Porter writes: "President Obama has fallen into the habit of accepting
whatever 'group think' is prevalent in Official Washington, which often
falsely accuses some 'enemy' of a nefarious deed, but Obama then tries to
dodge the desired reaction: war. This risky pattern is playing out again
over Iran."
An Iranian man holding a photo of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. (photo:
Iranian government)
Obama Buys False Iran Narrative
By Gareth Porter, Consortium News
28 July 15
President Obama has fallen into the habit of accepting whatever group
think is prevalent in Official Washington, which often falsely accuses some
enemy of a nefarious deed, but Obama then tries to dodge the desired
reaction: war. This risky pattern is playing out again over Iran, writes
Gareth Porter.
Im glad that the United States and Iran reached an agreement in Vienna
after nearly two years of negotiations and 35 years of enmity. A failure to
do so under present political conditions would certainly have left a
festering conflict with unpredictably bad consequences. And the successful
negotiation of such a far-reaching agreement in which both sides made
significant concessions should help to moderate the extreme hostility that
has been building up in the United States over the years.
But my enthusiasm for the agreement is tempered by the fact that the U.S.
political process surrounding the Congressional consideration of the
agreement is going to have the opposite effect. And a big part of the
problem is that the Obama administration is not going to do anything to
refute the extremist view of Iran as determined to get nuclear weapons.
Instead the administration is integrating the idea of Iran as rogue nuclear
state into its messaging on the agreement.
Secretary of State John Kerrys testimony before the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee on Thursday makes the administrations political
strategy very clear. In two sentences, Kerry managed to combine the images
of Iranian-supported terrorism and sectarian violence across the entire
region and Iranian determination to get nuclear weapons.
He told the Committee about the administrations plans to push back against
Irans other activities against terrorism support, its contribution to
sectarian violence in the Middle East, which he called unacceptable. Then
he added: But pushing back against an Iran with nuclear weapons is very
different from pushing back against Iran without one.
The administrations determination to be just as alarmist about Irans
alleged nuclear ambitions as its opponents creates a U.S. political
discourse on the Iran nuclear issue built around two dueling narratives that
disagree about the effect of the agreement but have one politically crucial
common denominator: they both hold it as beyond debate that Iran cannot be
trusted because it wants nuclear weapons; and the only question is whether
and for how long that Iranian quest for nuclear weapons can be held off
without war.
The Israeli line is that the agreement is merely a temporary lull, and that
it will simply embolden Iran to plan for a bomb once the agreement expires
ten years hence. But for the administrations tough-minded diplomatic
efforts, Iran would have continued advancing towards getting a nuclear
weapon, and that the only alternative to the agreement is war with Iran.
The common assumption about Irans nuclear policy is never debated or even
discussed because it is so firmly entrenched in the political discourse by
now that there is no need to discuss it. The choice between two hard-line
views of Iran is hardly coincidental. The Obama administration accepted from
day one the narrative about the Iranian nuclear program that the Israelis
and their American allies had crafted during the Bush administration.
The Bush administrations narrative, adopted after the invasion of Iraq,
described a covert nuclear program run by Iran for two decades, the main
purpose of which was to serve as a cover for a secret nuclear weapons
program.
Undersecretary of State John Bolton and Vice-President Dick Cheney, who were
managing the policy, cleverly used leaks to the New York Times and Wall
Street Journal in 2005 to introduce into the domestic political discussion
alleged evidence from a collection of documents of then unknown provenance
that Iran had a secret nuclear weapons research program from 2001 to 2003.
The administration also passed the documents on to the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) in 2005, as part of a Bush strategy aimed to take Iran
to the United Nations Security Council on the charge of violating its
commitments to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Bolton and Cheney were working
with Israel to create a justification for regime change in Iran based on the
idea that Iran was working on nuclear weapons under the cover of its nuclear
program.
The entire Bush-Israeli narrative was false, however. It ignored or
suppressed fundamental historical facts that contradicted it as this writer
found from deeper research on the issue:
Iran was the one state in the entire world that had a history of abjuring
weapons of mass destruction on religious grounds. During the Iran-Iraq war
the military leadership had asked Ayatollah Khomeini to approve the
manufacture of chemical weapons to retaliate against repeated chemical
attacks by Iraqi forces. But Khomeini forbade their possession or use
forbidden by the Shia interpretation of the Quran and Shia jurisprudence.
Iran had begun to pursue uranium enrichment in the mid-1980s only after the
Reagan administration had declared publicly that it would prevent Iran from
relying on an international consortium in France to provide nuclear fuel for
the Bushehr reactor.
Iran did not inform the IAEA about its acquisition of enrichment
technology, its experiments with centrifuges and laser enrichment or its
first enrichment facility because of the continued U.S. attempt to suppress
the Iranian nuclear program. Releasing such information would have made it
easier for the United States to prevent continued procurement of necessary
parts and material and to pressure China to end all nuclear cooperation with
Iran.
The U.S. intelligence community found no hard evidence, either from human
intelligence or other forms of intelligence, of an Iranian nuclear weapons
program. U.S. national intelligence estimates during the Bush administration
concluding that Iran had run such a program, including the most famous
estimate issued in November 2007, were based on inference, not on hard
intelligence. That fact stood in sharp contrast to the very unambiguous
human and electronic intelligence the CIA had been able to obtain on covert
nuclear weapons programs in Israel, India, Pakistan, South Africa and South
Korea.
Barack Obama came to the White House with a highly critical view of Bush
policy towards both Iran and Iraq and was publicly committed to diplomatic
engagement with Iran. But his administrations acceptance of the Bush line
that Iran was a nuclear outlaw can be explained by the continuity of policy
that the national security bureaucracy generally maintains in the transition
from one administration to another, with rare exceptions.
Bureaucracies create the facts about any particular issue that support
their interests. Defining the Iranian nuclear threat as a threat to
proliferate was clearly in the interests of the counter-proliferation
offices in the White House, State Department, and CIA, which wielded strong
influence over the issue within their respective institutions.
The senior officials on Obamas transition team and his initial national
security team, moreover, had been closely associated with different versions
of the policy of treating Iran as nuclear rogue state in previous
administrations.
As Secretary of Defense in the Bush administration, Robert Gates had catered
to the interests of the Congressional-military-industrial alliance behind a
missile defense program in the United States, which had required an alarmist
definition of threat from Irans missile and nuclear programs.
Tom Donilon and Wendy Sherman, who had presided over Obamas State
Department transition, were both protégés of the Clinton administrations
Secretary of State Warren Christopher, who was an ardent proponent of
demonizing Iran. It should be of no surprise that Donilon said in 2011 that
Iran had a record of deceit and deception, and that Sherman declared in
Congressional testimony in 2013 that Iran couldnt be trusted because We
know that deception is part of the DNA.
Secretary Kerry and other Obama administration officials may have moderated
their views of the Irans nuclear program over the course of negotiations,
but the external and domestic pressures for an even tougher line toward Iran
have clearly outweighed any such learning process on the issue.
If it isnt changed dramatically from Kerrys testimony, the
administrations choice of political strategy will certainly contribute to a
domestic political atmosphere in which even the most limited steps toward
greater cooperation with Iran are all but impossible for years to come.
Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist and winner of the
2012 Gellhorn Prize for journalism. He is the author of the newly published
Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare. [This story
first appeared at Middle East Eye.
http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/obama-s-line-iran-nuclear-deal-second-f
alse-narrative-1257324710#sthash.KrTd3X84.dpuf]
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
An Iranian man holding a photo of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. (photo:
Iranian government)
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/07/27/obama-buys-false-iran-narrative/https:
//consortiumnews.com/2015/07/27/obama-buys-false-iran-narrative/
Obama Buys False Iran Narrative
By Gareth Porter, Consortium News
28 July 15
President Obama has fallen into the habit of accepting whatever group
think is prevalent in Official Washington, which often falsely accuses some
enemy of a nefarious deed, but Obama then tries to dodge the desired
reaction: war. This risky pattern is playing out again over Iran, writes
Gareth Porter.
m glad that the United States and Iran reached an agreement in Vienna
after nearly two years of negotiations and 35 years of enmity. A failure to
do so under present political conditions would certainly have left a
festering conflict with unpredictably bad consequences. And the successful
negotiation of such a far-reaching agreement in which both sides made
significant concessions should help to moderate the extreme hostility that
has been building up in the United States over the years.
But my enthusiasm for the agreement is tempered by the fact that the U.S.
political process surrounding the Congressional consideration of the
agreement is going to have the opposite effect. And a big part of the
problem is that the Obama administration is not going to do anything to
refute the extremist view of Iran as determined to get nuclear weapons.
Instead the administration is integrating the idea of Iran as rogue nuclear
state into its messaging on the agreement.
Secretary of State John Kerrys testimony before the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee on Thursday makes the administrations political
strategy very clear. In two sentences, Kerry managed to combine the images
of Iranian-supported terrorism and sectarian violence across the entire
region and Iranian determination to get nuclear weapons.
He told the Committee about the administrations plans to push back against
Irans other activities against terrorism support, its contribution to
sectarian violence in the Middle East, which he called unacceptable. Then
he added: But pushing back against an Iran with nuclear weapons is very
different from pushing back against Iran without one.
The administrations determination to be just as alarmist about Irans
alleged nuclear ambitions as its opponents creates a U.S. political
discourse on the Iran nuclear issue built around two dueling narratives that
disagree about the effect of the agreement but have one politically crucial
common denominator: they both hold it as beyond debate that Iran cannot be
trusted because it wants nuclear weapons; and the only question is whether
and for how long that Iranian quest for nuclear weapons can be held off
without war.
The Israeli line is that the agreement is merely a temporary lull, and that
it will simply embolden Iran to plan for a bomb once the agreement expires
ten years hence. But for the administrations tough-minded diplomatic
efforts, Iran would have continued advancing towards getting a nuclear
weapon, and that the only alternative to the agreement is war with Iran.
The common assumption about Irans nuclear policy is never debated or even
discussed because it is so firmly entrenched in the political discourse by
now that there is no need to discuss it. The choice between two hard-line
views of Iran is hardly coincidental. The Obama administration accepted from
day one the narrative about the Iranian nuclear program that the Israelis
and their American allies had crafted during the Bush administration.
The Bush administrations narrative, adopted after the invasion of Iraq,
described a covert nuclear program run by Iran for two decades, the main
purpose of which was to serve as a cover for a secret nuclear weapons
program.
Undersecretary of State John Bolton and Vice-President Dick Cheney, who were
managing the policy, cleverly used leaks to the New York Times and Wall
Street Journal in 2005 to introduce into the domestic political discussion
alleged evidence from a collection of documents of then unknown provenance
that Iran had a secret nuclear weapons research program from 2001 to 2003.
The administration also passed the documents on to the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) in 2005, as part of a Bush strategy aimed to take Iran
to the United Nations Security Council on the charge of violating its
commitments to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Bolton and Cheney were working
with Israel to create a justification for regime change in Iran based on the
idea that Iran was working on nuclear weapons under the cover of its nuclear
program.
The entire Bush-Israeli narrative was false, however. It ignored or
suppressed fundamental historical facts that contradicted it as this writer
found from deeper research on the issue:
Iran was the one state in the entire world that had a history of abjuring
weapons of mass destruction on religious grounds. During the Iran-Iraq war
the military leadership had asked Ayatollah Khomeini to approve the
manufacture of chemical weapons to retaliate against repeated chemical
attacks by Iraqi forces. But Khomeini forbade their possession or use
forbidden by the Shia interpretation of the Quran and Shia jurisprudence.
Iran had begun to pursue uranium enrichment in the mid-1980s only after the
Reagan administration had declared publicly that it would prevent Iran from
relying on an international consortium in France to provide nuclear fuel for
the Bushehr reactor.
Iran did not inform the IAEA about its acquisition of enrichment
technology, its experiments with centrifuges and laser enrichment or its
first enrichment facility because of the continued U.S. attempt to suppress
the Iranian nuclear program. Releasing such information would have made it
easier for the United States to prevent continued procurement of necessary
parts and material and to pressure China to end all nuclear cooperation with
Iran.
The U.S. intelligence community found no hard evidence, either from human
intelligence or other forms of intelligence, of an Iranian nuclear weapons
program. U.S. national intelligence estimates during the Bush administration
concluding that Iran had run such a program, including the most famous
estimate issued in November 2007, were based on inference, not on hard
intelligence. That fact stood in sharp contrast to the very unambiguous
human and electronic intelligence the CIA had been able to obtain on covert
nuclear weapons programs in Israel, India, Pakistan, South Africa and South
Korea.
Barack Obama came to the White House with a highly critical view of Bush
policy towards both Iran and Iraq and was publicly committed to diplomatic
engagement with Iran. But his administrations acceptance of the Bush line
that Iran was a nuclear outlaw can be explained by the continuity of policy
that the national security bureaucracy generally maintains in the transition
from one administration to another, with rare exceptions.
Bureaucracies create the facts about any particular issue that support
their interests. Defining the Iranian nuclear threat as a threat to
proliferate was clearly in the interests of the counter-proliferation
offices in the White House, State Department, and CIA, which wielded strong
influence over the issue within their respective institutions.
The senior officials on Obamas transition team and his initial national
security team, moreover, had been closely associated with different versions
of the policy of treating Iran as nuclear rogue state in previous
administrations.
As Secretary of Defense in the Bush administration, Robert Gates had catered
to the interests of the Congressional-military-industrial alliance behind a
missile defense program in the United States, which had required an alarmist
definition of threat from Irans missile and nuclear programs.
Tom Donilon and Wendy Sherman, who had presided over Obamas State
Department transition, were both protégés of the Clinton administrations
Secretary of State Warren Christopher, who was an ardent proponent of
demonizing Iran. It should be of no surprise that Donilon said in 2011 that
Iran had a record of deceit and deception, and that Sherman declared in
Congressional testimony in 2013 that Iran couldnt be trusted because We
know that deception is part of the DNA.
Secretary Kerry and other Obama administration officials may have moderated
their views of the Irans nuclear program over the course of negotiations,
but the external and domestic pressures for an even tougher line toward Iran
have clearly outweighed any such learning process on the issue.
If it isnt changed dramatically from Kerrys testimony, the
administrations choice of political strategy will certainly contribute to a
domestic political atmosphere in which even the most limited steps toward
greater cooperation with Iran are all but impossible for years to come.
Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist and winner of the
2012 Gellhorn Prize for journalism. He is the author of the newly published
Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare. [This story
first appeared at Middle East Eye.
http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/obama-s-line-iran-nuclear-deal-second-f
alse-narrative-1257324710#sthash.KrTd3X84.dpuf]
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
