U.S. Drumbeat of War Against Iran

No offense to the superb New York Times reporters I know, but the paper’s Iran coverage is disturbingly reminiscent of the reporting about Iraq’s possession of WMD’s before the invasion.

You'd think The Times would have learned its lesson after the shaming of Judith Miller, but this week's paper was littered with the same red flags we saw a decade ago. 

 

The January 12th editorial, Dangerous Tension with Iran, is a classic example of the paper's tendency to parrot the government's line, reinforce the double standards of U.S. foreign policy, and fear monger while paying lip-service to liberal democratic values like diplomacy. On the surface the editorial calls for Obama to focus his effort on negotiations with Iran in order to avert military actions, but in practice it really plants the seeds of the casus belli that the next administration will probably use to make its case for war to congress in the not-too-distant future--regardless of which party wins the election. I imagine it will go something like this: "We tried diplomacy. We tried sanctions. The Islamic Republic of Iran has rejected repeated calls by the international community and the U.N. to abandon its nuclear program and could have the capacity to enrich uranianium as early as next year.  Our hands are tied. Military action is the only tool we have to reign in this intransigent, religiously fanatic, ruthlessly oppressive regime that poses an existential threat to America and our regional allies in Israel and the Gulf. "

Look at this language: "On Wednesday, an Iranian nuclear scientist died in a bomb attack en route to work, and a government newspaper signaled that the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps might retaliate." DIED? Ask yourself they would have used such passive language if the situation were reversed and the victim had been an Israeli nuclear scientist had been assassinated (allegedly by Iranian spies)? I bet the editorial would have said something like "an Israeli nuclear scientist was assassinated in a brutal act of terrorism."

Now compare these two excerpts from the editorial: "No one should want to see Iran, with its contempt for international law, acquire a nuclear weapon. But a military strike on the nuclear facilities would be a disaster." Then two paragraphs later: "An accelerating covert campaign of assassinations, bombings, cyber attacks and defections — carried out mainly by Israel, according to The Times — is slowing the program, but whether that is enough is unclear."  When the Iranian government signals that it "might" retaliate and/or ignores the U.N. and violates international law it is described as "contemptuous." But the editorial questions whether Israel's escalating covert campaign of assasinations, bombings, cyber attacks and defections will be "engough" to slow Iran's nuclear program. The message is that Israel's (more eggregious) violations of international law are heroic, while Iran's mere sabre rattling is hostile, belligerent, fanatical, and unprovoked. (The editorial also contains misleading statements that are contradicted by other reports in the paper. "On Thursday, Japan pledged to buy less Iranian oil, China and South Korea were looking for alternative suppliers, and India’s intent was unclear," but a story published on January 11th in The Times says that Chinese officials told U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner that they "wanted no part in the effort" to deprive Iran of oil reserves.

The Times' initial article about the assassination sends a similar message. "Iran Reports Killing of Nuclear Scientist in ‘Terrorist’ Blast." In any other country would the Times ever question whether the assasination of a civilian was an act of terrorism? Of course not. The same two page article goes on to talk about the intensifying campaign by the international community to hamper Iran's nuclear program in the form of harsh economic sanctions, "the deployment of a computer worm known as Stuxnet and the sale of doctored computer software." The story makes no mention of Israel's nuclear program and ends with paragraphs about the two U.S. Naval rescues of Iranian fleets recently. Valiant, but not enough to remove the sting of four progressively harsh rounds of U.N. sanctions at the behest of the U.S., an imminent E.U. embargo of Iranian oil, and the intensifying U.S. pressure on Iran's best customers in Asia and Russia to find alternative suppliers. 


But what's most troublesome is not the skewed editorial and news coverage of Iran in the The Times, but more subtle forms of propaganda like this apparently objective story about the release of "the first-of-its-kind public benchmarking project of nuclear materials security conditions on a country-by-country basis

Israel ranks 25, but that's not mentioned in the Times because for some reason, even though Israeli officials practically confessed their responsibility publicly, the state-sponsored, extrajudicial assassination of a civilian citizen of another country doesn't count if that country is on America's shit list. Iran, of course, figures prominently. For those who don't really buy the notion that a hollow threat to shut down the straight of Hormuz by the feckless president of a country whose economy is wholly dependent on the international oil trade constitutes a serious threat to geopolitical stability, the U.S. government can site the poor security precautions of Iranian enrichment facilities.

"A surprise nation on the list is Iran. It claims no ambitions for making bomb fuel even while global leaders worry that its growing atomic program seeks just that capability...Iran received an overall score of 46, its standing undercut by what the report judged to be corruption, political instability and poor procedures for nuclear control and accounting. Of 32 nations, it ranked 30th."