How Corporate Media Are Fueling a New Iran Nuclear Crisis
How Corporate Media Are Fueling a New Iran Nuclear Crisis
Screen shot of a recent Fox Business report about U.S.-Iran relations. (Fox
Business via YouTube)
The U.S. news medias coverage of the Iran nuclear issue has been woefully
off-kilter for many years. Now, however, those same outlets are contributing
to the serious crisis building between Washington and Tehran.
Iran has responded to Trumps withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal by
resuming the stockpiling of low enriched uranium, removing the cap on the
level of uranium enrichment and resuming work at the Arak nuclear reactor,
while making it very clear that those steps would be immediately reversed if
the United States agreed to full compliance.
The major fact about Iranian nuclear policy before the Joint Comprehensive
Plan of Action (JCPOA) was negotiated should shape public understanding of
the current conflict: For more than three years, from 2012 to 2015, Iran
could have enriched enough uranium at 20% enrichment level for one or more
nuclear weapons, but it chose not to do so. Instead, it used the U.S.s
knowledge of that capability as leverage against the U.S. in negotiating
what eventually became the JCPOA.
The real nuclear crisis facing the United States is not that of an Iranian
regime threatening a nuclear conflict. Rather, its a U.S. government policy
that rejects the 2015 compromise and seeks to provoke Iran even further.
Yet thats not the way The New York Times and other news media have covered
the story. From the start of the current phase of the conflict, corporate
media coverage has overwhelmingly emphasized a presumed new Iranian threat
to break out in order to obtain the enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon.
A July 1 Times story by Rick Gladstone about Irans breach of the JCPOA cap
on uranium stockpile stated that Irans latest move does not by itself give
the country the material to produce a nuclear weapon.
But it is the
strongest signal yet that Iran is moving to restore the far larger stockpile
that took the United States and five other nations years to persuade Tehran
to send abroad.
In his article, Gladstone went on to challenge Irans assertion of its legal
right to withdraw from some commitments in the JCPOA a year after Trump had
unilaterally withdrawn from the agreement. Iranian leaders, he said, have
sought to justify these steps as a response to the Trump administrations
abandonment of the nuclear accord last year and its reimposition of
sanctions. He claimed that [W]estern experts on the agreement had
disputed Irans reasoning. But Gladstone cited only one expert, Henry
Rome of the Eurasia Group, who called the Iranian claim a unilateral
interpretation from the Iranian side of what the nuclear deal means
.
Rome is evidently unfamiliar, however, with the fundamental principle of
international law that grants a party to an agreement the inherent right to
reduce or terminate the fulfillment of an agreement if there is a material
breach by another party. In response to an email query for this story, Dr.
Richard Falk, a leading scholar on international law, responded to Romes
statement by commenting, The U.S. repudiation of the agreement and
reimposition of sanctions constitutes without any reasonable doubt, a
material breach of the Nuclear Agreement, which relieves Iran of any legal
obligations with respect to complying with the treaty.
David Sanger, who for two decades has served as chief national security
correspondent for The New York Times, wrote a story published July 1 that
led with the assertion that Iran had violated a key provision of the 2015
nuclear deal. Sanger thus ignored the distinction between a response to
complete renunciation of the entire deal by the Trump administration and a
violation of it. Sanger also called the announcement by foreign minister
Mohammad Javad Zarif of Irans intention to increase the level of purity of
enrichment a provocative action that could move the country closer to
possessing fuel that with further processing could be used in a weapon.
Sanger acknowledged Iran has consistently denied that it has any intention
of making a nuclear weapon, but asserted, [A] trove of nuclear-related
documents, spirited out of a Tehran warehouse by Israeli agents last year,
showed extensive work before 2003 to design a nuclear warhead.
But the alleged Mossad theft in 2018 of half a ton of purported top-secret
Iranian nuclear weapons archive documents from an unguarded shack in Tehran
was a highly implausible tale. No evidence was offered to prove that the
entire storyand the new documents shown by the Israeliswere not completely
fraudulent.
The Associated Press ran a story on May 16 with a lede declaring, Iran made
a veiled threat this week to enrich uranium stocks closer to weapon-grade
levels
. Iran had denied that it had ever sought nuclear weapons, the story
said, but Western officials and experts say that prior to the nuclear deal,
Iran had a breakout capability of just a few months if it were to decide to
build a bomb.
The Washington Post published its version of the Iranian breakout
capability threat story July 3. Reporting Irans plans to enrich uranium to
20%, the Post explained, Such a move would mean that Iran could jump to
producing weapons-grade uranium more quickly.
Furthermore, the Post reported, Experts estimate that before the nuclear
deal, the amount of time that Iran needed to accumulate enough enriched
uranium for a nuclear bomb was two or three months. The JCPOA, on the other
hand, was designed to increase that breakout period to about a year.
National Public Radio chimed in with its own contribution to the breakout
narrative on July 10, quoting John Negroponte, a former U.S. Director of
National Intelligence, declaring, Irans newly-announced levels appear
modest at the moment, but would become more concerning if there were further
increases. Such steps would imply a willingness on Irans part to go all the
way to construction of a bomb.
The media narrative about Irans resuming uranium enrichment thus suggests
that what Americans should be worried about primarily is not the provocative
character of the Trump administrations Iran policy but the threat that Iran
will move toward a breakout strategy vis-à-vis its nuclear weapons
capability.
Irans enrichment diplomacy
The real history of Irans uranium enrichment strategy shows, however, that
that nation was always aimed at rolling back U.S. financial sanctions and
compelling the United States to acknowledge legitimate Iranian interests in
the region rather than to fuel a race for a nuclear bomb.
Iran began enriching uranium to 20% in February 2010 for the first time to
provide fuel plates for its Tehran Research Reactor, which produces isotopes
for cancer treatment. But its overarching objective was to put pressure on
the Obama administration, which was seeking to on coerce Iran to give up its
nuclear program altogether.
In 2012, Iran began an new phase of diplomatic pressure on the Obama
administration by making very large additions to its capabilities for
enrichment at 20% while still avoiding converting those capabilities to a
higher stockpile of 20% enrichment uranium. Meanwhile, Irans government
signaled to the United States that it had the option of reversing the
increase through an agreement.
The number of centrifuges at the two Iranian enrichment facilities, where
20% enrichment was being carried out, stood at 696 in May 2012. By that
August, it had increased to 2,140, according the International Atomic Energy
Agencys August 30, 2012 report. Furthermore, its total production of 20%
enriched uranium increased from 143 kg in May to 189.4 kg in August.
But the same IAEA report revealed that Irans stockpile of 20% enriched
uranium had actually fallen during that period from 101 kg to 91.4 kg. The
reason for that seemingly contradictory result was that between May and
August 2012, Iran had increased the amount of the 20% enriched uranium it
had produced to powder for fuel plates for its Tehran medical reactor
instead of adding it to the stockpile. That meant that the enriched uranium
was in a form that could not be reconverted easily or quickly to
weapons-grade enriched uranium.
Behind that reduction was an even bigger political decision: None of the
1,440 centrifuges added to Irans two enrichment facilities during that
period was put into operation, as the IAEA report showed.
This all amounted to a clear signal to the Obama administration that Iran
was ready to negotiate strict limits on its enrichment if the United States
abandoned its zero-enrichment demand. They are creating tremendous
capacity, a senior U.S. official told The New York Times, but they are not
using it. The official acknowledged, moreover, that Irans enrichment
diplomacy gave it leverage on U.S. policy.
The widely accepted notion that Iran was prevented only by U.S. pressure
from making a breakout bid for a nuclear weapon and that Iran is now once
again threatening to do so is central to the present toxic political
atmosphere surrounding the Iran nuclear issue.
In fact, by mid-2012 Iran already had what was called a breakout
capability but chose to use instead to induce the United States to negotiate
seriously with Iran.
As the IAEA documented in its August 2012 report, Iran already had produced
189 kg of 20% enriched uranium, which was close to the minimum estimate of
what experts believe it would take to produce the 25 kg of 90% enriched
uranium needed for a single nuclear weapon. And had Iran actually used the
additional 1,440 centrifuges available, Iran could have tripled its
stockpile of 20% enriched uranium within a matter of months.
A media crisis on the Iran nuclear issue
From mid-2012 until the JCOPOA was completed in mid-2015, Iran chose to
pursue an agreement with the United States instead of exploiting its
capabilities for a breakout. But that pivotal episode in Irans past
enrichment diplomacy has been ignored by the corporate media. Now the media
are once again portraying Iran primarily as the aggressor in the breakout
narrative despite the clearly expressed Iranian readiness to reverse the
process.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration is already preparing for a new
confrontation with Iran over its resumption of enrichment even as it planned
to add still more onerous sanctions. Hidden near the bottom of its story,
The New York Times revealed on July 1 that the Pentagon and the intelligence
agencies were beginning to review what steps to take if the president
determined that Iran was getting too close to producing a bomb.
The new nuclear crisis with Iran is being stoked by the corporate medias
collective failure to convey the reality of the situation to the public.
Thus, the Trump administration and the media have, to date, successfully
made the Iranian government the focus of scrutiny that the public would be
well-served to turn on them as well.
Gareth Porter
Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist, historian and
author who has covered U.S. wars and interventions in Iraq, Pakistan,
Afghanistan, Iran, Yemen and Syria since 2004 and was the 2012
Gareth Porter
