was responsible. Thus far no one has claimed responsibility, and Prime Minister Netanyahu, despite loud proclamations of Hezbollah guilt in the affair has not produced one iota of evidence that Hezbollah was actually involved. Investigator Gareth Porter dissects this matter, concluding that the Israeli claims have no merit. 

      

WASHINGTON, Jul 24 2012 (IPS) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim Sunday of absolutely reliable intelligence linking Hezbollah to the bombing in Burgas, Bulgaria last week was apparently aimed at supporting his government’s determination to get the EU to declare Hezbollah a terrorist state.

The Netanyahu claim in interviews on Fox News Sunday and CBS Face the Nation of “rock solid” intelligence on the bombing was accompanied by an announcement that Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman would travel to Brussels Monday to meet with EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and foreign ministers of nine EU member states to persuade them to put Hezbollah on the list of terrorist organisations.

Netanyahu, who usually emphasises Iran’s role in terrorism, focused primarily on Hezbollah’s alleged culpability.

Unlike the United States, the EU has never officially considered Hezbollah to be a terrorist organisation, but Netanyahu believes that pinning the Bulgarian bombing on Hezbollah gives him political leverage on the EU to change that.

Lieberman was quoted Sunday as saying the bombing in Bulgaria “has changed the way in which Hezbollah is seen”.

For months, Netanyau has been building a case that Iran has been carrying out a worldwide campaign of terrorism. That narrative is based, however, on a systematic and highly successful Israeli campaign of shaping the news coverage of a series of murky allegations about terrorist actions or efforts in Baku, Tibilisi, Bangkok and Delhi, and into stories fitting neatly into the overall narrative.

Netanyahu used sweeping language about the alleged intelligence underlying his charge that Hezbollah carried out the Bulgarian tourist bombing, but refused to offer any further information to back it up.

In the interview on Fox News Sunday, Netanyahu said, “We know with absolute certainty, without a shadow of a doubt that this is a Hezbollah operation….” But despite being asked by interviewer Chris Wallace for some indication of the nature of the intelligence, he would say only that information had been shared with “friendly agencies”.

When the heads of Mossad and Shin Bet, Tamir Pardo and Yoram Cohen, briefed the Israeli cabinet Sunday on those agencies’ efforts against what were described as Iranian and Hezbollah plans for terrorism in more than 20 countries, they were not reported to have presented hard intelligence supporting the claim of Hezbollah responsibility for the Bulgarian bombing.

If the Israeli government did share intelligence information on Hezbollah and the Bulgarian bombing with the Central Intelligence Agency as Netanyahu claimed, it did not register with the senior U.S. officials on Jul. 19.

When a “senior U.S. official” was quoted by the New York Times that day confirming the Israeli assertion that the bomber who carried out the operation was “a member of a Hezbollah cell operating in Bulgaria”, he was apparently merely making assumptions rather than relying on any hard evidence.
Also on Jul. 19, Pentagon press secretary George Little said, “I don’t know that anybody has assessed attribution for this cowardly action….”

On Jul. 20, White House spokesman Jay Carney said the administration was “not in a position to make a statement about responsibility”.

Netanyahu declared immediately after the news of the Bulgarian bus bombing Jul. 18 that Iran was responsible for the attack. In support of the charge, he cited recent alleged terrorist incidents in a number of other countries. “All the signs lead to Iran,” he said.

But Netanyahu offered no proof, and the Israeli Embassy in Washington acknowledged to CNN on Jul. 19 that it had no proof that Iran was the instigator of the attack.

Netanyahu also argued in his Fox News interview as well as in an appearance on CBS Face the Nation that an Iran/Hezbollah connection to the bombing of the Israeli tourist bus could be reasonably inferred from a Hezbollah terrorist plan that had been discovered in Cyprus only a week earlier.

“The whole world can see who it is,” said Netanyahu on Fox News Sunday. “You would have known or been able to surmise it from Cyprus a week ago.” A “Hezbollah operative” in Cyprus was caught planning “exactly the same attack, exactly the same modus operandi”, he said.
But the case to which Netanyahu referred is much less clear-cut than his dramatic description. In fact, it is unclear who the alleged Hezbollah operative really is and what he was actually doing in Cyprus. The 24-year-old Lebanese man with a Swedish passport was arrested in his hotel room in Limossol Jul. 7 – just two days after he had arrived in the country — following an urgent message sent to Cyprus from Israeli intelligence that the man intended to carry out attacks, according to Haaretz Jul. 14.

The Israeli press have portrayed the unnamed Lebanese as “collecting information for a terror attack” being planned by Hezbollah (Israel Hayom) and as identifying the “vulnerabilities that would allow for maximal damage among a group of Israeli tourists in their first hours on Cyprus ” (Ynet News).

But those descriptions may not reflect what the Lebanese man was actually doing. A senior Cypriot official told Reuters a week after he was taken into custody, “It is not clear what, or whether, there was a target in Cyprus.” And other Cypriot authorities were reported by the Cyprus Mail Jul. 20 and by Associated Press Monday to have said they believe the man was acting alone.

The Cypriot Greek-language newspaper Phileftheros reported that he was found with information on tour buses carrying Israeli passengers, a list of places favoured by Israeli tourists, and flight information on Israeli airlines that land in Cyprus, suggesting that he planned to detonate explosives on board a plane or bus.

But despite an intensive search, no indication has been found that the man is linked to any explosives.
A lone individual arrested in his hotel room without any explosives hardly presents a close parallel to the bus bombing in Burgas. Contrary to Netanyahu’s breathless description of what happened in Cyprus, the arrest may turn out to have been an overreaction by Mossad to unconfirmed information the agency had obtained three months earlier that someone might be interested in harming Israeli tourists in Cyprus, reported by Ynet News Jul. 15.

Details that have emerged about the cases of Lebanese and Iranian citizens arrested at the insistence of Mossad in Thailand in January and Kenya in June also suggest that sensational press accounts of alleged terrorist plans by the suspects inspired by the Israelis may have been highly distorted, and that the individuals arrested may turn out not to be terrorists at all.

*Gareth Porter, an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy, received the UK-based Gellhorn Prize for journalism for 2011 for articles on the U.S. war in Afghanistan.

Illinois Anti-Marriage equality commentator mis-quotes Reverend John Piper (Star-Tribune Letter of the Day)

http://www.startribune.com/opinion/letters/160893545.html

Letter of the Day (July 2): The Rev. John Piper

• Updated: July 1, 2012 - 8:40 PM

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The Revs. John Piper, above, and Leith Anderson, evangelical leaders in Minnesota, are taking a measured stance on the state’s marriage amendment issue.

Photo: Kyndell Harkness, Star Tribune

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Laurie Higgins of the Illinois Family Institute has taken it on herself to interpret the Rev. John Piper's sermon on the Minnesota marriage amendment ("Pastor showed way to clarity on amendment," June 26). She concludes that although Piper did not direct his parishioners to vote for the amendment, his sermon was tantamount to calling for a positive vote.

Higgins' commentary disturbed me greatly. Was she actually present for the sermon? She doesn't say so.

Also, why is she speaking for the pastor when he would be perfectly capable of answering for himself if he had been mischaracterized by the Star Tribune report in question ("Key pastors opt out of marriage fight," June 21).

Higgins' article strikes me as yet another out-of-state attempt to influence Minnesotans' vote on the amendment.

WILLIAM O. BEEMAN, MINNEAPOLIS

• related content

• 

  Pastor showed way to clarity on amendment

  Monday June 25, 2012
  It's clear that the Rev. John Piper directed his church members to vote to approve the amendment.
• 

  Key Minnesota pastors opt out of marriage fight

  Thursday June 21, 2012
  They decline to advise their flocks on how to vote on the amendment.

A Thing of Beauty is a Joy Forever

William O. Beeman Comment in The New York Times Magazine, 17 June 2012

Commenting on June 12, 2012 Issue article by Adam Davidson on the Contemporary Art Market and the astronomical prices being paid today.

When art becomes primarily an object to be bought and sold at market value, the entire purpose of artistic expression is sullied. It certainly is true that “a thing of beauty is a joy forever,” but these vulgar “collectors” buying art in the hope that it will “pay off” in appreciated value take all the joy out of it. If crass commercialism is unavoidable, at the very least artists should be able to avoid being exploited by the market. I would be in favor of a royalty system whereby the artist and her heirs share in the resale of her artistic works.

WILLIAM O. BEEMAN, Minneapolis, posted on nytimes.com

Gareth Porter wins Martha Gelhorn Prize for Reporting on Afghanistan, Iran

I have long recommended Gareth Porter's work to those who ask: "whom should I be reading on Iran and Afghanistan." You don't find Gareth Porter quoted by the mainstream media, but he is the best of the best. His work is carefully researched, always incisive and flies in the face of the conventional wisdom that constitutes the pap coming out of Washington and New York.

This prestigious award (below) is so well deserved, and this recognition will give his work additional credence, and gain him additional readers. I urge you all to search out his work on IPS and realize that his efforts are worthy of aspiration by all of us who try to seek the truth in our efforts at elucidating the difficult events of this area of the world.

Best,

Bill

                               The Martha Gellhorn Trust

                                          Press Release                                                                             

             

   TOP UK AWARD GOES TO JOURNALIST WHO EXPOSED

                        SECRETS OF AFGHANISTAN WAR

Gareth Porter, the Washington-based journalist, has won the prestigious Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism for 2012 for his investigation of US ‘killing strategy’ in Afghanistan, including the targeting of people through their mobile phones.

The judges said: ‘In a series of extraordinary articles, Gareth Porter has torn away the facades of the Obama administration and disclosed a military strategy that amounts to a war against civilians.’

The Martha Gellhorn Prize is given in honour of one of the 20^th century’s greatest reporters and is awarded to a journalist ‘whose work has penetrated the established version of events and told an unpalatable truth that exposes establishment propaganda, or “official drivel”, as Martha Gellhorn called it’.

Previous winners include Robert Fisk of the Independent, Nick Davies of the Guardian, Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, and the late Marie Colvin of the Sunday Times (special award).

Those short-listed for this year’s prize were Amelia Gentleman of the Guardian for her articles about Britain’s ‘forgotten people’, the elderly and young offenders, described by the judges as ‘unique and eloquent’ ; and Phil Hammond and Andrew Bousfield for their ‘stunning’ special investigation in Private Eye, ‘Shoot the messenger: How NHS whistleblowers are silenced and sacked’.

The Martha Gellhorn Trust judges are: Dr. Alexander Matthews, John Pilger, James Fox, Jeremy Harding, Cynthia Kee and Shirlee Matthews.

For information: Dr. Alexander Matthews sandyandshirlee@phonecoop.coop

William O. Beeman and Gareth Porter critique Joby Warrick's Washington Report on Iranian assassination plots

William O. Beeman writes: 

Joby Warrick's Washington Post story on supposed Iranian assassination plots all over the place has all the hallmarks of a hoax. (see below:"U.S. officials among the targets of Iran-linked assassination plots" http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-officials-among-the-targets-of-iran-linked-assassination-plots/2012/05/27/gJQAHlAOvU_print.html )

There isn't a single attribution in the story--not even the origin of the "cable traffic" in November. There is no specific target for these assassination attempts mentioned in the story. The "plots" are possibly carried out by Hezbollah, possibly by the Qods force--in short no one knows anything, and there is no evidence that the "plots" even exist. And at the end, the writer and his informants must conclude there is nothing that ties this ephemeral set of accusations to the Iranian government. When one understands that Azerbaijan is virtually an American and Israeli client state these days, the possibility of a hoax becomes even more apparent. I am perfectly prepared to believe that Iranian forces, angry at the assassinations that have actually taken place inside Iran, are interested in retaliating, but this piece of "journalism" is complete garbage. It doesn't substantiate anything real. Warrick is serving as someone's cats-paw in putting out this baseless report.

The piece is clearly suspect for another reason--it follows a pattern: finding some way to denigrate Iran after some rapprochement with the West has occurred.  Iran has actually concluded a set of talks with the West. While the talks were disappointing and inconclusive, they are a watershed, being the first time there have been a series of sustained face-to-face talks in this manner. Now a third set is scheduled for Moscow. Instant success is not to be expected in negotiations like this, but the longer people talk, the better the chances. There are forces all over the place--Iran, Israel and the United States that want these talks to stop, or better yet, blow up. What better way than to cook up a bogey-man international assassination conspiracy out of whole cloth.

I won't believe any of this until there is some real evidence, and people willing to put their names to their claims.

Bill Beeman
University of Minnesota

Historian and Analyst Gareth Porter writes:

This article is one of many recent instances of a news outlet letting itself be used to promote a story relating to Iran representing the propaganda line of a government without acknowledging that fact.  The government, of course, is Israel.  Alert readers will have noticed the reference to "Middle Eastern officials" throughout the article, which is an obvious device to avoid admitting that the article is based overwhelmingly on information from Israel.  Providing a shield for Israel to put out information that is extremely dubious without even having to be accountable for it is a journalistic scandal, but is apparently perfectly acceptable to the Post and Joby Warrick.

The "report" that is referenced in the Post article presents a propaganda theme paralleling the one that Israel circulated in the January-February period about a widespread Iranian terrorist campaign in multiple countries, supposedly linked to the anniversary of Imad Mugniyah's assassination in Lebanon in February 12, 2008.

The whole idea that Iran and Hezbollah would launch a campaign that would be at the same time covert and deniable but done to coincide with a date that would identify it as an Iranian operation should set off all kinds of red lights in the minds of serious analysts.  But

there are other details in the article, reflecting the report in question, that mirror Israeli statements about the Delhi bombing and the bombs found in Bangkok that both give away the provenance of the report and which are inaccurate.  Specifically the claim that the bombs were the same in both cases was not supported by the information released by the investigators in the two capitals, as I pointed out in my own article on the Delhi bombing in AlJazeera.

On the purported plot in Azerbaijan, the Post article fails to reflect the fact that there is a patron-client relationship between Israeli and Azerbaijani intelligence agencies, as pointed out by an article published by WINEP March 30, 2005, ("Good Relations between Azerbaijan and Israel"). Israeli intelligence not only train Azerbaijani intelligence personnel but provide constant briefings to the Azerbaijan intelligence agency on Iranian activities.  

In fact, Azerbaijan has been regularly claiming similar terrorist plots by Iran for years involving the supposed intention to kill local Jews as well as U.S. diplomats, and those plots have been invoked to arrest people regarded as pro-Iranian in Baku and elsewhere. It happened in 2000 and again in 2007, as Alexander Murinson observed in article for the Begin-Sadat Center in Israel in 2010.

Furthermore, as the internet-based Azerbaijani news outlet "Contact", supported by the National Endowment for Democracy, reported at the time, the mother of one of those who publicly confessed to being part of the plot said he was given a statement that he had to read.  The whole idea that Iran was hiring locals to kill Jews in Baku in order to revenge the killing of Mugniyah goes well beyond bizarre to ludicrous.  

And Balargardash Dadashov the alleged kingpin of the plot (whose name is misspelled in the Post article) did not confess that the alleged plot was to be revenge for the killing to Mugniyah, and in fact was never arrested, because as pointed out by "Contact" in January, he has long lived in Iran. As stated in reports from Baku at the time, this was the story that one of the people under arrest provided to police.

Best,

Gareth

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-officials-among-the-targets-of-iran-linked-assassination-plots/2012/05/27/gJQAHlAOvU_print.html
Washington Post

U.S. officials among the targets of Iran-linked assassination plots

By Joby Warrick, Published: May 27

In November, the tide of daily cable traffic to the U.S. Embassy in Azerbaijan brought a chilling message for Ambassador Matthew Bryza, then the top U.S. diplomat to the small Central Asian country. A plot to kill Americans had been uncovered, the message read, and embassy officials were on the target list.

The details, scant at first, became clearer as intelligence agencies from both countries stepped up their probe. The plot had two strands, U.S. officials learned, one involving snipers with silencer-equipped rifles and the other a car bomb, apparently intended to kill embassy employees or members of their families.

Both strands could be traced back to the same place, the officials were told: Azerbaijan’s southern neighbor, Iran.

The threat, many details of which were never made public, appeared to recede after Azerbaijani authorities rounded up nearly two dozen people in waves of arrests early this year. Precisely who ordered the hits, and why, was never conclusively determined. But U.S. and Middle Eastern officials now see the attempts as part of a broader campaign by Iran-linked operatives to kill foreign diplomats in at least seven countries over a span of 13 months. The targets have included two Saudi officials, a half-dozen Israelis and — in the Azerbaijan case — several Americans, the officials say.

In recent weeks, investigators working in four countries have amassed new evidence tying the disparate assassination attempts to one another and linking all of them to either Iran-backed Hezbollah militants or operatives based inside Iran, according to U.S. and Middle Eastern security officials. An official report last month summarizing the evidence cited phone records, forensic tests, coordinated travel arrangements and even cellphone SIM cards purchased in Iran and used by several of the would-be assailants, said two officials who have seen the six-page document.

Strikingly, the officials noted, the attempts halted abruptly in early spring, at a time when Iran began to shift its tone after weeks of bellicose anti-Western rhetoric and threats to shut down vital shipping lanes. In March, Iranian officials formally accepted a proposal to resume negotiations with six world powers on proposals to curb its nuclear program.

“There appears to have been a deliberate attempt to calm things down ahead of the talks,” said a Western diplomat briefed on the assassination plots, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the intelligence. “What happens if the talks fail — that’s anyone’s guess.”

Less clear is whether the attempts were ordered by government officials or perhaps carried out with the authorities’ tacit approval by intelligence operatives or a proxy group such as Hezbollah. Many U.S. officials and Middle East experts see the incidents as part of an ongoing shadow war, a multi-sided, covert struggle in which Iran also has been the victim of assassinations. Four scientists tied to Iran’s nuclear program have been killed by unknown assailants in the past three years, and the country’s nuclear sites have been hobbled by cyberattacks. Iran has accused the United States and Israel of killing its scientists, but it has repeatedly denied any role in plots to assassinate foreign diplomats abroad.

The Obama administration has declined to directly link the Azerbaijan plot to the Iranian government, avoiding what could be an explosive accusation at a time when the two governments are engaged in negotiations on limiting Iran’s nuclear program. U.S. officials say they are less convinced that top Iranian and Hezbollah leaders worked together to coordinate the attempted hits, noting that both groups have a long history of committing such acts on their own, and for their own purposes.

“The idea that Iran and Hezbollah might have worked together on these attempts is possible,” said a senior U.S. official who has studied the evidence, “but this conclusion is not definitive.”

‘Walking a fine line’

Attacks directly targeting American diplomats are rare but not unknown. In 2002, Laurence Foley, a senior official at the U.S. Embassy in Jordan, was fatally shot by suspected Islamist extremists outside his home in Amman, and other diplomats have been killed in recent years in Pakistan, Sudan and Iraq. U.S. intelligence officials believe that Americans would probably have been killed if an alleged Iranian plot to kill Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Washington last year had succeeded.

In Azerbaijan, however, embassy officials have been alerted to plots against employees at least three times in the past two years. In each case, the alleged planners were discovered and the threats quietly put down by Azerbaijani authorities, working closely with American counterterrorism officials, according to U.S. and Middle Eastern officials familiar with the incidents. Azerbaijan, a majority-Muslim country of 9 million, has had a troubled history with its much larger neighbor to the south, but it publicly seeks to maintain friendly relations with Iran, whose population is 16 percent ethnic Azerbaijani.

Embassy employees were told little about the threats. Bryza, the ambassador at the time, worked with embassy security officers to quietly tighten procedures while officials in Washington tried to assess the seriousness of the threats, the officials said. Bryza, who left the State Department this year after the Senate blocked confirmation of his re-nomination to the ambassador’s post, declined to comment about the events.

“They were walking a fine line, trying to avoid panic while taking the necessary precautions,” said a former State Department official who dealt regularly with the embassy. “There was a constant operational concern during that time.”

The most recent threat came to light after a foreign spy agency intercepted electronic messages that appeared to describe plans to move weapons and explosives from Iran into Azerbaijan. Some of the messages were traced to an Azerbaijani national named Balagardash Dashdev, a man with an extensive criminal background and, according to a Middle East investigator involved in the case, deep ties to a network of intelligence operatives and militant groups based inside Iran.

Working from inside Iran, officials said, Dashdev in late October began coordinating the shipment of explosives, weapons and cash to Azerbaijani contacts, including relatives and former criminal associates. As U.S. and Middle Eastern intelligence deepened their surveillance, they began to discern what the Middle Eastern investigator described as a “jumble of overlapping plans,” some specifically aimed at Azerbaijan’s small Jewish community and others targeting diplomats and foreign-owned businesses in Baku, the country’s sprawling capital on the Caspian Sea.

During the late fall and early winter, the weapons were smuggled into the country along with at least 10 Iranian nationals recruited to help carry out the plot, U.S. and Middle Eastern officials said.

The Azerbaijani participants had been paid a cash advance and were beginning to conduct surveillance on a list of targets — including a Jewish elementary school, a U.S.-owned fast-food restaurant, an oil company office and “other objects in Baku,” according to a brief statement issued by the Azerbaijani government after a series of raids in which about two dozen alleged accomplices were arrested between January and early March.

The Obama administration acknowledged in March that the U.S. Embassy may have been among the intended targets. But in the months since then, the suspects under questioning revealed extensive details about the “other objects in Baku” that had been on the target list, confirming that the would-be assassins intended to go beyond attacks on buildings.

“They were going after individuals,” said the former State Department official who worked closely with the embassy in Baku. “They had names [of employees]. And they were interested in family members, too.”

The alleged plot leader, Dashdev, would tell investigators that the planned attacks were intended as revenge for the deaths of the Iranian nuclear scientists, attacks that Iran has publicly linked to Israel and the United States. Iran vehemently denied involvement in any assassination plot inside Azerbaijan, and the Iranian Embassy in Baku suggested in a statement that the plot was fiction.

“We believe that the glorious people of Azerbaijan understand that this part of the script of Iranophobia and Islamophobia is organized by the Zionists and the United States,” the statement read. Attempts to contact Iranian officials for additional comments for this article were unsuccessful. Dashdev, who confessed to his role in a videotaped message broadcast on Azerbaijani television, remains in custody and could not be reached for comment. Baku officials have repeatedly accused Iran of stirring up unrest among pro-Iranian extremists to drive a wedge between Azerbaijan’s population and its government, which cooperates closely and openly with Western counterterrorism agencies.

“What we are trying to do is build a strong, independent nation that is a responsible actor,” Elin Suleymanov, Azerbaijan’s ambassador to Washington, said in an interview. “We have told all our friends and neighbors that expressing disagreement in a civilized way is more beneficial than resorting to terrorism or promoting radicalization.”

String of foiled attacks

U.S. and Middle Eastern officials say the Azerbaijan plot fits a pattern seen in numerous other recent attempts linked to Iran. The foiled assassination of Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Washington involved a similar plan to hire criminal gangs — in this case, members of a Mexican drug cartel — to kill a senior diplomat in a public setting, U.S. intelligence officials note.

The report presented to U.S. officials last month asserts extensive links between attempted assassinations of diplomats in five other countries: India, Turkey, Thailand, Pakistan and the former Soviet republic of Georgia. Each attempt was carried out by operatives with direct ties to Iran or Hezbollah and directed against diplomats from countries hostile to Iran, the reports states.

Israeli and Indian officials have described substantial Iranian links to a car bombing in February that seriously wounded the wife of an Israeli diplomat in New Delhi. In that Feb. 13 attack, an assailant on a motorcycle attached a magnet bomb to a diplomatic car in which the woman was riding, injuring her and her driver. Indian police have charged an Indian man — a free-lance journalist working for Iranian news organizations — with organizing the attack with the help of three Iranian nationals who had entered the country.

The next day, an alleged plot to kill Israeli diplomats in Bangkok was thwarted when a bomb being assembled exploded prematurely.

The car bombs prepared for use in both attacks were virtually identical, with a magnetic outer shell that was smuggled into the two countries, to be combined later with C4 military explosives obtained from a still-unknown source. Two of the Iranian nationals allegedly involved in the Bangkok attempt were captured, and they, like the suspects in Azerbaijan, are continuing to provide clues to investigators.

The suspects, thought to be low-level operatives, either do not know or will not say who ordered the attacks, leaving investigators to speculate about how far up within Iran’s government the plots may have originated.

“There is not yet a smoking gun,” said the Western diplomat briefed on the evidence. “But the pattern is clear, and each day the volume of evidence grows.”

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William O. Beeman--More on U.N. Security Council Resolutions against Iran

Many commentators claim that Iran should be denounced, if not attacked for ignoring seven U.N. Security Council Resolutions calling for it to stop uranium enrichment. (Iran has the inalienable right to enrich uranium as granted to it as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The U.N. Resolutions single out Iran as the only Treaty signatory being called on to suspend this inalienable right).

I have been criticized by neoconservatives for calling the U.N. Sanctions into question. 

It is the duty of the Security Council not to make resolutions that are based on unsound premises. It is too bad that the Council is imperfect in this regard. In the Iranian case, the United States has blocked any arguments in the subsequent resolutions that Iran has in fact demonstrated that it has no nuclear weapons program, thus fulfilling the point of the original Resolution 1696 that "confidence building" has indeed been achieved by any objective measure. I invite all  readers to actually read the resolutions. They all point back to the original resolution 1696.

One would think that six years of continual, unbroken, authoritative statements from the United Nations' own bodies as well as the United States and Israeli authorities and reporting organizations that Iran has no nuclear weapons program would provide enough "confidence building." However, the United States and its allies steadfastly ignore the conclusions of their own inspections and intelligence bodies. The vendetta against Iran is so strong and so ideologically driven that it promulgates even nonsensical resolutions.

Not to stray too far from the Iranian case, but I am sure most readers can think of a few Security Council Resolutions denouncing the actions of U.N. member states that he would argue are without foundation. Indeed one need look no further than our own former Ambassador, John Bolton to see reams of criticism of this sort.  I am equally sure that a large number of readers, particularly Republicans, would be able and willing to denounce these resolutions as without substance based on what they may or may not feel about their foundation.

That said, I am in good company in denouncing and pointing out the flaws in Security Council resolutions as much as Ambassador Bolton or numerous members of Congress. It may not change the mindset of those who want to use these Resolutions as some kind of justification for attacking Iran, but I hope it will at least prompt a few people to actually read them rather than invoking them in a ritual manner, and then proclaiming, ex cathedra, that no one dare question them because they don't have the "authority" to do so.

Bill Beeman
University of Minnesota

William O. Beeman--United Nations Resolutions Against Iran have Failed—and for good reason: their basic premise no longer applies

The article below was written in 2008. Nevertheless, commentators STILL claim that Iran's failure to obey Security Council Resolutions calling for suspension of uranium enrichment are justification for sanctions and for attacking Iran militarily. Since this article was written eight IAEA Reports and four National Intelligence Estimates have been released all of which say that there is no evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. Numerous intelligence officials in the United States, Europe and Israel have said the same thing. So why do the media and some politicians keep insisting that Iran is building nuclear weapons? They clearly are using this as an excuse to attack Iran. If it weren't the nuclear issue, it would be something else.

--Bill Beeman

United Nations Resolutions Against Iran have Failed—and for good reason: their basic premise no longer applies

William O. Beeman

The United Nations Security Council Resolution 1696 calling for Iran to suspend nuclear enrichment were passed on July 31, 2006, nearly two years ago. Every sanction and demand placed on Iran since that time has been based on this Resolution and its strengthened re-iteration, Resolution 1737 on December 27.

Clearly after two years the Resolution and its follow-ups have not worked. Iran has not suspended its uranium enrichment activities, and indications this week are that it is not likely to do so in the future. The United States and its reluctant European allies clearly can not put enough pressure on Iran to cause it to abandon what the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which Iran (but not Israel, Pakistan or India) is signatory, is its “inalienable right” to peaceful nuclear development. As long as it does not violate Provision One of the NPT, namely the agreement not to develop nuclear weaponry.

Ironically Security Council Resolution 1696 reaffirms the right to peaceful nuclear development. Since this Resolution has failed, it is worth looking at it again to examine its flaws.

It is first essential to understand the purpose of the resolution, which is stated clearly in points one and two of the Resolution in which the Security Council:

1. Calls upon Iran without further delay to take the steps required by the IAEA Board of Governors in its resolution GOV/2006/14, which are essential to build confidence in the exclusively peaceful purpose of its nuclear programme and to resolve outstanding questions,

2. Demands, in this context, that Iran shall suspend all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, including research and development, to be verified by the IAEA

The IAEA Report on which this resolution was based, GOV/2006/14 was formulated on February 7, 2006, now nearly two and one-half years ago.
What is striking about both the IAEA Report and the UN Resolution is that both call on Iran to suspend its enrichment activities to “build confidence” that Iran is not violating Provision One of the NPT.

However, the world seems to have forgotten that the suspension of uranium enrichment was merely a means to that confidence building, and not an end in itself. The Bush administration now focuses on suspension of enrichment rather than confidence building.  Since enrichment of uranium for nuclear fuel is clearly allowed under the NPT, this creates a paradox, and is the principal flaw in the Resolution. No one talked about alternative means of confidence building, though imaginative diplomacy would certainly have been able to craft such a provision that would have been acceptable to Iran.

More importantly, in two and one half years, a lot has taken place. Most notably, the United States National Intelligence Estimate was published in December 2007 in which it is clearly stated that Iran does not have an active nuclear weapons program.  The IAEA continually reaffirms this estimate, and both Russia and China are in agreement as well.

If Iran does not have a weapons program, it is not in violation of NPT Provision One. There is no need for the confidence building called for in Resolution 1696, and therefore no need for suspension of Iran’s enrichment program.

The anger and public denial of the NIE on the part of President Bush, Vice-President Cheney and others in the Bush administration results from frustration with this situation. And no wonder, the basic reason for the Security Council Resolution has now been completely gutted.  Bush officials spent hours and hours berating, jawboning and cajoling other nations, particularly European Allies, to go along with these Resolutions, and even to implement further sanctions based on them now to no avail.

The deep irony in the situation is that American intelligence itself  has vitiated the very reason for these actions.

Iranians see through this charade. For this reason they refuse to relinquish their treaty rights, and have determined to stand up to the United States. They have earned the anger of the Bush administration, but the admiration—often grudging—of much of the rest of the world.

It is certainly time to revisit the original Resolution 1696 to find new ways to guarantee to the world that Iran is in fact not building weapons. Since there is no evidence whatever that they are, this should be easy, if the United States will only stop trying to force Iran into the impossible choice of giving up an inalienable right in order to satisfy a rapacious U.S. administration bent on its destruction. Appeasement cuts both ways.

William O. Beeman is Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is President of the Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association. His latest book, The “Great Statan” vs. the “Mad Mullahs”: How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other was published in April in an updated edition by the University of Chicago Press.