Last October we noted (“Iraq All Over Again?,” Media Advisory, 10/7/09) that reporters and corporate pundits were often treating allegations about Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions as if they were facts. There have been no verifiable discoveries of an Iranian nuclear weapons program; the main question thus far concerns uranium enrichment, some of which could hypothetically be used in a weapon.
Yesterday was a good day to recall this history, as a Washington Post editorial (6/13/10) referred matter-of-factly to “ending the threat posed by Iran’s support for terrorism and pursuit of nuclear weapons.” And NBC‘s Meet the Press host David Gregory referenced “Iran’s dangerous drive toward nuclear weapons.” Gregory actually appeared in the October FAIR advisory, wondering if negotiations could “push that country to give up its nuclear weapons program.”
It’s worth recalling that Gregory not too long rebuffed the idea that Meet the Press needed any outside factchecking.
Is Hart being paid by Iran to whitewash it? Even the UN Atomic Energy Commission found that Iran had lied about the reactors it had. If Hart is so sure that Iran’s nuclear intentions are innocent, maybe he should try explaining Iran’s behavior. Not to say that Ahmedinajahd (sp?) has talked of wiping Israel off the map. (Nice fellow!) With what would he be thinking of doing that? Flying Persian carpets? Hart seems to have been taking a ride on one of those carpets himself. All in the interests of FAIR reporting. Of course!
TDKemper. Lots of allegations, no supporting facts. Try again when you have something.
The UN Atomic Energy Commission? Wasn’t that officially disbanded by the UN General Assembly in 1952?
I don’t know what’s fact and what’s not on this subject, but did find the following first installment on this subject, from the website of the German weekly news magazine Der Spiegel, interesting:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,701109,00.html#ref=nlint
I have never figured out why all our troop movements, first in Iraq, now in Afghanistan, and our continued presence in the Persian Gulf, is supposed to calm Iran into believing we mean no harm. We essentially have them surrounded. And Iran does not understand why the US, Pakistan, and Israel can have nukes in the Middle East, and they, who HAVE signed the non-proliferation treaty (unlike India, whom George Bush showered with nuclear benefits) absolutely cannot. Who is to blame for making the possession of nuclear weapons so fashionable anyway?
By the way, Ahmadinejad did NOT say he would wipe Israel off the map. People who know how to speak Farsi say that the actual phrase was more like – “such regimes must fade from the pages of time” – the Iranians have most of their problems with the Zionist government than with the nation itself. Historically, they are correct – extremist movements, governments, etc come and go – it is how history is. But there was no “wipe off” or any mention of a “map”. We got our particular translation from a group with close ties to Dick Cheney. a group that tended to exaggerate for political reasons. We know Dick Cheney wanted a war with Iran – but it had nothing to do with nukes. The issue is that the Iranian revolution threw out the Shah, who had opened Iran’s oil fields to our money-hungry companies, and the Ayatollah re-nationalized their oil. Cheney has never forgiven the Iranians for that. He needed an excuse to start an invasion, and that one had already worked with Iraq. Although he is not vice-president anymore, let’s not forget that Cheney “seeded” the government with like-minded lackeys, hoping that their influence may still be felt in the Obama administration.
SuzeO has stated some excellent “facts” in her comment.
To go back a little closer to what brought Iran to it’s present course, we have to go back further than the last Shah (yes there has been more than one) to the Democratically elected Mohammad Mosaddegh, as Prime Minister from 1951 to 1953. He was at the forefront of the first oil nationalization, wrenching control of their oil production from the British controlled Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, which later became British Petroleum. Yes those same rascals who have killed my beautiful Gulf of Mexico.
The British didn’t like this turn of events in Iran since their population had become quite comfortable with all the profits they were stealing from the Iranian people. So in 1953 a coup d’etat replaced the leadership with the Iranian General Fazlollah Zahedi, who became the Prime Minister. The Shah of Iran returned from exile to power once the coup was complete. The coup by the way was the first ever carried out by the newly created CIA under President Dwight Eisenhower, who ironically warned us in his 1960 Farewell Address about the “unchecked powers of government” and the “military industrial complex”. I guess he knew what he was talking about.
These events led to where SuzeO began with what became known as the popular uprising, and which ousted the Shah and replaced him with the Ayatollah in 1979. It’s also worth noting that in those years following the coup, and up until the popular uprising, the US provided Iran with much of it’s military equipment and weapons, as we have done and continue to do with nation after non-democratic nation. And we seem to prefer that the recipients of this military aid not be so Democratic, so that we may better profit from their countries’ natural resources (I believe in fact that we are about to do this kind of exploitation in Afghanistan).
Dick Cheney, the Bush family and many other ethically-challenged leaders and public figures in the US and the rest of the “Anglo-Free-World” don’t take kindly to Muslim countries in particular, but any “anti-transnational-corporation” nation be they Latino or Asian or other, having their way with their own autonomy, if it does not coincide with our own economic-colonial agenda.
The bottom line is, unless you firmly believe in “American Exceptionalism”, that we are somehow more deserving of everyone else’s national treasures than they themselves are, or you care not for the justifiable “cause-and-effect” of history (although the CIA certainly do, they call it “blowback”), then it’s no wonder that you swallow, without pause or question, the mainstream “popular” narrative.
For myself I prefer the paradox our Fore-Fathers created for us. A Democratic ideal that demands we reject any form of oppressive government, whether foreign or, as George Washington observed, “domestic” in nature.
Thanks, SuzeO for reminding me why I deeply love what this country can once again become.
The US intelligence community has repeatedly concluded that Iran has no active nuclear weapons program. Surely this is more relevant than IAEA claims about Iran’s noncompliance with inspections, which does not equate with an active weapons program (and which the IAEA has never suggested). When Israel and the US open up their (actual) nuclear stockpiles to international inspections get back to me about Iran’s behaviour.