Vaccinating Americans Against Stupid S*** on Iran
Mainstream liberal media in the U.S. continues to misinform its audiences on the nature and strategic purpose of Iran's nuclear program
So we’re back in another news cycle in which U.S. audiences are invited to believe that Iran is building nuclear weapons. It made me realize that I’ve been writing about this for the past 16 years, which in itself was a reminder that this story, and the misconceptions that undergird it, have been with us for quite some time. And it’s those misconceptions that can and have resulted in the U.S. previously doing “stupid s***” in the Middle East, as President Obama once put it.
This piece – Asking the Wrong Questions on Iran — from my Rootless Cosmopolitan site, written in 2007 while I was covering the issue for TIME — reiterates many of the key basics that hold true 13 years later. Extract:
It would certainly be quite understandable in the strategic environment in which Iran operates to seek a nuclear weapon; some would argue they’d be stupid not to. After all, three of their arch-rivals, the U.S., Israel and Pakistan have such weapons. And they’ve seen such capability may have helped North Korea evade U.S. military action. The recent U.S. nuclear deal with India, moreover, underscores the fact that Washington is unashamedly selective in applying the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and has always ignored the treaty’s premise, i.e. that other countries would refrain from acquiring nuclear weapons in order to allow those that currently have them to disarm. Disarm? The U.S. is the only nation ever to have visited nuclear terror on another nation, a war crime — yes, it is a war crime to deliberately target a civilian population — the discussion of which is quite simply taboo in America. Instead, in the U.S. it is still acceptable to talk of actually using nuclear weapons: Hillary Clinton castigates Barak Obama for ruling out their use against al-Qaeda in Pakistan or Afghanistan! [Note: this was during the primary campaign for the Democratic Party’s 2008 nomination]States do not pursue weapons systems as ends in themselves; and states are hardwired to ensure their own survival. It is to that end that they acquire weapons systems, to protect, enhance or advance their own strategic position and even up the odds against more powerful rivals. As everything from the Cold War to the current deal with North Korea demonstrate, the only way to avoid nuclear conflict is to address the concerns and fears on both sides that might spark such a conflict.
There’s also some enduring value in this one, published in The Nation from the summer of 2010, which was a takedown of some Jeffrey Goldberg hasbara suggesting Israel was about to start a catastrophic war unless the US did so on its behalf, which was palpable shtuyot, as they might say in Israel. (Oh, and it got me blocked from following – yes, from following – the apparently very thin-skinned Mr. Goldberg…)
To suggest that Iran’s present nuclear program represents the security equivalent of a clock ticking down to midnight is calculated hysteria that bears no relation to reality. Ah, says Goldberg, but the point is that the Israelis believe it to be so. Yes, replies former National Security Council Iran analyst Gary Sick, now at Columbia University, but the Israelis and some Americans have been claiming Iran is just a few years away from a nuclear weapon since 1992…
Creating a sense of crisis on the Iran front, narrowing US options in the public mind, and precluding a real discussion of US policy towards Iran may serve multiple purposes for various interested groups. Taken together, however, they reduce all discussion to one issue: when to exercise that military option kept "on the table," given the unlikeliness of an Iranian surrender. The debate’s ultimate purpose is to plant in the public mind the idea that a march to war with Iran, as Admiral Hayden put it on CNN, "seems inexorable, doesn’t it?"
Inexorable—only if the media allows itself to be fooled twice.
On the subject of media manipulation and misrepresentation of an Iran ‘threat’, read this excellent piece by Ben Armbruster on how the New York Times and others seem determined to repeat their shameful failures in the buildup to the Iraq invasion. In the same way as Trump does, Iran ‘hawks’ create ‘facts’ by simply repeating them, as Ben shows in examining the coverage of the assassination of Iranian scientist Moshen Fakhridazeh.
And for prolific, reliable cool-headed sanity on Iran, two of my go-to sources:
* On what Tehran’s leaders are thinking, Barbara Slavin is an indispensable analyst
* On the nature of Iran’s nuclear work and on what would be required to restore the deal trashed by Trump, Ali Vaez of the International Crisis Group.
* Also among many brilliant writers on Iran (who can’t all be listed here), follow Negar Mortazavi, Narges Bajoghli, and my awesome friend Azadeh Moaveni.
Both Barbra and Ali feature in this smart explainer video by AJ+’s Mashaal Mir:
And finally, my own assessment written five years ago when the JCPOA deal (later Trashed by Trump) went into affect, of the strategic gains Iran achieved through its nuclear program — which, again, may offer a useful strategic read to help understand what it’s up to right now:
The Islamic Republic’s nuclear program was a remarkable strategic success [because] Iran has effectively banked the strategic benefits of a bomb it never built.
By demonstrably acquiring the means to build a nuclear deterrent – while refraining from actually doing so, and remaining party to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) – Tehran won a place at the negotiating table with the world’s major powers, where it was treated with the respect its leadership has long craved and where its regime became party to an important international treaty. The nuclear diplomacy has effectively taken any fantasies among Iran’s foes of regime-change by invasion off the table – an achievement that had been a primary goal in Iran’s nuclear decision-making according to the US National Intelligence Estimate.
While American and Israeli hawks claimed that Iran sought nuclear weapons to destroy Israel and trigger an apocalyptic war, the intelligence community in both countries saw Iran’s strategic motivation as in line with those of all other states that have sought nuclear weapons… — to guarantee their survival, security and strategic independence…
Iran’s research into nuclear weapons began in the late 1980s, in response to the nuclear efforts of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, which fought an eight-year war with the Islamic Republic. When the 2003 US invasion of Iraq eliminated Tehran’s most dangerous enemy, Iran’s research into building nuclear weapons was halted.
But Iran continued to steadily acquire key technologies necessary to build a bomb, particularly the ability to enrich uranium. Here, Iran was exploiting the ambiguity of the NPT, which permits member states to build the full fuel-cycle of a nuclear energy program that effectively gives them “breakout capacity” or “nuclear threshold” status. And it was by moving steadily towards that threshold while staying within the parameters of the NPT that Iran forced the western powers to engage with its regime on an equal footing... The possibility of an Iranian nuclear deterrent prompted the West to opt to reintegrate Iran into the international system…
Iran simply played by the unwritten rule of post-Second World War geopolitics in which nuclear weapons have been the price of admission to the top table. Iran’s real innovation was getting to the table with a forged ticket, because its nuclear deterrent was never built.
Trump reversed that outcome and reimposed sanctions, and while the Europeans responded with handwringing, they failed to defy those sanctions. The fact that Iran is responding with its own leverage by rekindling its capacity to enrich uranium to a higher level (albeit while staying within the NPT limits) should surprise no one. Right now, Iran is once again demonstrating capacity to build nuclear weapons, while giving the U.S. and other world powers a diplomatic alternative to avoid it executing on that capacity.
Tahdigable Planet
What cigars are to the monstrously stupid U.S. sanctions on Cuba, high quality saffron is to the monstrously stupid U.S. sanctions on Iran. If you don’t know, as Biggie Smalls once said, now you know. Nestle a pinch in the butter and olive oil on the bottom of your pot before pouring in the rice to steam, and you’ll get the best damn tahdig your tastebuds can imagine. I did that on New Year’s Eve, guided by Naz Deravian’s tahdig recipe (get her book Bottom of the Pot, you won’t regret it) and it was a true crowd pleaser (though there was no crowd…) paired with Samin Nosrat’s Gormeh Sabzi recipe. Nowruz came early to the People’s Republic of Brooklyn…