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Friday, April 20, 2012
Riding a Misinformation Train to War
by Thomas Wark
Commentary by William O. Beeman: Thomas Wark provides a compendium of press mistakes, distortions and misinformation about Iran's nuclear program. The largest media outlets in the nation are regularly engaged in this activity, bringing the United States ever closer to disastrous conflict in the Middle East.
As a body politic, citizens of the United States are among the most misinformed in the world.
More Americans seek information from Fox TV, whose contempt for truth is self-evident, than from any other source. What's far worse, though, is that other sources, including some once held to be virtually unimpeachable, can no longer be trusted. American media, as an entity, have betrayed the mission for which their First Amendment shield was written.
Now, as a result, Americans are once again wallowing toward war in a pigsty of distortion, misunderstanding, ignorance and falsehood. Even as useful bilateral talks continue between the so-called P5+1and Iran, Americans are subject to new rounds of misinformation and misinterpretation. (P5+1 stands for the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council -- France, the United Kingdom, the United States, China and Russia-- plus Germany.) A new report from Media Matters finds that the broadcast news networks — NBC Nightly News, ABC’s World News and CBS’s Evening News — “frequently” distort or exaggerate key information regarding Iran’s nuclear program. “Two egregious misrepresentations in particular repeatedly came up,” the report says, “suggesting that Iran will imminently obtain the bomb and suggesting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has major influence over the country’s nuclear program.” Neither statement is true.
How can so many be so wrong about Iran? Let us count but some of the ways:
The Basics: David Ignatius of the Washington Post wrote that in a possible compromise, " Iran would agree to stop enriching uranium to the 20 percent level and to halt work at an underground facility near Qom built for higher enrichment. Iran would export its stockpile of highly enriched uranium for final processing to 20 percent, for use in medical isotopes. . . ."
Dr. Cyrus Safdari, Michigan State University's Middle East expert: First, Iran does not have a "stockpile of highly enriched uranium". It has a stockpile of low-enriched uranium. Twenty per cent is the upper limit of what is considered to be low-enriched. Second, Iran would not be exporting this stockpile for "final processing to 20%." It would be doing so for processing into nuclear fuel rods (a technology which, Iran has now started to develop indigenously, thus vitiating a need to export the stuff and probably making the issue a better bargaining chip for the Iranians...all thanks to the sanctions on a medical reactor that posed no proliferation threat in the first place.) And the 20% uranium is not "used in medical isotopes" but is instead used to power the reactor that makes isotopes. And I'm at loss as to how Ignatius concluded that Qom is "built for higher enrichment" than 20%. It is not.
The Serious Stuff: The common line in U.S. media is that while Iran asserts that its nuclear work is for peaceful purposes, our leadership suspects that it's really intended to produce weapons. The United States in fact does not suspect this. Its intelligence agencies have said publicly, twice, that there is no evidence that Iran is preparing to build weapons. The International Atomic Energy Agency said it has no evidence of a nuclear weapons program in Iran "now or ever."
Even as the first "constructive and useful" P5+1 talks with Iran were being held,the New York Times published a piece by James Risen that was littered with fallacy and misinterpretation. Quoting "some analysts," Risen wrote that Ayatollah Khamenei's denial that Iran wanted nuclear arms "has to be seen as part of a Shiite historical concept called taqiyya, or religious dissembling. For centuries an oppressed minority within Islam, Shiites learned to conceal their sectarian identity to survive, and so there is a precedent for lying to protect the Shiite community." As usual in this kind of Times piece, we aren't give a clue as to who these "analysts" are. But Juan Cole, one of the top Mideast scholars in the United States, points out that historically, taqiyya was not a license to lie about anything, but permission to conceal one's religious identity in the face of life-threatening sectarian prejudice. He also notes that, in the twentieth century, the tide of Shiite legal opinion ran against taqiyya, and that Imam Khomeini, who led the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, demanded that taqiyya be abandoned. Cole concludes by saying that the taqiyya argument is "just some weird form of Islamophobia."
Risen's article seemed designed to question Khameni's religious edict, or fatwa, banning the possession of nuclear weapons as a sin against Islam, just as top U.N. officials were meeting "constructively" with the Iranians. Risen rehashed old arguments by Iran's adversaries and added some of his own.
Once again on the word of unnamed "analysts," Risen wrote that Khamenei's no-nukes posture was contradicted "by remarks he had made last year 'that it was a mistake for Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya to give up his nuclear weapons program.'"
In fact, Khamenei's remarks referred to "all his (Qaddafi's) nuclear facilities," and not to his nuclear weapons (as Risen reported). Khamenei was making a point that other Iranian leaders frequently make: merely having a nuclear program without nuclear weapons can be a deterrent to attack. They cite the Japanese model as one for Iran to emulate.
Risen wrote that Khamenei's predecessor, Ayatollah Khomeini, reversed his initial opposition to nuclear weapons as inconsistent with Islam in 1984, and "secretly decided to restart the nuclear weapons program." He cited no source for that sweeping accusation.
Gareth Porter, historian and investigative journalist, says he has encountered skeptics who doubt that the Khamenei fatwa even exists. "But," he writes, "even Mehdi Khalaji of the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy acknowledged in an essay published last September that Khamenei's oral statements are considered fatwas and are binding on believers."
Condi Rice's infamous "mushroom cloud" threat from Iraq turned out to be thin blue smoke. But even the so-called "responsible" American media snuffed it up as the real thing.
Dare we let it happen again?
Showing posts with label U.S.-Iranian Relations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label U.S.-Iranian Relations. Show all posts
Saturday, April 21, 2012
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Attacking Iran Makes No Sense, but Netanyahu Might Do It Anyway
Attacking Iran Makes No Sense, but Netanyahu Might Do It Anyway
By all accounts, Israeli and American military officials are clear about one thing: Iran does not possess military weapons, is not likely to have weapons in the near future, and does not constitute an immediate danger to Israel.
The most strenuous objection to an Iranian attack by Israel comes from recently retired Mossad head Meir Dagan, who called attacking Iran “the stupidest thing I have ever heard.” His predecessor, Ephraim Halevy, seconded his assessment. Dagan’s successor, Tamir Pardo, and former Israeli Defense Force Chief of Staff Dan Halutz both declared that Iran is “not an existential threat” to Israel.
And since it is unlikely that Israel could launch such an attack without U.S. approval, the opinions of American officials are equally important.
American concerns hinge on Iran’s nuclear program. Though there is widespread suspicion that Iran may have a nuclear weapons program, there is no evidence that such a program exists. The latest pronouncement came on January 31 from U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who stated in testimony before Congress: “We do not know . . . if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons.”
His assessment echoes that of CIA Director David Petraeus and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta that Iran is not building nuclear weapons at present.
Still, the threat that Israel might attack Iran this spring was renewed by Panetta, and has been the stuff of speculation for several weeks. Speaking to Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, Secretary Panetta said there is a strong likelihood that Israel will strike Iran in April, May or June, expressing concern about this turn of events and the opposition of the United States government to such a strike.
Israeli defense analysts also warn of the danger to Israel itself if the government does the unthinkable and launches a first strike against Iran. According to senior military analysts, more than 15,000 rockets could be launched against Israeli targets in retaliation.
Jerusalem Post military correspondents Yaakov Katz and Melanie Lidman write that every city in Israel could be attacked, including the Port of Haifa and Jerusalem itself — heretofore “immune” from attack because of its many Muslim religious sites. "The threat scenarios,” they add, “are compiled by the Home Front Command and are based on intelligence collected regarding the enemy's intentions as well as its capabilities."
The “Clean Break” Doctrine
So why is Israel continuing to pursue a clearly dangerous course opposed by so many?
The ostensible reason given by Israel is that Iran will be entering a “zone of immunity,” whereby progress on a nuclear weapon will be so extensive and their underground concealment so impregnable that further advances will be unstoppable should they decide to manufacture weapons.
This sounds plausible on the face of it, except for the fact that all of Iran’s nuclear facilities are under inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Every scrap of uranium both enriched and unenriched is under seal. The only underground facility in Iran -- the Fordow plant near the city of Qum -- was declared before any fissile material or equipment was introduced and like all other facilities is under constant inspection.
It is also noteworthy that the IAEA continues to report that Iran has not diverted any radioactive material for military purposes.
For an explanation concerning the continual drumbeat to attack, therefore, one must return to Netanyahu who, during his first term as prime minister in 1996, spoke of the “immediate danger facing Israel.” By “danger” he meant of course Iraq, for which he sought the advice of a group of American neoconservatives who presented a plan on safeguarding Israel’s security.
Titled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” the report was co-authored by a study group under the direction of former United States Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle. The group -- which included Douglas Feith, David and Meyrav Wurmser, James Colbert, Robert Loewenberg and Charles Fairbanks, Jr. – urged regime change throughout the Middle East, beginning with Saddam Hussein and later the governments of Syria and Iran.
The “Clean Break” doctrine was followed by the establishment of the Project for a New American Century, whose members -- including Feith, Perle, and Wurmser augmented by John Bolton, and Meyrav Wurmser -- pushed the agenda of regime change throughout the Middle East. Under George W. Bush these individuals began to set policy—including the first stage of their plan, the removal of Saddam Hussein.
The problem they faced was gaining public credibility and justification for an attack, the solution to which came in the form of “weapons of mass destruction,” which served as the pretext on which the United States invaded Iraq in 2003. It is the pretext with which Israel and its American supporters would attack Iran today.
Israel’s “Great Statesman”
Most of the neoconservatives who concocted this scenario are out of power. They continue to inhabit the think tanks of Washington, appearing ubiquitously in mainstream media. However, Prime Minister Netanyahu, for whom this plan was written, is most definitely in power, and he possesses the red button that could launch the Iranian attack. But would he?
Here one must look at Netanyahu’s temperament. A telling portrait of the Prime Minister was presented by Carlo Strenger in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz on September 9, 2010.
“Netanyahu likes to think in large historical contexts,” Stengler writes, “and he likes to model himself along the lines of great statesmen. So far, Churchill has been his favorite, because Bibi thinks of himself as the Churchill that warns the world of Political Islam while the Chamberlains of this world are trying to appease it.”
For Netanyahu, it is a posture replete with hubris and grandiloquence. But he is joined by an equally remarkable partner, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, whose hero is Charles deGaulle—a leader who flew in the face of his own advisers.
Barak, noted Ha’aretz writer Aluf Benn on March 11, 2010, “is now exhorting Netanyahu to be a de Gaulle and not a Churchill, because the British leader merely said ‘no’ and refused to budge, while his counterpart in Paris settled on no less than changing the world.”
The specter of a Churchill and a de Gaulle at the helm in Israel, ignoring their own advisers and convinced they are right and the world is wrong is an extremely dangerous situation. Netanyahu has a 15 year mission to reshape the Middle East that he sees as his destiny—his “Churchill moment.” With Ehud Barak by his side, his politics constitute a perfect match of heedlessness and stubborn pride flying in the face of both facts and reason.
These two prideful men could set the world aflame and insist, as the destruction and mayhem rage after a needless attack on Iran, that their generals, advisers, as well as the world community were all unprincipled fools.
William O. Beeman is Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. He has conducted research in the Middle East for more than 40 years. He is author of The “Great Satan” vs. the “Mad Mullahs”: How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other
The most strenuous objection to an Iranian attack by Israel comes from recently retired Mossad head Meir Dagan, who called attacking Iran “the stupidest thing I have ever heard.” His predecessor, Ephraim Halevy, seconded his assessment. Dagan’s successor, Tamir Pardo, and former Israeli Defense Force Chief of Staff Dan Halutz both declared that Iran is “not an existential threat” to Israel.
And since it is unlikely that Israel could launch such an attack without U.S. approval, the opinions of American officials are equally important.
American concerns hinge on Iran’s nuclear program. Though there is widespread suspicion that Iran may have a nuclear weapons program, there is no evidence that such a program exists. The latest pronouncement came on January 31 from U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who stated in testimony before Congress: “We do not know . . . if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons.”
His assessment echoes that of CIA Director David Petraeus and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta that Iran is not building nuclear weapons at present.
Still, the threat that Israel might attack Iran this spring was renewed by Panetta, and has been the stuff of speculation for several weeks. Speaking to Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, Secretary Panetta said there is a strong likelihood that Israel will strike Iran in April, May or June, expressing concern about this turn of events and the opposition of the United States government to such a strike.
Israeli defense analysts also warn of the danger to Israel itself if the government does the unthinkable and launches a first strike against Iran. According to senior military analysts, more than 15,000 rockets could be launched against Israeli targets in retaliation.
Jerusalem Post military correspondents Yaakov Katz and Melanie Lidman write that every city in Israel could be attacked, including the Port of Haifa and Jerusalem itself — heretofore “immune” from attack because of its many Muslim religious sites. "The threat scenarios,” they add, “are compiled by the Home Front Command and are based on intelligence collected regarding the enemy's intentions as well as its capabilities."
The “Clean Break” Doctrine
So why is Israel continuing to pursue a clearly dangerous course opposed by so many?
The ostensible reason given by Israel is that Iran will be entering a “zone of immunity,” whereby progress on a nuclear weapon will be so extensive and their underground concealment so impregnable that further advances will be unstoppable should they decide to manufacture weapons.
This sounds plausible on the face of it, except for the fact that all of Iran’s nuclear facilities are under inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Every scrap of uranium both enriched and unenriched is under seal. The only underground facility in Iran -- the Fordow plant near the city of Qum -- was declared before any fissile material or equipment was introduced and like all other facilities is under constant inspection.
It is also noteworthy that the IAEA continues to report that Iran has not diverted any radioactive material for military purposes.
For an explanation concerning the continual drumbeat to attack, therefore, one must return to Netanyahu who, during his first term as prime minister in 1996, spoke of the “immediate danger facing Israel.” By “danger” he meant of course Iraq, for which he sought the advice of a group of American neoconservatives who presented a plan on safeguarding Israel’s security.
Titled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” the report was co-authored by a study group under the direction of former United States Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle. The group -- which included Douglas Feith, David and Meyrav Wurmser, James Colbert, Robert Loewenberg and Charles Fairbanks, Jr. – urged regime change throughout the Middle East, beginning with Saddam Hussein and later the governments of Syria and Iran.
The “Clean Break” doctrine was followed by the establishment of the Project for a New American Century, whose members -- including Feith, Perle, and Wurmser augmented by John Bolton, and Meyrav Wurmser -- pushed the agenda of regime change throughout the Middle East. Under George W. Bush these individuals began to set policy—including the first stage of their plan, the removal of Saddam Hussein.
The problem they faced was gaining public credibility and justification for an attack, the solution to which came in the form of “weapons of mass destruction,” which served as the pretext on which the United States invaded Iraq in 2003. It is the pretext with which Israel and its American supporters would attack Iran today.
Israel’s “Great Statesman”
Most of the neoconservatives who concocted this scenario are out of power. They continue to inhabit the think tanks of Washington, appearing ubiquitously in mainstream media. However, Prime Minister Netanyahu, for whom this plan was written, is most definitely in power, and he possesses the red button that could launch the Iranian attack. But would he?
Here one must look at Netanyahu’s temperament. A telling portrait of the Prime Minister was presented by Carlo Strenger in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz on September 9, 2010.
“Netanyahu likes to think in large historical contexts,” Stengler writes, “and he likes to model himself along the lines of great statesmen. So far, Churchill has been his favorite, because Bibi thinks of himself as the Churchill that warns the world of Political Islam while the Chamberlains of this world are trying to appease it.”
For Netanyahu, it is a posture replete with hubris and grandiloquence. But he is joined by an equally remarkable partner, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, whose hero is Charles deGaulle—a leader who flew in the face of his own advisers.
Barak, noted Ha’aretz writer Aluf Benn on March 11, 2010, “is now exhorting Netanyahu to be a de Gaulle and not a Churchill, because the British leader merely said ‘no’ and refused to budge, while his counterpart in Paris settled on no less than changing the world.”
The specter of a Churchill and a de Gaulle at the helm in Israel, ignoring their own advisers and convinced they are right and the world is wrong is an extremely dangerous situation. Netanyahu has a 15 year mission to reshape the Middle East that he sees as his destiny—his “Churchill moment.” With Ehud Barak by his side, his politics constitute a perfect match of heedlessness and stubborn pride flying in the face of both facts and reason.
These two prideful men could set the world aflame and insist, as the destruction and mayhem rage after a needless attack on Iran, that their generals, advisers, as well as the world community were all unprincipled fools.
William O. Beeman is Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. He has conducted research in the Middle East for more than 40 years. He is author of The “Great Satan” vs. the “Mad Mullahs”: How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Do You Feel Your Strings Being Pulled --Again? (Interview with William O. Beeman)
http://bordellopianist.blogspot.com/
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Do You Feel Your Strings Being Pulled -- Again?
The media branch of the Great American War machine has just dropped a bunker-busting propaganda bomb. The New York Times Magazine virtually declared war against Iran on behalf of Israel in this week's cover story by Ronen Bergman, an Israeli journalist.
"Israel vs. Iran," the cover graphic shouts, and the subtitle asks not "if" but "When will it erupt?" Bergman's answer: sometime in 2012. Why? Because, according to Bergman, Israel's leaders believe that the three conditions for attacking Iran have been met. The conditions are (1) that Israel is capable of "severely damaging Iran's nuclear sites" and of withstanding the inevitable counterattack; (2) there is at least tacit support from the international community, especially the United States and (3) all other possibiities for "the containment of Iran's nuclear threat" have been exhausted; war is the last resort.
This comes immediately on the heels of a magazine piece by the Times's former executive editor, Bill Keller, headlined "'Bomb-bomb-Bomb, Bomb-Bomb-Iran?'" The Times's main news section has published, often under misleading headlines, stories by David Sanger, Erick Schmitt and Steven Elranger that contained distortions, questionable interpretations or outright falsehoods. For just one example, on Jan. 4, Erlanger wrote:
"The threats from Iran, aimed both at the West and at Israel, combined with a recent assessment by the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran's nuclear program has a military objective, is becoming an important issue in the American presidential campaign."
Twice on the main page introducing Bergman's article last Sunday, Times editors used the phrase "Iran's nuclear threat" as if it were an accepted fact.
It is not. Washington Post Ombudsman Patrick Pexton: "The IAEA report does not say Iran has a bomb, nor does it say it is building one, only that its multi-year effort pursuing nuclear technology is sophisticated and broad enough that it could be consistent with building a bomb." William O. Beeman, professor and chair of anthropology and specialist in Middle East studies at the University of Minnesota: "Israeli and American officials state flatly that Iran does not have a nuclear weapon, and is not likely to have one soon. There is no evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program, and the opinion of the U.S. intelligence community, the Obama administration, and the latest IAEA report is that Iran’s enrichment is so far civilian in nature." Ira Chernus, author and professor of religious studies at the University of Colorado: "The myth of 'poor little Israel, surrounded by fanatic enemies bent on destroying it' is so pervasive here in the U.S., most readers might easily take this Iranophobic article at face value, forgetting the absurd premises underlying all arguments that Israel 'must' attack Iran."
Early in the Times magazine article, Bergman quotes Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak: "The Iranians are, after all, a nation whose leaders have set themselves a strategic goal of wiping Israel off the map." This is quotational abuse equivalent to "hoist on his own petard" (Shakespeare wrote "with") and "play it again, Sam" (Bogart said, "Play it, Sam. Play, 'As Time Goes By.') Dead wrong, but in the language to stay.
Beeman again: "The quote about wiping Israel off the map is inaccurate. It was an old quote from Ayatollah Khomeini in 1978. It is a wish or desire expressed in the subjunctive, and there are several possible translations, but none of them call for wiping Israel off the map. Here is the original Persian: een rezhim-e eshghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad::
"One translation would be 'The regime occupying Jerusalem should (eventually) disappear from the pages of time.' Because it is subjunctive, it could also be seen as a wish or a hope: 'May it be that the regime occupying Jerusalem disappear from the pages of time.' However it is translated, it is not a policy or directive or anything that could be seen as a threat or a call to action. This is one of the most abused and misused pieces of propaganda for the last six years. I am thoroughly sick of hearing it misquoted by people who obviously know better, and more importantly being used as an excuse to justify attacking Iran. Shame on everyone, especially Ehud Barak, for indulging in this ongoing lie."
Last night, CNN rejoined the war chorus, with a "special report" on Iran full of dire language, which even trotted out one of those retired military officers who are paid by the Pentagon to lobby for war. During the segments I saw there was no one who represented the views of Beeman, Chernus or John Glaser of the Anti-War Forum.
Beeman did score several important points in a recent debate on Real News Radio with Leonard Spector, deputy director of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies. It was a wide-ranging discussion, rich in technical detail.
After raising the straw man of what Iran "could do" with its current uranium enrichment program in terms of "possibly" developing a weapon, Spector acknowledged that "Mr. Beeman may be correct that by the letter of the law, perhaps they are within bounds in some of these areas, but when you see all of these things piling up, nobody can be comfortable about it."
Beeman responded that "the letter of the law, is precisely the point. And what Iran is saying to the world community is, we are signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and you are not allowing us to exercise our rights; you are forcing us to do something that no other signatory to the treaty has been asked to do, and that is to stop enriching uranium, which is our inalienable right--and I use that word very carefully, because it's in the preamble to the NPT: it is their inalienable right to enrich uranium, or to do anything, really, for peaceful purposes.
"There are about 20 other nations who have exactly the same capability. They've been doing exactly the same things. Japan . . . is developing the capacity to develop nuclear weapons. They declare it. They're quite open about it. And the United States doesn't worry at all about Japan's capacity to build nuclear weapons, even though they're even far more advanced in this than Iran. But I wanted to go back to the question about the enrichment of uranium. You're talking about an enrichment to 20 percent of uranium. And Iran several years ago . . . said that they were running out of uranium, running out of isotope generators for the treatment of cancer. You may not know this, but Iran is a major provider of medical services for the entire region. There's medical tourism going on to Iran all the time, because their treatment of medical problems is superior to almost everybody in the region. They declared to the United States two years before they began to enrich uranium to 20 percent that they were running out of these isotopes, which had been provided . . . by the United States many years ago. And so the United States said, well, we're not going to give you any more enriched uranium. And so the Iranians started to do it themselves. Iran has a few thousand centrifuges. They need sixty or seventy thousand centrifuges in order to be able to enrich things to (weapons grade) 90 percent. We're talking about something that is theoretically way down the road."
The Times magazine article generated a huge barrage of comments before the comments were cut off. One commenter wondered what section of international law entitles one country to wage war upon another because of what it "could" or "might" or "might become capable of" doing ?
There is no such law, of course. But neither is there an iota of law to support many other wrongful aspects of American foreign policy under Bush II or Obama.
American media, resuming their enabler role in the run-up to the Iraq invasion, don't want to raise the difficult questions that Beeman, Chernus, Glaser and many others are raising about Iran's alleged nuclear program.
What folly. What madness.
1 comments "Israel vs. Iran," the cover graphic shouts, and the subtitle asks not "if" but "When will it erupt?" Bergman's answer: sometime in 2012. Why? Because, according to Bergman, Israel's leaders believe that the three conditions for attacking Iran have been met. The conditions are (1) that Israel is capable of "severely damaging Iran's nuclear sites" and of withstanding the inevitable counterattack; (2) there is at least tacit support from the international community, especially the United States and (3) all other possibiities for "the containment of Iran's nuclear threat" have been exhausted; war is the last resort.
This comes immediately on the heels of a magazine piece by the Times's former executive editor, Bill Keller, headlined "'Bomb-bomb-Bomb, Bomb-Bomb-Iran?'" The Times's main news section has published, often under misleading headlines, stories by David Sanger, Erick Schmitt and Steven Elranger that contained distortions, questionable interpretations or outright falsehoods. For just one example, on Jan. 4, Erlanger wrote:
"The threats from Iran, aimed both at the West and at Israel, combined with a recent assessment by the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran's nuclear program has a military objective, is becoming an important issue in the American presidential campaign."
Twice on the main page introducing Bergman's article last Sunday, Times editors used the phrase "Iran's nuclear threat" as if it were an accepted fact.
It is not. Washington Post Ombudsman Patrick Pexton: "The IAEA report does not say Iran has a bomb, nor does it say it is building one, only that its multi-year effort pursuing nuclear technology is sophisticated and broad enough that it could be consistent with building a bomb." William O. Beeman, professor and chair of anthropology and specialist in Middle East studies at the University of Minnesota: "Israeli and American officials state flatly that Iran does not have a nuclear weapon, and is not likely to have one soon. There is no evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program, and the opinion of the U.S. intelligence community, the Obama administration, and the latest IAEA report is that Iran’s enrichment is so far civilian in nature." Ira Chernus, author and professor of religious studies at the University of Colorado: "The myth of 'poor little Israel, surrounded by fanatic enemies bent on destroying it' is so pervasive here in the U.S., most readers might easily take this Iranophobic article at face value, forgetting the absurd premises underlying all arguments that Israel 'must' attack Iran."
Early in the Times magazine article, Bergman quotes Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak: "The Iranians are, after all, a nation whose leaders have set themselves a strategic goal of wiping Israel off the map." This is quotational abuse equivalent to "hoist on his own petard" (Shakespeare wrote "with") and "play it again, Sam" (Bogart said, "Play it, Sam. Play, 'As Time Goes By.') Dead wrong, but in the language to stay.
Beeman again: "The quote about wiping Israel off the map is inaccurate. It was an old quote from Ayatollah Khomeini in 1978. It is a wish or desire expressed in the subjunctive, and there are several possible translations, but none of them call for wiping Israel off the map. Here is the original Persian: een rezhim-e eshghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad::
"One translation would be 'The regime occupying Jerusalem should (eventually) disappear from the pages of time.' Because it is subjunctive, it could also be seen as a wish or a hope: 'May it be that the regime occupying Jerusalem disappear from the pages of time.' However it is translated, it is not a policy or directive or anything that could be seen as a threat or a call to action. This is one of the most abused and misused pieces of propaganda for the last six years. I am thoroughly sick of hearing it misquoted by people who obviously know better, and more importantly being used as an excuse to justify attacking Iran. Shame on everyone, especially Ehud Barak, for indulging in this ongoing lie."
Last night, CNN rejoined the war chorus, with a "special report" on Iran full of dire language, which even trotted out one of those retired military officers who are paid by the Pentagon to lobby for war. During the segments I saw there was no one who represented the views of Beeman, Chernus or John Glaser of the Anti-War Forum.
Beeman did score several important points in a recent debate on Real News Radio with Leonard Spector, deputy director of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies. It was a wide-ranging discussion, rich in technical detail.
After raising the straw man of what Iran "could do" with its current uranium enrichment program in terms of "possibly" developing a weapon, Spector acknowledged that "Mr. Beeman may be correct that by the letter of the law, perhaps they are within bounds in some of these areas, but when you see all of these things piling up, nobody can be comfortable about it."
Beeman responded that "the letter of the law, is precisely the point. And what Iran is saying to the world community is, we are signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and you are not allowing us to exercise our rights; you are forcing us to do something that no other signatory to the treaty has been asked to do, and that is to stop enriching uranium, which is our inalienable right--and I use that word very carefully, because it's in the preamble to the NPT: it is their inalienable right to enrich uranium, or to do anything, really, for peaceful purposes.
"There are about 20 other nations who have exactly the same capability. They've been doing exactly the same things. Japan . . . is developing the capacity to develop nuclear weapons. They declare it. They're quite open about it. And the United States doesn't worry at all about Japan's capacity to build nuclear weapons, even though they're even far more advanced in this than Iran. But I wanted to go back to the question about the enrichment of uranium. You're talking about an enrichment to 20 percent of uranium. And Iran several years ago . . . said that they were running out of uranium, running out of isotope generators for the treatment of cancer. You may not know this, but Iran is a major provider of medical services for the entire region. There's medical tourism going on to Iran all the time, because their treatment of medical problems is superior to almost everybody in the region. They declared to the United States two years before they began to enrich uranium to 20 percent that they were running out of these isotopes, which had been provided . . . by the United States many years ago. And so the United States said, well, we're not going to give you any more enriched uranium. And so the Iranians started to do it themselves. Iran has a few thousand centrifuges. They need sixty or seventy thousand centrifuges in order to be able to enrich things to (weapons grade) 90 percent. We're talking about something that is theoretically way down the road."
The Times magazine article generated a huge barrage of comments before the comments were cut off. One commenter wondered what section of international law entitles one country to wage war upon another because of what it "could" or "might" or "might become capable of" doing ?
There is no such law, of course. But neither is there an iota of law to support many other wrongful aspects of American foreign policy under Bush II or Obama.
American media, resuming their enabler role in the run-up to the Iraq invasion, don't want to raise the difficult questions that Beeman, Chernus, Glaser and many others are raising about Iran's alleged nuclear program.
What folly. What madness.
Thomas Wark is a retired newspaper editor: New York Times, Detroit Free Press, Philadelphia Inquirer.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
William O. Beeman--Response to Reuel Marc Gerecht "Help Iran's Reformers"
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/24/opinion/l24iran.html?ref=letters
June 23, 2010
Help Iran’s Reformers?
To the Editor:
Reuel Marc Gerecht correctly assesses the winds of change in the Green movement in Iran (“Iran’s Revolution: Year 2,” Op-Ed, June 15), but he is wrong about the ability of the United States to effectively aid that movement.
Sadly, decades of United States interference in Iranian affairs have guaranteed that any official American support of an Iranian reform movement will poison that movement with the plausible accusation of another round of American desire to dominate Iran.
This happened in 1953 with the C.I.A.-engineered overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, in the 1980s with the tilt toward Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war, and today in the United States-led move to curtail Iran’s nuclear energy program.
The reformers have said clearly and repeatedly that they don’t want our “help.” So why would we force it upon them — only to guarantee their failure through invidious association with us?
Iranians are not children. Political evolution in the Islamic Republic is the only way to guarantee permanent reform.
William O. Beeman
London, June 15, 2010
The writer, professor and chairman of the department of anthropology at the University of Minnesota, is the author of “The ‘Great Satan’ vs. the ‘Mad Mullahs’: How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other.”
(A version of this letter appeared in print on June 24, 2010, on page A32 of the New York edition.)
June 23, 2010
Help Iran’s Reformers?
To the Editor:
Reuel Marc Gerecht correctly assesses the winds of change in the Green movement in Iran (“Iran’s Revolution: Year 2,” Op-Ed, June 15), but he is wrong about the ability of the United States to effectively aid that movement.
Sadly, decades of United States interference in Iranian affairs have guaranteed that any official American support of an Iranian reform movement will poison that movement with the plausible accusation of another round of American desire to dominate Iran.
This happened in 1953 with the C.I.A.-engineered overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, in the 1980s with the tilt toward Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war, and today in the United States-led move to curtail Iran’s nuclear energy program.
The reformers have said clearly and repeatedly that they don’t want our “help.” So why would we force it upon them — only to guarantee their failure through invidious association with us?
Iranians are not children. Political evolution in the Islamic Republic is the only way to guarantee permanent reform.
William O. Beeman
London, June 15, 2010
The writer, professor and chairman of the department of anthropology at the University of Minnesota, is the author of “The ‘Great Satan’ vs. the ‘Mad Mullahs’: How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other.”
(A version of this letter appeared in print on June 24, 2010, on page A32 of the New York edition.)
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
William O. Beeman--Oh Those Diabolically Tricky Iranians!
Oh, those Diabolically Tricky Iranians!
Driven to Distraction, the U.S. Engages in Schoolyard Behavior on Iran
William O. Beeman
It is bizarre watching the Washington talking heads falling all over
themselves trying to condemn Iran for actually taking up the American
offer to move their Low Enriched Uranium (LEU) to a third country. Oh those tricky Iranians! They actually accepted the American offer just as it was presented, and (gasp) they had the audacity to accept it while it was still on the table. Oh how diabolical! And then they went ahead and kept on enriching uranium so the American offer looked a lot less attractive to the West then it did in October.
And they did it for all the wrong reasons. They didn't cringe under American pressure like they were supposed to! They had a friendly talk with Turkey and Brazil and in total disrespect for the big American stick, agreed through the underhanded sneakiness of actual negotiations.
How purely evil. They should have stood still until we could beat them to a bloody pulp instead of this unsportsmanlike dodging and weaving. This left the White House sputtering, wheezing and gasping about how untrustworthy they were, and no one believed their intentions anyway.
My friends, sometimes we make bad bargains, and if the U.S. thinks that this is a bad bargain now, why did American officials offer it in the first place? Now Washington is stuck with egg on its face, its silly sanctions policy in shambles and risking offending Brazil and Turkey, upon whom it depends to carry out the sanctions policy. Russia now has the perfect excuse to escape the thumscrews Washington was putting on it, and China--well, forget it!
When are we going to stop playing schoolyard games with Iran and get down to real diplomacy? This is truly embarrassing behavior. Tit-for-tat, insults hurled, snippy rhetoric, take-backs. Honestly, seven year olds know how to play nicer than this.
What makes the entire exercise utterly silly is that Iran poses zero nuclear danger to anyone. The hyper-ventilation of commentators spouting hypothetical fantasy scenarios of Iran suddenly dropping the NPT and rolling out a bomb the next day from their secret undetected caves is worthy of ten Tom Clancy's. We have so much to gain by cooperating with Iran, including increased influence over their human-rights record. Why are we spinning our wheels in this useless and childish manner?
Bill BeemanUniversity of Minnesota
Driven to Distraction, the U.S. Engages in Schoolyard Behavior on Iran
William O. Beeman
It is bizarre watching the Washington talking heads falling all over
themselves trying to condemn Iran for actually taking up the American
offer to move their Low Enriched Uranium (LEU) to a third country. Oh those tricky Iranians! They actually accepted the American offer just as it was presented, and (gasp) they had the audacity to accept it while it was still on the table. Oh how diabolical! And then they went ahead and kept on enriching uranium so the American offer looked a lot less attractive to the West then it did in October.
And they did it for all the wrong reasons. They didn't cringe under American pressure like they were supposed to! They had a friendly talk with Turkey and Brazil and in total disrespect for the big American stick, agreed through the underhanded sneakiness of actual negotiations.
How purely evil. They should have stood still until we could beat them to a bloody pulp instead of this unsportsmanlike dodging and weaving. This left the White House sputtering, wheezing and gasping about how untrustworthy they were, and no one believed their intentions anyway.
My friends, sometimes we make bad bargains, and if the U.S. thinks that this is a bad bargain now, why did American officials offer it in the first place? Now Washington is stuck with egg on its face, its silly sanctions policy in shambles and risking offending Brazil and Turkey, upon whom it depends to carry out the sanctions policy. Russia now has the perfect excuse to escape the thumscrews Washington was putting on it, and China--well, forget it!
When are we going to stop playing schoolyard games with Iran and get down to real diplomacy? This is truly embarrassing behavior. Tit-for-tat, insults hurled, snippy rhetoric, take-backs. Honestly, seven year olds know how to play nicer than this.
What makes the entire exercise utterly silly is that Iran poses zero nuclear danger to anyone. The hyper-ventilation of commentators spouting hypothetical fantasy scenarios of Iran suddenly dropping the NPT and rolling out a bomb the next day from their secret undetected caves is worthy of ten Tom Clancy's. We have so much to gain by cooperating with Iran, including increased influence over their human-rights record. Why are we spinning our wheels in this useless and childish manner?
Bill BeemanUniversity of Minnesota
Thursday, December 31, 2009
William O. Beeman--Iran's Uncertain Future (New America Media)
Iran’s Uncertain Future
New America Media, News analysis,
William O. Beeman, Posted: Dec 31, 2009 
It is now clear that the population of Iran is in full revolt against its leaders. There is a better than even chance that the government will fall before summer. Sadly, there is no clear successor leadership on the horizon. This may prove to be the worst of all possible revolutions—a leaderless coup often leads to a regime that feeds on itself.
The current governmental regime in Tehran, including spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamene’i and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have made error after error in dealing with the opposition. Iran is a hierarchical society. Persons in high positions are paradoxically in the most fragile positions. Either they must support their followers, or be toppled from power.
The government has, in the face of the questionable presidential elections in June, repressed, murdered and incarcerated thousands of legitimate protestors. They have jailed former architects of the Revolution of 1978-79 that toppled Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and former government officials such as ex-Foreign Minister, Dr. Ibrahim Yazdi. These actions are a betrayal of the social ties that bind political leaders to their followers. In essence, Iran’s political elite has utterly lost its public support. There is no other possible result than that they leave the scene.
The situation has been exacerbated by the confluence of this repression with the annual observances of the martyrdom of Imam Hossein, grandson of the Prophet Mohammad. Hossein’s legitimacy to rule the Islamic community was opposed by the Umayyid Caliph, Yazid. Yazid then ordered his army to Kerbala where Hossein was encamped with his family. The male members of Hossein’s clan were beheaded and the women and children led into captivity in the Umayyid capital, Damascus.
Now the public is equating opposition candidate Mir-Hossein Musavi with Imam Hossein. They chant “Ya Hossein, Ya Mir-Hossein” in their opposition marches. Ayatollah Khamene’i is now equated directly with the Caliph, Yazid in street slogans and banners. Currency is being defaced with insults against the government. As veteran Middle East commentator, Robin Wright, has noted, the current Iranian resistance “is arguably the most vibrant and imaginative civil disobedience campaign anywhere in the world today.”
However, should Ayatollah Khamene’i, President Ahmadinejad and other high officials be toppled from power, it is unclear who will replace them. The opposition candidate, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, has proved to be utterly feckless as a leader. His fortunes only improved shortly before the June election when he suddenly was seen as a viable opponent for the increasingly unpopular President Ahmadinejad. Since the election he has been more a follower than a leader. In fact, his wife, the intrepid Dr. Zahra Rahnavard, who apparently organized his campaign, emerged as a greater political force.
Ayatollah Ali-Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, former President and supreme political operative also engineered Mousavi’s campaign. Usually outspoken, he has been exceptionally cautious in recent weeks, and his relatives have been terrorized by Tehran’s leaders. Now in his 70’s, it is unclear that he could emerge as a strong leader in a new government.
There is also the sticky business of the bedrock principle of the Islamic Republic, the “Velayat-e Faqih,” or “Regency of the Chief Jurisprudent.” It is this principle that legitimizes the supreme authority of Ayatollah Khamene’i, who is said to be ruling as regent, or substitute for the 9th Century Imam, Mohammad al-Mahdi, who is believed to be alive, but “in occultation,” until the Day of Judgment. This doctrine was established by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini after the 1978-79 Revolution and is ensconced in the Iranian Constitution. If Ayatollah Khamene’i is toppled from power, either the constitution must be scrapped, or a successor must be found. Most religious leaders reject this doctrine today—a fact that has already created a de facto constitutional crisis.
Humanity has seen leaderless revolutions before, and they don’t turn out well. Those vying for power early on are condemned by those who arise after them. There is a perpetual scramble for both power and control of the ideology of the revolution. Much blood flows, and decades can pass before order is restored.
In light of this situation, the Obama administration is wise to stand aside and wait before making any commitments to the present power elite. More importantly, it behooves the administration to start preparing for a post-revolutionary phase, making sure that U.S. actions do not alienate the Iranian public or those who will accede to power.
Sadly, the U.S. Congress is not as wise as the executive branch. Still stuck with a crude and inaccurate fetishization of Iran’s nuclear energy program, they are on the brink of approving economic sanctions that will only cement the Iranian public’s already fixed notion that America only wants their nation to sink in misery and failure.
William O. Beeman is professor and chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota, and is past president of the Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association. He has lived and worked in the Middle East for more than 30 years. His most recent book is "'The Great Satan' vs. the 'Mad Mullahs': How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other." (Chicago, 2008).
Friday, August 28, 2009
Nuclear drive a casualty of Iran's turmoil Experts say Tehran is unlikely to speed up its program (L.A. Times)
latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iran-nukes28-2009aug28,0,4625620.story
latimes.com
Nuclear drive a casualty of Iran's turmoil
Experts say Tehran is unlikely to speed up its program, giving the U.S. and its allies more time to work with.
Commentary by William O. Beeman: Iran's nuclear program has served as an excuse for launching an attack on the Islamic Republic since 2003. It is clear that Iran is far away from mastering the fuel cycle that would allow it to create fuel for generation of energy. Iran's attackers use weasel-words like "nuclear weapons development capacity" to make the program seem vastly more threatening than it is. In fact, there is no evidence whatever that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. This does not stop politicians in the United States, Israel and elsewhere from presenting Iranian nuclear weapons development as a fait accompli. As Borzou Daragahi points out, there would be many bumps in the road before Iran could come close to developing a weapon, if such a program actually existed, and the current political turmoil sets the clock back even farther. In the meantime, Pakistan becomes less and less stable every day, and Pakistan has nuclear bombs ready to launch. No one in Washington or Tel Aviv seems to care.
By Borzou Daragahi
August 28, 2009
Reporting from Beirut
Iran's political crisis could prevent the nation from making any swift move to ratchet up its nuclear program, said analysts and officials, giving President Obama and Western allies more time to grapple with the issue.
The chaos over the disputed reelection of hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad brings into question who calls the shots in Tehran, and what any deal with the Islamic Republic involving its nuclear program would look like.
The Obama administration, concerned that Tehran is seeking to amass the materials needed to manufacture nuclear weapons, set an informal deadline of September for Iran to respond positively to an offer to discuss the matter rather than risk new economic sanctions.
"The infighting in Tehran has sent up a smoke screen that further confuses the picture from the outside, and the picture was plenty opaque to begin with," said a U.S. official in Washington who is involved in formulating nuclear policy and spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
Tehran has long insisted that its nuclear research program is meant solely to provide electricity for its growing population. Its production of reactor-grade uranium has become a source of national pride, the atomic symbol emblazoned on the back of Iran's 50,000-rial bills.
But most Western arms-control experts believe Iran is trying to achieve the ability to quickly manufacture a nuclear bomb. And Iran continues to defy United Nations Security Council resolutions demanding that it stop producing the enriched uranium, material that, if further refined, could be turned into the fissile material for a bomb.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, is set to take up its latest quarterly status report on Iran's nuclear program in early September.
In recent weeks, Iran granted IAEA inspectors access to a heavy-water reactor and parts of the country's enrichment facility after previously barring them. The move suggests an effort by Tehran to ease pressure on itself and on its most likely supporters at the Security Council -- Russia and China -- before any new talks on sanctions.
Although Iranian scientists have continued to enrich low-grade uranium during the nation's political crisis, news agencies have reported that Tehran has not taken steps to increase its processing capacity during the last quarter. Experts say that may have more to do with technical quirks than political decisions.
For now, most Iran watchers agree that Tehran will not only be unable to respond positively to the Obama administration's offer of talks, but also is in too much political disarray to make the major decisions necessary to build a nuclear weapon. Such steps would include further enriching its uranium supply to weapons grade, or constructing controversial new facilities for speeding up the process.
"The nuclear dossier has been stalled and is in a stagnant position, with no back or forth moves," said Ahmad Shirzad, an Iranian nuclear scientist and political analyst. "The recent events in Iran put all important decision-making in limbo. The postelection events have not completely unfolded, and Mr. Ahmadinejad has not come to a conclusion what to do."
Iran's 20-year foray into nuclear technology has long benefited from a broad consensus among the nation's political elites, or at least acquiescence by foes of the program. Important institutions such as the Expediency Council, led by Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani; the presidency; the Supreme National Security Council and parliament, along with supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have played a role in the program's creation and sustenance.
Conservative Ahmadinejad likes to take credit for Iran's recent nuclear progress. But Tehran actually relaunched its dormant program under the 1980s premiership of his primary rival, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, and the first breakthroughs on enrichment came during the presidency of Ahmadinejad's reformist predecessor, Mohammad Khatami.
"Nuclear policy has not changed regardless of the domestic problems, as the nuclear policy, like any other strategic policy, was predetermined more than two decades ago," said Ali Khorram, a former Iranian diplomat based in Tehran.
Since the disputed June election, Iran's feuding factions have been preoccupied with political infighting. Rafsanjani skipped Ahmadinejad's inauguration and the president skipped a session of the Expediency Council. At a ceremony honoring the new judiciary chief, who is a conservative rival to Ahmadinejad, the president arrived an hour late and left in haste after delivering a blistering speech calling on the jurist to go after those he termed elitists, alluding to Rafsanjani.
Within Iran's treacherous domestic political arena, any sign of weakness, or of bowing to the West, either by slowing Tehran's missile program or suspending the production of reactor-grade uranium, could be used by rivals to pounce, political analysts say. Therefore, it is likely that the current program, in which reactor-grade nuclear material is processed by at least 5,000 spinning centrifuges, will keep moving forward at its current pace.
"The nuclear program is a touchstone issue for the entire government," said the U.S. official. "No one on either side of the current controversy is going to risk his credibility by even suggesting a change in posture or a substantive pause."
Iran's political hard-liners have made dramatic moves during previous periods of domestic discord. Such measures as stoning women or questioning the Holocaust provoked an international reaction that unified squabbling domestic factions and silenced critics.
But because of the extent of the current political feuding and the stakes involved, experts say, it is unlikely that Tehran will make a dramatic move toward constructing a nuclear weapon.
"It will be hard to get an approval by all concerned," said Jalil Roshandel, an Iran expert at East Carolina University.
Moreover, he said, continued public support of Ahmadinejad's nuclear policies is no longer a given.
"Public opinion is divided, dispersed or, at best, indifferent," he said.
A "breakout" move on the nuclear issue risks not only public scorn, but also tighter sanctions, an embargo on sales of refined petroleum to Tehran or even armed conflict.
Iran's rulers may not want to risk testing the loyalty of an already volatile and angry populace..
"We must remember that the nuclear program is a means to an end," said Meir Javedanfar, an Iran expert based in Tel Aviv. "Khamenei would not sacrifice his regime over it."
Anger over Ahmadinejad's domestic policies has already emboldened figures close to the opposition to speak out more forcefully against his approach on the nuclear issue.
"The Iranian authorities should know what they should expect if they do not enter the negotiations seriously and do not adhere to the repeated resolutions of the Security Council on the suspension of the uranium enrichment program," warned a commentary in the reformist newspaper Mardom Salari.
Internal paralysis, international isolation and stagnant oil prices, analysts say, could work dramatically in the West's favor, giving Tehran the incentive to make a quick deal with the West in order to concentrate on shoring up domestic stability and its faltering economy.
"So far, since the election, Iran seems to be a bit more flexible than before," said Anoush Ehteshami, a professor of international relations at Durham University in Britain.
"Given the current political climate at home, it makes sense to try to contain the nuclear crisis for as long as possible."
But some warn that any deal with Iran's current government would strengthen its legitimacy, betraying an election protest movement that has captured the world's imagination and challenged decades-old ideas about Iran's political realities.
"The Iranian people will never forget if Western liberalism and the international community abandons the Iranian nation's struggle for freedom," said Reza Kaviani, a Tehran-based analyst and opposition supporter.
daragahi@latimes.com
Special correspondent Ramin Mostaghim in Tehran contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times
latimes.com
Nuclear drive a casualty of Iran's turmoil
Experts say Tehran is unlikely to speed up its program, giving the U.S. and its allies more time to work with.
Commentary by William O. Beeman: Iran's nuclear program has served as an excuse for launching an attack on the Islamic Republic since 2003. It is clear that Iran is far away from mastering the fuel cycle that would allow it to create fuel for generation of energy. Iran's attackers use weasel-words like "nuclear weapons development capacity" to make the program seem vastly more threatening than it is. In fact, there is no evidence whatever that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. This does not stop politicians in the United States, Israel and elsewhere from presenting Iranian nuclear weapons development as a fait accompli. As Borzou Daragahi points out, there would be many bumps in the road before Iran could come close to developing a weapon, if such a program actually existed, and the current political turmoil sets the clock back even farther. In the meantime, Pakistan becomes less and less stable every day, and Pakistan has nuclear bombs ready to launch. No one in Washington or Tel Aviv seems to care.
By Borzou Daragahi
August 28, 2009
Reporting from Beirut
Iran's political crisis could prevent the nation from making any swift move to ratchet up its nuclear program, said analysts and officials, giving President Obama and Western allies more time to grapple with the issue.
The chaos over the disputed reelection of hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad brings into question who calls the shots in Tehran, and what any deal with the Islamic Republic involving its nuclear program would look like.
The Obama administration, concerned that Tehran is seeking to amass the materials needed to manufacture nuclear weapons, set an informal deadline of September for Iran to respond positively to an offer to discuss the matter rather than risk new economic sanctions.
"The infighting in Tehran has sent up a smoke screen that further confuses the picture from the outside, and the picture was plenty opaque to begin with," said a U.S. official in Washington who is involved in formulating nuclear policy and spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
Tehran has long insisted that its nuclear research program is meant solely to provide electricity for its growing population. Its production of reactor-grade uranium has become a source of national pride, the atomic symbol emblazoned on the back of Iran's 50,000-rial bills.
But most Western arms-control experts believe Iran is trying to achieve the ability to quickly manufacture a nuclear bomb. And Iran continues to defy United Nations Security Council resolutions demanding that it stop producing the enriched uranium, material that, if further refined, could be turned into the fissile material for a bomb.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, is set to take up its latest quarterly status report on Iran's nuclear program in early September.
In recent weeks, Iran granted IAEA inspectors access to a heavy-water reactor and parts of the country's enrichment facility after previously barring them. The move suggests an effort by Tehran to ease pressure on itself and on its most likely supporters at the Security Council -- Russia and China -- before any new talks on sanctions.
Although Iranian scientists have continued to enrich low-grade uranium during the nation's political crisis, news agencies have reported that Tehran has not taken steps to increase its processing capacity during the last quarter. Experts say that may have more to do with technical quirks than political decisions.
For now, most Iran watchers agree that Tehran will not only be unable to respond positively to the Obama administration's offer of talks, but also is in too much political disarray to make the major decisions necessary to build a nuclear weapon. Such steps would include further enriching its uranium supply to weapons grade, or constructing controversial new facilities for speeding up the process.
"The nuclear dossier has been stalled and is in a stagnant position, with no back or forth moves," said Ahmad Shirzad, an Iranian nuclear scientist and political analyst. "The recent events in Iran put all important decision-making in limbo. The postelection events have not completely unfolded, and Mr. Ahmadinejad has not come to a conclusion what to do."
Iran's 20-year foray into nuclear technology has long benefited from a broad consensus among the nation's political elites, or at least acquiescence by foes of the program. Important institutions such as the Expediency Council, led by Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani; the presidency; the Supreme National Security Council and parliament, along with supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have played a role in the program's creation and sustenance.
Conservative Ahmadinejad likes to take credit for Iran's recent nuclear progress. But Tehran actually relaunched its dormant program under the 1980s premiership of his primary rival, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, and the first breakthroughs on enrichment came during the presidency of Ahmadinejad's reformist predecessor, Mohammad Khatami.
"Nuclear policy has not changed regardless of the domestic problems, as the nuclear policy, like any other strategic policy, was predetermined more than two decades ago," said Ali Khorram, a former Iranian diplomat based in Tehran.
Since the disputed June election, Iran's feuding factions have been preoccupied with political infighting. Rafsanjani skipped Ahmadinejad's inauguration and the president skipped a session of the Expediency Council. At a ceremony honoring the new judiciary chief, who is a conservative rival to Ahmadinejad, the president arrived an hour late and left in haste after delivering a blistering speech calling on the jurist to go after those he termed elitists, alluding to Rafsanjani.
Within Iran's treacherous domestic political arena, any sign of weakness, or of bowing to the West, either by slowing Tehran's missile program or suspending the production of reactor-grade uranium, could be used by rivals to pounce, political analysts say. Therefore, it is likely that the current program, in which reactor-grade nuclear material is processed by at least 5,000 spinning centrifuges, will keep moving forward at its current pace.
"The nuclear program is a touchstone issue for the entire government," said the U.S. official. "No one on either side of the current controversy is going to risk his credibility by even suggesting a change in posture or a substantive pause."
Iran's political hard-liners have made dramatic moves during previous periods of domestic discord. Such measures as stoning women or questioning the Holocaust provoked an international reaction that unified squabbling domestic factions and silenced critics.
But because of the extent of the current political feuding and the stakes involved, experts say, it is unlikely that Tehran will make a dramatic move toward constructing a nuclear weapon.
"It will be hard to get an approval by all concerned," said Jalil Roshandel, an Iran expert at East Carolina University.
Moreover, he said, continued public support of Ahmadinejad's nuclear policies is no longer a given.
"Public opinion is divided, dispersed or, at best, indifferent," he said.
A "breakout" move on the nuclear issue risks not only public scorn, but also tighter sanctions, an embargo on sales of refined petroleum to Tehran or even armed conflict.
Iran's rulers may not want to risk testing the loyalty of an already volatile and angry populace..
"We must remember that the nuclear program is a means to an end," said Meir Javedanfar, an Iran expert based in Tel Aviv. "Khamenei would not sacrifice his regime over it."
Anger over Ahmadinejad's domestic policies has already emboldened figures close to the opposition to speak out more forcefully against his approach on the nuclear issue.
"The Iranian authorities should know what they should expect if they do not enter the negotiations seriously and do not adhere to the repeated resolutions of the Security Council on the suspension of the uranium enrichment program," warned a commentary in the reformist newspaper Mardom Salari.
Internal paralysis, international isolation and stagnant oil prices, analysts say, could work dramatically in the West's favor, giving Tehran the incentive to make a quick deal with the West in order to concentrate on shoring up domestic stability and its faltering economy.
"So far, since the election, Iran seems to be a bit more flexible than before," said Anoush Ehteshami, a professor of international relations at Durham University in Britain.
"Given the current political climate at home, it makes sense to try to contain the nuclear crisis for as long as possible."
But some warn that any deal with Iran's current government would strengthen its legitimacy, betraying an election protest movement that has captured the world's imagination and challenged decades-old ideas about Iran's political realities.
"The Iranian people will never forget if Western liberalism and the international community abandons the Iranian nation's struggle for freedom," said Reza Kaviani, a Tehran-based analyst and opposition supporter.
daragahi@latimes.com
Special correspondent Ramin Mostaghim in Tehran contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
With Each New Assessment, Iran's Nuclear Clock Is Reset Politics Plays a Role in How Intelligence Is Interpreted --(Jewish Daily Forward)
With Each New Assessment, Iran's Nuclear Clock Is Reset
Politics Plays a Role in How Intelligence Is Interpreted
By Gal Beckerman
Published August 19, 2009, issue of August 28, 2009.
Commentary by William O. Beeman: There is no evidence whatever that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. Yet American and Israeli politicians have continually made political hay by claiming that there is one, and that production of an Iranian nuclear bomb is "one year away." This has been going on every year since the early 1990's. Additionally, the Mujaheddin-e Khalk (MEK or MKO), a U.S.-certified terrorist group dedicated to the overthrow of Iran's government continues to curry favor with the west by supplying dubious information about Iran's nuclear intentions. This masquerade needs to be exposed. In the article below from the Jewish Daily Forward, Gal Beckerman points out the chicanery in these claims, and the venal motives of those who make them.
The senior Israeli official's tone was dire. In only a few years, the Iranians would be ready to launch a nuclear bomb. He minced no words. "If Iran is not interrupted in this program by some foreign power, it will have the device in more or less five years."
The year this apocalyptic prediction was made: 1995.
As we all know, Israel survived the year 2000. Iran did not get the bomb. And earlier this month, it was revealed that the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research's latest estimate has pushed that dreaded date back to 2013, when it posits that Iran will finally be able to produce highly enriched uranium, a key ingredient in any nuclear weapon.
Then again, the State Department could be as wrong as that Israeli official back in 1995. To listen to the drumbeat emanating from Tel Aviv, the Iranians are much, much closer. In March, Amos Yadlin, the head of Israeli military intelligence, announced that Iran had "crossed the technological threshold." In only a year, they would be equipped with what they need to build some kind of crude nuclear device.
It's hard to know how to make sense of all these divergent estimates. Though they have become more numerous and more conflicting since the beginning of this year, analyses of Iran's nuclear capabilities have always been a matter of broad interpretation. From the moment that Iran announced in the mid-1980s its intention to launch a nuclear program, intelligence agencies in Israel and the United States - which analysts agree both look at the same raw data - have set and reset the nuclear clock over and over again.
Israeli intelligence, in particular, has announced a "point of no return" almost every year, a continually unfulfilled prediction that some say erodes the credibility of its analysts.
What some see as the fine point of when exactly Iran gets the bomb is not inconsequential. The time frame for both diplomacy and a military response that would have serious ramifications hinge on this question. It is for this reason, a wide range of independent observers agree, that politics has played the most central role in how intelligence on Iran and its nuclear program is interpreted and packaged for the public.
"Clearly the fact that some of these assessments seem to change rather rapidly has fueled the suspicion that much of it is actually politically motivated," said Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council.
The problem, according to Parsi and others, is that the elements that make up any assessment of Iran's actual progress can be read differently.
From a technical standpoint, there are a series of steps on the path toward making a bomb, each of which can be interpreted as the menacing "threshold." Beginning with building large quantities of centrifuges to producing low-enriched uranium and then more highly enriched weapons-grade uranium to finally having a device to launch a bomb, the red lights could start flashing at any point.
By all accounts, Iran has managed to produce low-enriched uranium, possibly enough to make a crude bomb. Low-level enrichment for civilian nuclear uses is legal under international law. But based on its incomplete answers to the International Atomic Energy Agency, world leaders, neighboring countries and many security analysts are deeply concerned that this is not all Iran has in mind. The question of Iranian nuclear weapons development remains murky. According to the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, Iran stopped all work on a nuclear weapons program in 2003. But this piece of intelligence is also disputed.
"This is one of these cases that where you stand determines to a large extent what is your assessment," said Shlomo Brom, a former Brigadier General in the Israeli Army and now senior research fellow and director of the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University. "If you are at the possible receiving end of this thing - and that is the feeling of most Israelis - then you don't want to take chances. You look at the worst possible scenario. It's only if you're in an institute somewhere in the Western world then you can make sober analysis and make predictions based on the more probable assumptions."
Further underlining the degree to which politics plays a role in these predictions is the long history of unrealized Armageddon scenarios - and it is not Israeli intelligence alone that has sounded the alarms.
In 1992, Robert Gates, then director of the CIA, pointedly upended conventional thinking about Iran's nuclear progress when he gave a much shorter time span for attainment of the bomb. "Is it a problem today?" he asked at the time, "probably not. But three, four, five years from now it could be a serious problem."
Another rash of predictions arrived in 1995. When Israeli government officials were quoted in American newspapers talking about a five-year timeline, officials with the Clinton administration quickly countered with qualifications and their own counter predictions. The small conflict led to a meeting in Jerusalem between William Perry, the defense secretary and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. They emerged from their discussions to announce that they were in agreement - Iran would get the bomb in seven to 15 years (next year, that is, at the latest).
Much of the speculation about Iran throughout the 1990s had to do with the possibility that its nuclear program was being boosted with outside help, from Russian loose nukes to technical help from North Korea. At least one of these outside elements did evade American intelligence, the Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan who is known to have aided the Iranians in advancing their program at least twice, in the late 1980s and mid 1990s.
This unknown variable of outside help also allowed for a wide range of timelines.
Throughout the last decade, the warnings have become more dire at the same time that it has become harder to see into what David Albright, a physicist who is president of the Institute for Science and International Security, called "the black box of Iran's decision making." This further unknown - what Iranian leaders intend - is one more fluid element that gives both the skeptics and alarmists an opportunity to project their own thinking and come up with independent predictions.
Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu, for one, views Iran's leadership as "a messianic apocalyptic cult" who will not be deterred by Israel's own nuclear weapons capability. "When the wide-eyed believer gets hold of the reins of power and the weapons of mass death, then the entire world should start worrying, and that is what is happening in Iran," he told the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg in May.
In contrast, Anthony Cordesman, a widely respected Middle East strategic analyst who has worked for both Democratic and Republican administrations, and Abdullah Toukan, an adviser to the late King Hussein of Jordan, present an Iran that is a rational, if hostile, actor, influenced by concrete geopolitical perceptions of its own. These include "unfriendly neighbors surrounding them, including nuclear tipped Pakistan" just to Iran's east; the "grave threat to its security" that Iran sees in America's military presence in Iraq immediately to its west and the presence of the American Fifth Fleet in the Persian Gulf waters lapping its south, the two men wrote in a recent study. This is seen also in the context of what was, until recently, America's declared policy of "regime change," they note. Finally, say Cordesman and Toukan, Iran's fear of "Israeli intentions to destabilize Iran and attack its nuclear facilities," drive it to develop its capabilities all the more.
"The Israelis always like to posit that Iran is one year away," Albright said. "There is an honesty to these assessments because they do have technical analysts in Israel who are looking very closely. They could be talking about a certain number of centrifuges built, a certain type of covert facility, various other things, but it's always one year away."
Many American analysts think these Israeli nightmare scenarios are distracting from what might be the most plausible explanation of Iran's intentions.
Gary Sick served on the National Security Council staff under Presidents Ford, Carter and Reagan and was the principal White House aide for Iran during the Iranian Revolution and the hostage crisis. He believes that Iran has been slowly engaged since the 1970s in building a peaceful civilian nuclear program that has what he called "surge capacity" of 18 months. That is the amount of time it would take for Iran to boost low-enriched uranium for power plants and other non-military uses to highly enriched, weapons-grade uranium and deploy this as an atomic bomb, Sick said.
According to Sick, this interpretation is shared by many other analysts and backed up by statements from those who began the program under the Shah in the 1970s. But others warn that Iran may be developing a nuclear weapon capability secretly that it could deploy much more quickly.
Either way would mean that Iran is seeking a kind of nuclear ambiguity. It wants to be threatening without actually publicly introducing another nuclear weapon into the Middle East - a clear turning point likely only to set off a race by its neighbors to obtain nuclear weapons of their own. It is a position not dissimilar from the one now held by Israel, which still does not publicly disclose that it has the bomb.
Asked why this more nuanced scenario - one that would do nothing to assuage or discredit Israeli fears - is not more widely discussed, Sick answered, "It doesn't sell newspapers."
Contact Gal Beckerman at beckerman@forward.com
Politics Plays a Role in How Intelligence Is Interpreted
By Gal Beckerman
Published August 19, 2009, issue of August 28, 2009.
Commentary by William O. Beeman: There is no evidence whatever that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. Yet American and Israeli politicians have continually made political hay by claiming that there is one, and that production of an Iranian nuclear bomb is "one year away." This has been going on every year since the early 1990's. Additionally, the Mujaheddin-e Khalk (MEK or MKO), a U.S.-certified terrorist group dedicated to the overthrow of Iran's government continues to curry favor with the west by supplying dubious information about Iran's nuclear intentions. This masquerade needs to be exposed. In the article below from the Jewish Daily Forward, Gal Beckerman points out the chicanery in these claims, and the venal motives of those who make them.
The senior Israeli official's tone was dire. In only a few years, the Iranians would be ready to launch a nuclear bomb. He minced no words. "If Iran is not interrupted in this program by some foreign power, it will have the device in more or less five years."
The year this apocalyptic prediction was made: 1995.
As we all know, Israel survived the year 2000. Iran did not get the bomb. And earlier this month, it was revealed that the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research's latest estimate has pushed that dreaded date back to 2013, when it posits that Iran will finally be able to produce highly enriched uranium, a key ingredient in any nuclear weapon.
Then again, the State Department could be as wrong as that Israeli official back in 1995. To listen to the drumbeat emanating from Tel Aviv, the Iranians are much, much closer. In March, Amos Yadlin, the head of Israeli military intelligence, announced that Iran had "crossed the technological threshold." In only a year, they would be equipped with what they need to build some kind of crude nuclear device.
It's hard to know how to make sense of all these divergent estimates. Though they have become more numerous and more conflicting since the beginning of this year, analyses of Iran's nuclear capabilities have always been a matter of broad interpretation. From the moment that Iran announced in the mid-1980s its intention to launch a nuclear program, intelligence agencies in Israel and the United States - which analysts agree both look at the same raw data - have set and reset the nuclear clock over and over again.
Israeli intelligence, in particular, has announced a "point of no return" almost every year, a continually unfulfilled prediction that some say erodes the credibility of its analysts.
What some see as the fine point of when exactly Iran gets the bomb is not inconsequential. The time frame for both diplomacy and a military response that would have serious ramifications hinge on this question. It is for this reason, a wide range of independent observers agree, that politics has played the most central role in how intelligence on Iran and its nuclear program is interpreted and packaged for the public.
"Clearly the fact that some of these assessments seem to change rather rapidly has fueled the suspicion that much of it is actually politically motivated," said Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council.
The problem, according to Parsi and others, is that the elements that make up any assessment of Iran's actual progress can be read differently.
From a technical standpoint, there are a series of steps on the path toward making a bomb, each of which can be interpreted as the menacing "threshold." Beginning with building large quantities of centrifuges to producing low-enriched uranium and then more highly enriched weapons-grade uranium to finally having a device to launch a bomb, the red lights could start flashing at any point.
By all accounts, Iran has managed to produce low-enriched uranium, possibly enough to make a crude bomb. Low-level enrichment for civilian nuclear uses is legal under international law. But based on its incomplete answers to the International Atomic Energy Agency, world leaders, neighboring countries and many security analysts are deeply concerned that this is not all Iran has in mind. The question of Iranian nuclear weapons development remains murky. According to the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, Iran stopped all work on a nuclear weapons program in 2003. But this piece of intelligence is also disputed.
"This is one of these cases that where you stand determines to a large extent what is your assessment," said Shlomo Brom, a former Brigadier General in the Israeli Army and now senior research fellow and director of the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University. "If you are at the possible receiving end of this thing - and that is the feeling of most Israelis - then you don't want to take chances. You look at the worst possible scenario. It's only if you're in an institute somewhere in the Western world then you can make sober analysis and make predictions based on the more probable assumptions."
Further underlining the degree to which politics plays a role in these predictions is the long history of unrealized Armageddon scenarios - and it is not Israeli intelligence alone that has sounded the alarms.
In 1992, Robert Gates, then director of the CIA, pointedly upended conventional thinking about Iran's nuclear progress when he gave a much shorter time span for attainment of the bomb. "Is it a problem today?" he asked at the time, "probably not. But three, four, five years from now it could be a serious problem."
Another rash of predictions arrived in 1995. When Israeli government officials were quoted in American newspapers talking about a five-year timeline, officials with the Clinton administration quickly countered with qualifications and their own counter predictions. The small conflict led to a meeting in Jerusalem between William Perry, the defense secretary and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. They emerged from their discussions to announce that they were in agreement - Iran would get the bomb in seven to 15 years (next year, that is, at the latest).
Much of the speculation about Iran throughout the 1990s had to do with the possibility that its nuclear program was being boosted with outside help, from Russian loose nukes to technical help from North Korea. At least one of these outside elements did evade American intelligence, the Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan who is known to have aided the Iranians in advancing their program at least twice, in the late 1980s and mid 1990s.
This unknown variable of outside help also allowed for a wide range of timelines.
Throughout the last decade, the warnings have become more dire at the same time that it has become harder to see into what David Albright, a physicist who is president of the Institute for Science and International Security, called "the black box of Iran's decision making." This further unknown - what Iranian leaders intend - is one more fluid element that gives both the skeptics and alarmists an opportunity to project their own thinking and come up with independent predictions.
Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu, for one, views Iran's leadership as "a messianic apocalyptic cult" who will not be deterred by Israel's own nuclear weapons capability. "When the wide-eyed believer gets hold of the reins of power and the weapons of mass death, then the entire world should start worrying, and that is what is happening in Iran," he told the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg in May.
In contrast, Anthony Cordesman, a widely respected Middle East strategic analyst who has worked for both Democratic and Republican administrations, and Abdullah Toukan, an adviser to the late King Hussein of Jordan, present an Iran that is a rational, if hostile, actor, influenced by concrete geopolitical perceptions of its own. These include "unfriendly neighbors surrounding them, including nuclear tipped Pakistan" just to Iran's east; the "grave threat to its security" that Iran sees in America's military presence in Iraq immediately to its west and the presence of the American Fifth Fleet in the Persian Gulf waters lapping its south, the two men wrote in a recent study. This is seen also in the context of what was, until recently, America's declared policy of "regime change," they note. Finally, say Cordesman and Toukan, Iran's fear of "Israeli intentions to destabilize Iran and attack its nuclear facilities," drive it to develop its capabilities all the more.
"The Israelis always like to posit that Iran is one year away," Albright said. "There is an honesty to these assessments because they do have technical analysts in Israel who are looking very closely. They could be talking about a certain number of centrifuges built, a certain type of covert facility, various other things, but it's always one year away."
Many American analysts think these Israeli nightmare scenarios are distracting from what might be the most plausible explanation of Iran's intentions.
Gary Sick served on the National Security Council staff under Presidents Ford, Carter and Reagan and was the principal White House aide for Iran during the Iranian Revolution and the hostage crisis. He believes that Iran has been slowly engaged since the 1970s in building a peaceful civilian nuclear program that has what he called "surge capacity" of 18 months. That is the amount of time it would take for Iran to boost low-enriched uranium for power plants and other non-military uses to highly enriched, weapons-grade uranium and deploy this as an atomic bomb, Sick said.
According to Sick, this interpretation is shared by many other analysts and backed up by statements from those who began the program under the Shah in the 1970s. But others warn that Iran may be developing a nuclear weapon capability secretly that it could deploy much more quickly.
Either way would mean that Iran is seeking a kind of nuclear ambiguity. It wants to be threatening without actually publicly introducing another nuclear weapon into the Middle East - a clear turning point likely only to set off a race by its neighbors to obtain nuclear weapons of their own. It is a position not dissimilar from the one now held by Israel, which still does not publicly disclose that it has the bomb.
Asked why this more nuanced scenario - one that would do nothing to assuage or discredit Israeli fears - is not more widely discussed, Sick answered, "It doesn't sell newspapers."
Contact Gal Beckerman at beckerman@forward.com
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