Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: iran

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Wednesday, October 02, 2013

NYT upset at Bibi - but they won't say the real reason why

The New York Times is not happy with Bibi:

Mr. Netanyahu has legitimate reasons to be wary of any Iranian overtures, as do the United States and the four other major powers involved in negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. But it could be disastrous if Mr. Netanyahu and his supporters in Congress were so blinded by distrust of Iran that they exaggerate the threat, block President Obama from taking advantage of new diplomatic openings and sabotage the best chance to establish a new relationship since the 1979 Iranian revolution sent American-Iranian relations into the deep freeze.

Even though the Times admits that pretty much every fact Netanyahu brought up is accurate!

Mr. Rouhani and the Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, have insisted repeatedly that Iran wants only to develop nuclear energy and that obtaining a nuclear weapon would harm the country’s security.

Even so, Iran hid its nuclear program from United Nations inspectors for nearly 20 years, and the country is enriching uranium to a level that would make it possible to produce bomb-grade nuclear material more quickly. It has also pursued other activities, like developing high-voltage detonators and building missiles that experts believe could only have nuclear weapons-related uses.

These facts make it hard not to view the upcoming American-brokered negotiations skeptically. But Mr. Netanyahu has hinted so often of taking military action to keep Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon that he seems eager for a fight.

Actually, the main thrust of Bibi's speech was to not to start a war, but a warning against loosening sanctions in exchange for smiles and empty promises:

I have argued for many years, including on this podium, that the only way to peacefully prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons is to combine tough sanctions with a credible military threat. And that policy is today bearing fruit. Thanks to the effort of many countries, many represented here, and under the leadership of the United States, tough sanctions have taken a big bite out of Iran's economy. Oil revenues have fallen. The currency has plummeted. Banks are hard pressed to transfer money.

So as a result, the regime is under intense pressure from the Iranian people to get the sanctions removed. That's why Rouhani got elected in the first place. That's why he launched his charm offensive.

He definitely wants to get the sanctions lifted, I guarantee you that, but he doesn't want to give up Iran's nuclear weapons program in return.

Now, here's the strategy to achieve this:

First, smile a lot. Smiling never hurts. Second, pay lip service to peace, democracy and tolerance. Third, offer meaningless concessions in exchange for lifting sanctions. And fourth, and the most important, ensure that Iran retains sufficient nuclear material and sufficient nuclear infrastructure to race to the bomb at a time that it chooses to do so. You know why Rouhani thinks he can get away with this?...Because he's gotten away with it before.

The NYT cannot find any holes in Netanyahu's logic. It cannot find any concrete concession that Rouhani is
offering. Yet, against all known facts, it still insists that Rouhani is the moderate who must be given concessions to, and Bibi is the warmonger.

There is nothing wrong with speaking to and negotiating with Iran, but there is a great deal wrong with loosening sanctions in response to a smile.

So if the Times cannot find anything actually wrong with Bibi's words, why are they so upset at him? The reason seems to be because he called them out for doing the exact same thing with North Korea:

Like Iran, North Korea also said its nuclear program was for peaceful purposes. Like Iran, North Korea also offered meaningless concessions and empty promises in return for sanctions relief. In 2005, North Korea agreed to a deal that was celebrated the world over by many well-meaning people. Here is what the New York Times editorial had to say about it: "For years now, foreign policy insiders have pointed to North Korea as the ultimate nightmare... a closed, hostile and paranoid dictatorship with an aggressive nuclear weapons program.

Very few could envision a successful outcome.

And yet North Korea agreed in principle this week to dismantle its nuclear weapons program, return to the NPT, abide by the treaty's safeguards and admit international inspectors….Diplomacy, it seems, does work after all."

A year later, North Korea exploded its first nuclear weapons device.

That's the real reason the "Paper of Record" is so miffed - because Bibi mentioned its record of believing dictators on the threshold of nuclear weapons capability.

The truth hurts, so the NYT - instead of admitting its very real role in pressuring Washington to believe North Korea's empty promises - is lashing out at the person who pointed it out.

This is behavior one would expect from a teenager who was caught in a lie, not from a newspaper whose entire reputation is dependent on accuracy.

The NYT's choosing to ignore that part of Bibi's speech explains a great deal about its nonsensical editorial that is at odds with facts.

Video: Rouhani smilingly bragging of how he deceived the West

Details here.

But he's Western-educated! And he has such a nice smile!

I think we can trust him this time.

(h/t Ian and Yoel)

Judging from the news over the past few days, it appears that for a Muslim leader to sort-of grudgingly admit that the most well-documented historical fact even occurred is considered praiseworthy.

That is a pretty good example of how the media assumes a priori that Muslims must not be held to the same standards as normal human beings.

Right now, we have Israel being held to impossibly high standards far beyond what any Western nation at war has ever been held to while Arab and Muslim nations are held to absurdly low standards.

One day, when the West starts to judge everyone by the same standards, we can start to have real progress towards peace.

ElderToons: The Ayatollah and Rouhani Show

Survey of Iranian media rhetoric today

PressTV:

The chief of staff of Iran's Armed Forces has emphasized that a potential military attack against Syria by the US and its allies will have a ruinous impact on the Israeli regime.

"Any military measure against Syria will draw the Zionists deep in the fire [as well],” said Major General Hassan Firouzabadi in an address on the recent American military threats against the Syrian nation and government on Thursday.

Further elaborating on the ramifications of a potential new military move in the region, the top military commander said, “This will be a huge damage to the human community and its effects will not be merely limited to the Muslim community.”

He stated, “The US, Britain and the rest of their allies will suffer greatly by deploying their military forces to the region and Syria.”

FARS News Farsi says that a group of Iranian youths are volunteering to go to Syria to wage jihad against the Zionist regime.

PressTV:

President Assad made the remarks on Thursday while receiving a delegation of Yemeni politicians in the Syrian capital, Damascus, Syria's state television said.

"Syria will defend itself in the face of any aggression, and threats will only increase its commitment to its principles and its independence," Assad said.

The Syrian president also noted that Syria is determined to crush the Israeli-backed terrorists operating against his government.

“Syria, with its resistant people and valiant army, is determined to wipe out terrorism which is being backed by Israel and Western nations to serve their own purposes of sowing division in the region, fragmenting its people and forcing them into submission,” he added.

Also PressTV:

Iran says Tehran, Moscow and Beijing have been assured by the Syrian government that it has not used chemical weapons in the fight against Takfiri groups in the Arab country.

On Thursday, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab and African Affairs Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said the reassurance by the Syrian government has been relayed to the UN Under-Secretary-General Jeffery D. Feltman, who was recently on a visit to Iran.

Amir-Abdollahian further said Feltman was also told that the Islamic Republic, itself a “victim of chemical weapons,” is opposed to the use of such weapons in any way.

The Iranian diplomat further described a potential military intervention in Syria as a “strategic mistake, which would not be limited in dimensions if it occurred.”

IRNA:

Addressing his first meeting with members of the 11th government, Ayatollah Khamenei said the US threat of intervention in Syria would be a real catastrophe for the region.

Any intervention and war mongering will definitely be detrimental to the war mongers.

Also IRNA:

Addressing his weekly cabinet meeting, Rohani called recent regional developments worrying, and warned, Any adventurism in the Middle East would endanger regional and global stability.

He said people of the world, especially in the region, are not ready for a new war and warned that any adventurism in the region would only result in promotion of extremism and terrorism.

And this from the "moderate" foreign minister:

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif says the United States will fall into a trap laid in Syria by the Zionists if Washington launches a military strike on the Arab country.

“The Syria crisis is a trap set by Zionist pressure groups for this country (the United States),” said Zarif in a Tuesday TV interview.

What part of "Iran's Supreme Leader" doesn't the NYT understand?

Today the New York Times has its latest of a series of articles fawning over Iran's supposed new direction. This one concentrates on its new foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif.

Until this summer, Mohammad Javad Zarif, one of Iran’s most accomplished diplomats, was an outcast, exiled from the government by ultraconservatives for working too closely with the West. Rather than presenting the Iranian case to the world, as he had done so effectively throughout a 35-year diplomatic career, he was spending his days teaching at the Foreign Ministry’s training center on a quiet, leafy campus in North Tehran.

That changed with the election of the moderate president, Hassan Rouhani, in June. Now, Mr. Zarif is the country’s new foreign minister and seems virtually certain to lead Iran’s delegation in nuclear negotiations with the West — further indications, analysts say, that Mr. Rouhani is serious about reducing tensions with the United States and other Western countries.

“Mr. Zarif is the new face of a new policy,” said Davoud Hermidas-Bavand, a professor of international relations at Allameh Tabatabaei University in Tehran, who knows Mr. Zarif personally. “Our former foreign policy obviously did not yield any results and was clearly doomed. We need to revise our former methods and soften our stances in order to find a solution to the nuclear problem and reduce the sanctions.”

..His English is fluent, and both Western diplomats and journalists laud him as one of the rare Iranian officials who actually talk clearly to them.

Maybe Zarif is a wonderful person. Maybe he secretly eats turkey on Thanksgiving and watches Real Housewives of Atlanta.

But Zarif, like the new "moderate" Iranian president Rouhani, cannot make any real decisions on policy.

Because Iran is a dictatorship under Ayatollah Khamanei. Khamanei is not just a mere dictator, but also the religious leader of the nation. His word is divine law.

His freaking title is "Supreme Leader."

Literally nothing can be done in Iran's government or official media without Khamanei's tacit approval. The person that allows Rouhani and Zarif to put a moderate face on Iran in the New York Times is the same person that allows the most crazed antisemitic and anti-Western conspiracy theories to be published in Iran's official media.

Yet the New York Times, and other newspapers, barely mention Khamanei any more as they fall over themselves praising Iran's new, supposedly moderate leadership.

Rouhani and Zarif are nothing more than smiling faces on an autocratic regime that supports terrorism, seeks to become a world power using nuclear weapons and is dedicated to destroying Israel. They are doing their jobs under Khamanei's hardline control, not in spite of it.

Remember, Rouhani was hand-picked as one of the candidates of the Iranian election - by Khamanei. This seemingly new "policy" is nothing more than Iran's implementation of "good cop, bad cop."

How can any serious article by a mainstream newspaper ignore these facts? How can the Times report that a puppet of a dictator, one who cannot do anything without his approval, will change anything in reality?

Now, I'm not saying anything that the NYT doesn't already know. Which means that, effectively, to the Times, style is more important than substance.

Iran's nuclear program isn't the problem - the problem is that the West is alarmed by it. If only an Iranian diplomat can ease those tensions, and let Iran cross the nuclear threshold without interference, then the NYT will be happy.

This is not journalism. This is advocacy. And it is not just wrong, but dangerous.

(h/t EBoZ)

Iran literally covering up evidence of nuclear testing

Remember the Parchin site in Iran, suspected of nuclear explosive testing? Where last year they started covering up the buildings in pink tarp to make it harder for satellites to see what was going on?

In espionage (and police work,) evidence of covering up a crime is often more obvious than the crime itself. Unfortunately, no one has easy access to these sites, so while we have secondary evidence, Iran is covering up the primary evidence.

And, at Parchin, they are doing it again.

From ISIS:

Recent commercial satellite imagery of the Parchin site in Iran shows the extent of new paving as well as the extent of other alternations undertaken at the site over the past year and a half starting in February 2012. Iran appears to be in the final stages of modifying the suspected high explosive test site at the Parchin complex, having recently asphalted large sections of the site. As noted in several of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA’s) quarterly Iran safeguards reports and in numerous ISIS satellite imagery reports on Parchin, asphalting and the other documented activities have significantly changed the site and impacted the ability of IAEA inspectors to collect environmental samples and other evidence that it could use to determine whether nuclear weapons-related activities once took place there. Asphalting an entire area in this manner would make it very hard to take soil samples and likely be effective at covering up environmental evidence of nuclear weaponization-related experiments. Iran in 2003 and 2004 conducted similar concealment activities at Lavisan-Shian, razing and rebuilding the entire site in an effort suspected to be aimed at concealing alleged, undeclared military nuclear efforts.

The Parchin site remains of interest to the IAEA due to evidence of pre-2004 activities related to the development of nuclear weapons. Iran is alleged by the IAEA, the United States, and at least three European governments to have had a well-structured nuclear weapons program aimed at building a warhead small enough to fit on the Shahab 3 ballistic missile.

Iran is banking on the West discounting secondary evidence. And the scheme works well.

"Hey, IAEA, look over there for a minute, will you? I have to, um, take out the trash."

Farsi translation of Walt/Mearsheimer praised in Iran

From Iran's Book News Agency:

The Persian rendition of 'The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy' has been unveiled in Tehran, Iran.

Penned by John J. Mearsheimer, the book was unveiled in a ceremony held in Tehran on August 18, 2013, in the presence of cultural and media scholars.

Praising the translation of the book in Parisian, Nader Talebzadeh, recognized Iranian documentary maker and journalist, asserted that the book is like an attractive movie right from the beginning until the end that can play a significant role in raising awareness about the role and nature of Zionist lobbies in the US’s politics and foreign approach.

Reza Montazami and Mehran Nasr have jointly translated the book in Persian.

Talebzadeh stressed the need for raising global awareness on the issue of Zionism, and stated that there is a lot of potential in various artistic fields to exploit the current anti-Zionistic atmosphere in the world to counter their influence.

He further added that there are numerous prominent figures in the world who have voiced readiness to run courses on the field in Iranian universities. Figures like Michael Jones and Kevin Bert, American analyst of Islamic issues, and Jerry D. Mason.

He further called on the government to work out plans and programs to make use of such a golden opportunity to disseminate knowledge about the negative influence of the Zionist lobby in the world.

Elsewhere in his speech, he posited the Islamic Revolution as a fantastic raiser of awareness about Zionist and the realist of the Zionist regime as well as its role in world and regional equations.

“One of the achievements of the Islamic Revolution was that it showed the world the real face of the Zionist regime,” he said. “The Islamic Revolution bestowed a spiritual understanding to the world of the Zionist activities and still continues to do so with Iran being the forerunner of the movement. Designation of the Quds Day by Imam Khomeini was a turning point in this regard and got the world to earnestly consider the issue.”

Maybe Walt and Mearsheimer can give free lectures in Iran on how Israel is the source of all evil in the world. I'm sure they'd get paid handsomely.

(My earlier articles showing that the claims in their book are ridiculous can be seen here and here with some other nice links here, here is Walt making a sick moral equivalence between Jewish settlers and those who murder them, and this nice revelation of Walt's praising of the Qaddafi regime while taking a trip funded by the regime.)

Iranian general threatens US, Israel; says nuke negotiations won't change policy

From Tehran Times:

Brigadier General Massoud Jazayeri of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps said on Monday that U.S. and Zionist forces in the region are militarily “within the area of action of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

He also said, “It is surprising that certain U.S. officials are still talking about military threats against Iran and simplistically believe that such threats can affect Iranian political strategists.

“The strategic mistake of the United States is that they have not realized that the carrot and stick approach is now outdated.”

Elsewhere in his remarks, Jazayeri said that the major policies of the Islamic Republic would not be affected by nuclear talks or negotiations about other issues.

He added that the United States can only get closer to Iran if it apologizes to the great Iranian nation and drops its hostile stance.

In other words, "Keep acting like suckers, America."

ElderToons: Sage White House Advice

(UPDATE - Improved punchline.)

Nuclear disarmament conference to be held - in Iran

In another transparent attempt to deceive the West (which already has plenty of people who are anxious to be deceived,) Iran will be hosting a conference next month:

The Islamic Republic of Iran is scheduled to hold an international conference on nuclear disarmament in mid April.

The conference, dubbed as "Nuclear Energy For All, Nuclear Weapon For None", will be held in Iran on April 17-18.

Foreign ministers, representatives and nuclear experts from 60 countries are due to participate in the event to discuss challenges on nuclear disarmament, countries' commitments to the issue and the aftermaths of not destroying weapons of mass-destruction.

In February, Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani announced in Japan that Iran is scheduled to hold an international gathering on global disarmament in Tehran in the next two months to be attended by internationally renowned elites and experts, adding that participants are slated to assess the causes and reasons underlying the lack of heed and attention to the implementation of nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) regulations, Article 6 in particular.

A lot of well-meaning but ultimately idiotic Westerners strongly feel that as long as Iran is negotiating, it is not going to do anything dangerous. In truth, Iran has shown over the years that it will pretend to negotiate while completely undermining its public statements in private.

Here is an especially telling example where Iran is cynically pretending to put on a public face against nuclear weaponry deliberately to take international pressure off of its aggressive nuclear program.

There are enough credulous wishful thinkers in the West who will desperately grab at this straw, because the alternative is too scary for them to contemplate. For each Westerner who opines or argues that Iran is not a threat, it makes it that much harder for the clear-thinking Westerners, who see through Iran's act, to do anything effective.

While it is true that Iran's leaders do not have the same mindset as the West, they understand the West much better than the West understands them, and this conference is proof.

(h/t dd via email)