Did Robert Gates Manufacture the Iran Crisis?--Huffington Post--Beeman

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Did Robert Gates Manufacture the Iran Crisis?

Posted: 03/24/2014 1:27 pm EDT Updated: 03/24/2014 1:27 pm EDT

Gareth Porter has been the most conscientious follower of the purported danger of Iran's purported "nuclear weapons program." In his new, meticulously documented book, Manufactured Crisis (New York: Just World Books, 2014) he exposes the many lies and half-truths that have been promulgated over more than two decades to try and convince the American public and the world that Iran is the chief danger to international peace through its nuclear program.

One of Porter's surprising implications is that former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates may have been the prime mover in the 20-year-old attack on Iran based on unsubstantiated claims that Iran is manufacturing nuclear weapons.

Before plunging into the details of Porter's book or his information about Mr. Gates, let me state the book's conclusions unequivocally: Iran has never been proven to have a nuclear weapons program. Any claim to the contrary is absolutely false. The attempt to claim that such a weapons program exists was the result of a decades long effort on the part of American neoconservatives allied with right-wing forces in Israel to legitimize hostile actions against Iran designed to effect regime change there.

Porter's overall account of the evolution of consensus about the threat of Iran's nuclear program is fascinating and appalling reading. It is fascinating because he has created a compelling narrative showing how the framework for attacking Iran compounded lies and misinformation over many years. It appears in this account that Robert Gates had a continuing central role.

Robert Gates had been employed by the CIA since college. He was witness to the Iran-Contra affair under President Reagan, and was called to give testimony about his knowledge of the affair. Despite continual questions about the conduct of the CIA during the 1980's and early 1990's in which he had a central role, Gates rose through the ranks of the intelligence community. He served as Deputy National Security Adviser (1989-1991) -- a promotion from his role as Deputy Director of National Intelligence (1986-1989), and finally became Director of Central Intelligence in 1991 after contentious hearings

One of the most telling episodes in Porter's book concerns President George H.W. Bush. In 1989 he was willing to improve relations with Iran eliminating sanctions that had been in place since the Revolution of 1978-79. At that time American hostages were being held by Shi'a forces in Lebanon. Then Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati intervened, and all American prisoners were released. Bush was grateful and was supported by his National Security Advisor, Brent Snowcroft but suddenly his administration reversed course.

This is the point at which Robert Gates becomes a major player in the attacks against Iran. As Porter describes it, though Snowcroft and Bush wanted improved relations, everyone else on the National Security team -- and one assumes that this includes Gates -- insisted that Iran was "deeply engaged in other acts of terrorism that made it very, very difficult to improve the relationship" (p. 87). Porter goes on to demonstrate that these "other acts of terrorism" were unsubstantiated. Essentially the decision not to go forward with improved relations with Iran was a political one and not based on any proven Iranian actions.

After Gates became CIA Director, the disinformaton about Iran continued. Porter documents that in 1992 it was Gates who first declared in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee on March 27, with no hard evidence, that "Iran is developing a capability to produce weapons of mass destruction," and was "seeking to acquire a nuclear weapons capability." The phrase "nuclear weapons capability" likely originated here.

In this way the juggernaut against Iran was launched. Although the National Intelligence estimate for 1992 declared that Iran would not seriously threaten U.S. interests, Gates' estimate became gospel for the balance of the Bush administration, carrying forward into the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations. Gates' influence was indeed extremely telling.

After the tragedy of September 11, 2001, the George W. Bush administration was dominated by neo-conservatives who had been active since the administration of his father and were anxious to see regime change throughout the Middle East. They ignored the fact that the Iranian nuclear energy program had started in earnest during the last years of the regime of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and declared that Iran had been undertaking "secret" nuclear developments. In fact, these were not at all secret, and had been governed by the rules of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to which Iran and the United States (but not Israel, Pakistan, India or North Korea) were signatories, and which guaranteed Iran the "inalienable right" to the peaceful development of nuclear power.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was charged with carrying out inspections of Iran's nuclear program (and indeed, the nuclear programs of all signatories to the Treaty). They never once found the slightest evidence that Iran had a nuclear weapons program or had diverted any nuclear material for military use.

Still Gates' 10-year old assertion that Iran was seeking to acquire a "nuclear weapons capability," though completely unproven, was seized upon by the neoconservatives who wanted to bring down the Iranian regime.

As Porter documents, the IAEA quickly became politicized. Its head, Mohammad elBaradei was excoriated by the George W. Bush administration who tried to get him fired because he would not assert that Iran was building nuclear weapons. His eventual successor Yukio Amano was more compliant. Though still not able to say that Iran had a demonstrable nuclear weapons program, IAEA reports after he took office used convoluted language to suggest that they "could not eliminate the possibility" that Iran might be building nuclear weapons. Several attempts on Iran's part during the Bush administration to negotiate over misunderstandings of its program were rebuffed by Washington, partially due to those same neoconservatives in his administration, notably John Bolton who served as United Nations Ambassador on a recess appointment during a the crucial period from 2005-2006 and made it his mission to attack Iran with falsehoods at every turn.

Porter presents example after example of the U.S. Press, notably the New York Times, distorting the facts about Iran's nuclear activities. Every action and decision was placed under a microscope, and though Iran had only completed one reactor in development since before the Revolution, and was far from completing any facility for additional generation of nuclear power, the hyperbole in the press made it seem that Iran would have a bomb tomorrow. Lobbying groups such as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) influenced these writings and lobbied the U.S. Congress for more stringent sanctions on Iran with the aim of completely dismantling Iran's forty-year old nuclear program. They also supported military action against Iran either by the United States or by Israel. Porter's book features the famous picture of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pointing to a picture of a Warner Brothers cartoon bomb and inveighing against Iran.

In 2006 President George W. Bush nominated Robert Gates to be secretary of defense. Gates had been serving as president of Texas A&M University, and was persuaded to leave that post to return to national service. He was retained by President Obama after the 2008 election. It is notable that although President Obama had pledged to engage Iran diplomatically, in his first term, no serious diplomatic efforts were undertaken. To the contrary, increased rhetoric claiming that Iran had a nuclear weapons program issued from the White House and the Department of Defense. It was only after then Secretary Gates left office that the Obama administration began to engage in serious diplomatic talks with Iran. This process was aided by the election of Hassan Rowhani as president of Iran and the appointment of Javad Zarif, American educated former Iranian U.N. Ambassador, as Minister of Foreign Relations.

Aside from the intriguing clues to Robert Gates' probable role in constructing a false picture of the Iranian nuclear danger, Porter's book is essential reading for all Americans wary of manufactured paths to war that have become a major theme in U.S. foreign relations after World War II. Porter shows how ideology can distort facts, and be used as a weapon to sway public opinion in directions that are inimical to world interests. As talks with Iran in Vienna over its nuclear program proceed, Porter notes that the Obama administration, only after ridding itself of the extended influence of Robert Gates and his ilk, has finally made attempts to wind down the two decades of baseless attacks on Iran to try and forge a rapprochement. The question remains whether war mongers in Washington, Israel and some nations in Europe will come to their senses and let this happen.

Follow William O. Beeman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/wbeeman

A Tale of Sound and Fury Signifying Nothing--Review of Manufactured Crisis by Gareth Porter (Beeman)

http://womenagainstmilitarymadness.org/newsletter/2014/030414/tale.html A Tale of Sound and Fury Signifying Nothing: Iran’s Nukes Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare by Gareth Porter (New York: Just World Books, 2014)

Reviewed by William O. Beeman

Gareth Porter has been the most conscientious follower of the fantasy danger of Iran’s purported “nuclear weapons program.” In this new, meticulously documented book, he exposes the many lies and half-truths that have been promulgated over more than two decades to try and convince the American public and the world that Iran is the chief danger to international peace. Before plunging into the details of the book, let me state its conclusions unequivocally: Iran has never been proven to have a nuclear weapons program. Any claim to the contrary is absolutely false. The attempt to claim that such a weapons program exists was the result of a decades-long effort on the part of American neoconservatives allied with right-wing forces in Israel to legitimize hostile actions against Iran designed to effect regime change there. Porter’s account is fascinating and appalling reading. It is fascinating because he has created a compelling narrative showing how the framework for attacking Iran in this way evolved over decades. One of the most telling episodes in the book concerns President George H.W. Bush. In 1989 he was willing to improve relations with Iran eliminating sanctions that had been in place since the revolution of 1978-79. At that time American hostages were being held by Shi’a forces in Lebanon. Then Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati intervened, and all American prisoners were released. Bush was grateful and was supported by his national security advisor, Brent Snowcroft, but suddenly his administration reversed course. As Porter describes it, though he and Bush wanted improved relations, everyone else on the national security team insisted that Iran was “deeply engaged in other acts of terrorism that made it very, very difficult to improve the relationship” (p. 87). Porter goes on to demonstrate that these “other acts of terrorism” were unsubstantiated. Essentially the decision not to go forward with improved relations was a political one and not based on any proven Iranian actions. After Robert Gates, who had served on the National Security Council, became CIA director, the disinformaton about Iran continued. Porter documents that in 1992 it was Gates who first declared, with no hard evidence at all, that “Iran is developing a capability to produce weapons of mass destruction,” and was “seeking to acquire a nuclear weapons capability.” In this way the juggernaut against Iran was launched. Although the national intelligence estimate for that year declared that Iran would not seriously threaten U.S. interests, Gates’ estimate became gospel for the balance of the Bush administration, carrying forward into the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations. Gates’ influence was indeed extremely telling. After the tragedy of September 11, 2001, the George W. Bush administration was dominated by neoconservatives who had been active since the administration of his father and were anxious to see regime change throughout the Middle East. They ignored the fact that the Iranian nuclear energy program had started in earnest during the last years of the regime of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and declared that Iran had been undertaking “secret” nuclear developments. In fact, these were not at all secret, and had been governed by the rules of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to which Iran and the United States (but not Israel, Pakistan, India, or North Korea) were signatories, and which guaranteed Iran the “inalienable right” to the peaceful development of nuclear power. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was charged with carrying out inspections of Iran’s nuclear program (and indeed, the nuclear programs of all signatories to the treaty). They never once found the slightest evidence that Iran had a nuclear weapons program or had diverted any nuclear material for military use. Still Gates’ 10-year-old assertion that Iran was seeking to acquire a nuclear weapons capability, though completely unproven, was seized upon by the neoconservatives who wanted to bring down the Iranian regime. As Porter documents, the IAEA quickly became politicized. Its head, Mohamed ElBaradei, was excoriated by the George W. Bush administration, who tried to get him fired because he would not assert that Iran was building nuclear weapons. His eventual successor, Yukio Amano, was more compliant. Though still not able to say that Iran had a demonstrable nuclear weapons program, IAEA reports after he took office used convoluted language to suggest that they “could not eliminate the possibility” that Iran might be building nuclear weapons. Several attempts on Iran’s part during the Bush administration to negotiate over misunderstandings of its program were rebuffed by Washington, partially due to those same neoconservatives in his administration, notably John Bolton, who served as United Nations ambassador on a recess appointment during the crucial period from 2005-2006 and made it his mission to attack Iran with falsehoods at every turn. Porter presents example after example of the U.S. media, most notably The New York Times, distorting the facts about Iran’s nuclear activities. Every action and decision was placed under a microscope, and though Iran had only completed one reactor in development since before the revolution, and was far from completing any facility for additional generation of nuclear power, the hyperbole in the press made it seem that Iran would have a bomb tomorrow. Lobbying groups such as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) influenced these writings and lobbied the U.S. Congress for more stringent sanctions on Iran with the aim of completely dismantling Iran’s 40-year-old nuclear program. They also supported military action against Iran either by the United States or by Israel. Porter’s book features the famous picture of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pointing to a picture of a Warner Brothers cartoon bomb and inveighing against Iran. Porter’s book is essential reading for all Americans wary of the manufactured path to war. It shows how ideology can distort facts, and can be used as a weapon to sway public opinion in directions that are inimical to world interests. As talks with Iran in Vienna over its nuclear program proceed, Porter notes that the Obama administration, only after ridding itself of the extended influence of Robert Gates, has finally made attempts to wind down the two decades of baseless attacks on Iran to try and forge a rapprochement. The question remains whether warmongers in Washington, Israel, and some nations in Europe will come to their senses and let this happen. William O. Beeman is professor of anthropology at the University of Minnesota. He has conducted research in Iran for over 40 years, and is author of The “Great Satan” vs. the “Mad Mullahs”: How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other.

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Have We Already Lost Iran? Flint Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett [New York Times]

The New York Times

May 24, 2009
Op-Ed Contributors
Have We Already Lost Iran?
By FLYNT LEVERETT and HILLARY MANN LEVERETT

Washington

Commentary by William O. Beeman:
The ducks at AIPAC, the American Enterprise Institute, and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) are pecking the Obama administration to death on Iran. Dennis Ross, in particular, as outlined in the article below, is a fifth-column neoconservative connected with WINEP who is trying to make sure that negotiation with Iran fails in anticipation of an eventual military attack on the Islamic Republic. ("We tried everything, and so now we have to bomb them"). Americans should understand that the little rat terriers at these institutions are obsessed with Iran, and will not give up their monomaniacal inability to support any rapprochement between Iran and the West. As long as we have such people in positions of power, the Middle East region will continue to be an unstable and dangerous place.

PRESIDENT OBAMA’S Iran policy has, in all likelihood, already failed. On its present course, the White House’s approach will not stop Tehran’s development of a nuclear fuel program — or, as Iran’s successful test of a medium-range, solid-fuel missile last week underscored, military capacities of other sorts. It will also not provide an alternative to continued antagonism between the United States and Iran — a posture that for 30 years has proved increasingly damaging to the interests of the United States and its allies in the Middle East.

This judgment may seem both premature and overly severe. We do not make it happily. We voted for Barack Obama in 2008, and we still want him to succeed in reversing the deterioration in America’s strategic position. But we also believe that successful diplomacy with Iran is essential to that end. Unless President Obama and his national security team take a fundamentally different approach to Tehran, they will not achieve a breakthrough.

This is a genuine shame, for President Obama had the potential to do so much better for America’s position in the Middle East. In his greeting to “the people and leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran” on the Persian New Year in March, Mr. Obama included language meant to assuage Iranian skepticism about America’s willingness to end efforts to topple the regime and pursue comprehensive diplomacy.

Iranian diplomats have told us that the president’s professed willingness to deal with Iran on the “basis of mutual interest” in an atmosphere of “mutual respect” was particularly well received in Tehran. They say that the quick response of the nation’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — which included the unprecedented statement that “should you change, our behavior will change, too” — was a sincere signal of Iran’s openness to substantive diplomatic proposals from the new American administration.

Unfortunately, Mr. Obama is backing away from the bold steps required to achieve strategic, Nixon-to-China-type rapprochement with Tehran. Administration officials have professed disappointment that Iranian leaders have not responded more warmly to Mr. Obama’s rhetoric. Many say that the detention of the Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi (who was released this month) and Ayatollah Khamenei’s claim last week that America is “fomenting terrorism” inside Iran show that trying to engage Tehran is a fool’s errand.

But this ignores the real reason Iranian leaders have not responded to the new president more enthusiastically: the Obama administration has done nothing to cancel or repudiate an ostensibly covert but well-publicized program, begun in President George W. Bush’s second term, to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to destabilize the Islamic Republic. Under these circumstances, the Iranian government — regardless of who wins the presidential elections on June 12 — will continue to suspect that American intentions toward the Islamic Republic remain, ultimately, hostile.

In this context, the Saberi case should be interpreted not as the work of unspecified “hard-liners” in Tehran out to destroy prospects for improved relations with Washington, but rather as part of the Iranian leadership’s misguided but fundamentally defensive reaction to an American government campaign to bring about regime change. Similarly, Ayatollah Khamenei’s charge that “money, arms and organizations are being used by the Americans directly across our western border to fight the Islamic Republic’s system” reflects legitimate concern about American intentions. Mr. Obama has reinforced this concern by refusing to pursue an American-Iranian “grand bargain” — a comprehensive framework for resolving major bilateral differences and fundamentally realigning relations.

More broadly, President Obama has made several policy and personnel decisions that have undermined the promise of his encouraging rhetoric about Iran. On the personnel front, the problem begins at the top, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. As a presidential candidate, then-Senator Clinton ran well to the right of Mr. Obama on Iran, even saying she would “totally obliterate” Iran if it attacked Israel. Since becoming secretary of state, Clinton has told a number of allies in Europe and the Persian Gulf that she is skeptical that diplomacy with Iran will prove fruitful and testified to Congress that negotiations are primarily useful to garner support for “crippling” multilateral sanctions against Iran.

First of all, this posture is feckless, as Secretary Clinton does not have broad international support for sanctions that would come anywhere close to being crippling. More significantly, this posture is cynically counterproductive, for it eviscerates the credibility of any American diplomatic overtures in the eyes of Iranian leaders across the Islamic Republic’s political spectrum.

Even more disturbing is President Obama’s willingness to have Dennis Ross become the point person for Iran policy at the State Department. Mr. Ross has long been an advocate of what he describes as an “engagement with pressure” strategy toward Tehran, meaning that the United States should project a willingness to negotiate with Iran largely to elicit broader regional and international support for intensifying economic pressure on the Islamic Republic.

In conversations with Mr. Ross before Mr. Obama’s election, we asked him if he really believed that engage-with-pressure would bring concessions from Iran. He forthrightly acknowledged that this was unlikely. Why, then, was he advocating a diplomatic course that, in his judgment, would probably fail? Because, he told us, if Iran continued to expand its nuclear fuel program, at some point in the next couple of years President Bush’s successor would need to order military strikes against Iranian nuclear targets. Citing past “diplomacy” would be necessary for that president to claim any military action was legitimate.

Iranian officials are fully aware of Mr. Ross’s views — and are increasingly suspicious that he is determined that the Obama administration make, as one senior Iranian diplomat said to us, “an offer we can’t accept,” simply to gain international support for coercive action.

Understandably, given that much of Mr. Obama’s national security team doesn’t share his vision of rapprochement with Iran, America’s overall policy is incoherent. For example, while the administration recently completed a much-ballyhooed review of Iran policy, it has made no changes in its approach to the nuclear issue. Administration officials argue, with what seem to be straight faces, that the Iranian leadership should be impressed simply because American representatives will now show up for any nuclear negotiations with Iran that might take place.

Similarly, some officials suggest that the administration might be prepared to accept limited uranium enrichment on Iranian soil as part of a settlement — effectively asking to be given “credit” merely for acknowledging a well-established reality. Based on our own experience negotiating with Iranians, and our frequent discussions with Iranian diplomats and political figures since leaving the government, we think that it will take a lot more to persuade Tehran of America’s new seriousness.

Tehran will certainly not be persuaded of American seriousness if Washington acquiesces to Israeli insistence on a deadline for successful American engagement with Iran. Although the White House spokesman, Robert Gibbs, had told reporters that no such deadline would be imposed, President Obama himself said, after his meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, that he wants to see “progress” in nuclear negotiations before the end of the year. He also endorsed the creation of a high-level Israeli-American working group to identify more coercive options if Iran does not meet American conditions for limiting its nuclear activities.

More specifically, Secretary Clinton and Mr. Ross have been pushing the other permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and Germany to intensify multilateral sanctions against Iran if Tehran has not agreed to limit the expansion of its nuclear-fuel cycle program by the time the United Nations General Assembly convenes in New York at the end of September.

This diplomatic approach is guaranteed to fail. Having a deadline for successful negotiations will undercut the perceived credibility of American diplomacy in Tehran and serve only to prepare the way for more coercive measures. Mr. Obama’s justification for a deadline — that previous American-Iranian negotiations produced “a lot of talk but not always action and follow-through” — is incorrect as far as Iranian behavior was concerned. For example, during talks over Afghanistan after 9/11 in which one of us (Hillary) took part, Tehran deported hundreds of Qaeda and Taliban operatives who had sought sanctuary in Iran, and also helped establish the new Afghan government. It was Washington, not Tehran, that arbitrarily ended these productive talks.

Beyond the nuclear issue, the administration’s approach to Iran degenerates into an only slightly prettified version of George W. Bush’s approach — that is, an effort to contain a perceived Iranian threat without actually trying to resolve underlying political conflicts. Obama administration officials are buying into a Bush-era delusion: that concern about a rising Iranian threat could unite Israel and moderate Arab states in a grand alliance under Washington’s leadership.

President Obama and his team should not be excused for their failure to learn the lessons of recent history in the Middle East — that the prospect of strategic cooperation with Israel is profoundly unpopular with Arab publics and that even moderate Arab regimes cannot sustain such cooperation. The notion of an Israeli-moderate Arab coalition united to contain Iran is not only delusional, it would leave the Palestinian and Syrian-Lebanese tracks of the Arab-Israeli conflict unresolved and prospects for their resolution in free fall. These tracks cannot be resolved without meaningful American interaction with Iran and its regional allies, Hamas and Hezbollah.

Why has President Obama put himself in a position from which he cannot deliver on his own professed interest in improving relations with the Islamic Republic? Some diplomatic veterans who have spoken with him have told us that the president said that he did not realize, when he came to office, how “hard” the Iran problem would be. But what is hard about the Iran problem is not periodic inflammatory statements from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or episodes like Ms. Saberi’s detention. What is really hard is that getting America’s Iran policy “right” would require a president to take positions that some allies and domestic constituencies won’t like.

To fix our Iran policy, the president would have to commit not to use force to change the borders or the form of government of the Islamic Republic. He would also have to accept that Iran will continue enriching uranium, and that the only realistic potential resolution to the nuclear issue would leave Iran in effect like Japan — a nation with an increasingly sophisticated nuclear fuel-cycle program that is carefully safeguarded to manage proliferation risks. Additionally, the president would have to accept that Iran’s relationships with Hamas and Hezbollah will continue, and be willing to work with Tehran to integrate these groups into lasting settlements of the Middle East’s core political conflicts.

It was not easy for President Richard Nixon to discard a quarter-century of failed policy toward the People’s Republic of China and to reorient America’s posture toward Beijing in ways that have served America’s interests extremely well for more than 30 years. That took strategic vision, political ruthlessness and personal determination. We hope that President Obama — contrary to his record so far — will soon begin to demonstrate those same qualities in forging a new approach toward Iran.

Flynt Leverett directs the New America Foundation’s geopolitics of energy initiative and teaches at Penn State’s School of International Affairs. Hillary Mann Leverett is the president of a political risk consultancy. Both are former National Security Council staff members.