Iran Affairs

Strange visitor to my site: bnesystems.com??

My visitor log shows this:

Time	Page Title	Referring Address
3:48 PM	/ISACAR-war/secure/FetchArtifact	demo.bnesystems.com/ISACAR-war

Not sure what page I have with at /ISACAR-war/secure/FetchArtifact, but the referring address is from bnesystems.com, the website of BESC, a computer consultancy based in Dulles, VA... which happens to also be the location of several US intelligence agencies and their contractors.

What is ISACAR? According to a cached version of BESC's site:

BESC leverages the ISACAR 2.0 framework to produce customized analytic and deep mining solutions.  The ISACAR 2.0 framework provides the ability to rapidly deploy specialized applications allowing customers to:

Automatically produce analytic reports based on geo-locations and any topic of interest
Build customer specific topic ontologies
Visually depict concept and topic relationships
Automatically organize research results per user-defined structure
Graphically build and maintain research queries
Share information and collaborate using graphics and/or text
Access all application features via a browser client
Manage full traceability for all aspects of research and reporting activities
BESC offers licensing for the ISACAR 2.0 framework as well as services which can help your organization quickly deploy powerful analytic, research, and reporting capabilities. 

Hi guys!

Israel desperately accuses Iran of "war crimes" to fend off Goldstone report

There's something downright bizarre and pathetic about Israel accusing Iran of "war crimes" whilst it was busy dumping phosporous bombs on the heads of defenseless refugees in a concentration camp called Gaza. I guess they'll do anything to try to desperately shift the focus off of the Goldstone report on Israeli war crimes -- which was just endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly as well as the head of the UNHCR despite US attempts to kill the report at the UNHC , and is now off to the Security Council (where the US will have to take the rather embarassing step of yet again using a veto to kill the report ... by which time the damage will have been done. the US will simply be seen as exercising raw power to cover up documented war crimes by Israel. Ain't that a wonderful position for a self-proclaimed defender of human rights around to world to be in?)

Fishing in muddy waters of Iran's "Green Movement"

For my many readers in Iran, the English expression "Fishing in muddy waters" means trying to take advantage of a troubled situation for personal gains. With the supposed rise of a nebulous and ill-defined "Green Movement" in Iran, everyone and their uncle is rushing to try to claim the movement as their own and spin them for their own purposes. These include the denizens of pro-Israeli think tanks like Mehdi Khalaji, His Imperial Just-Wanna-be-Employed King of Kings Reza Pahlavi who is buys extolling the sudden-found virtues of democracy, and discredited "journalists" like Judith Miller.

But Jackson Deihl has already complained that the "opposition" forces in Iran are "unlovable" because they are just as insistent on Iran's nuclear rights as the current government, leading to the reported dismissal of the "Green Movement" by analysts in the West. 

And finally, Andrew Sullivan starts to get what I and the polls have been saying all along:

The US's main opponent in preventing Iran's military nuclear development is ... the Iranian people.

Nuclear standoff with Iran could have been resolved years ago

Just of the sake of posterity, I am attaching the text of Iranian Ambassador Javad Zarif's statement to the UN Security Council in December 2006, which shows that Iran had repeatedly offered a way out of the nuclear standoff that would have addressed any REAL concerns about nuclear weapons proliferation, by operating IRan's nuclear program as multinational joint ventures. These offers by Iran were totally ignored but the whole crisis now in the media could have been resolved YEARS ago. Note in particular this section excerpted below (click to enlarge)

Why Iran sanctions = war

Alex Massie asks regarding NeoCon Robert Kagan's rabid support for sanctions as supposedly a way to "trigger potentially explosive unrest" in Iran:

I'd wager that this is, at best, attempting to hit an inside straight. It might, in desperate times, be worth trying but it's not a bet that's likely to pay off. But let's suppose we make that bet. And lose. What then? Our chip count is smaller still and we're left with only one more card to play: military action.

Alex, I think you're just starting to get it. Yes, precisely -- the NeoCons don't care if the sanctions themselves are effective or not. To them, sanctions are just an increment to their real goal: a US military confrontation with Iran. Step by step, they're eliminating peaceful ways out of the standoff, deterring any sort of US-Iran engagement which is anathema to Israel, and building up to war. THAT is why Kagan and this buddies support sanctions. Like I said before, everytime you see the word "sanctions" you should read "war" because that's where it is going to lead.

The coming crack in OPEC

Earlier this month, Robert Fisk of the Independent reported that Arab, French, Japanese, Russian and Chinese finance officials had held secret talks on switch from the dollar to a basket of currencies. This would be an extraordinary event, as the dollar has been the defacto international currency for nearly a century.

On top of that, Iran and Venezuela have been trying to convince OPEC to use the Euro instead of the dollar in crude oil pricing.  Qatar has joined them because, like the Chinese, they're concerned about the fall of the value of the dollar.

The Saudis publicly insist on keeping the dollar but I think they must be privately concerned about the decline in the value of their dollars. The price of oil will rise as the dollar keeps falling, so the Saudis will want to increase oil output in the next Opec meeting in December in order to keep the price at around $75 which they set in December 2008, but they will be opposed by Iran and Venezuela and other countries that want to maintain high prices by cutting production. THe result could be a big split in OPEC. If the Saudis cave, the Saudi riyal may no longer remain pegged to the US dollar. This would have very important implications for the US dollar.

Plans for Iran nuke strategy consists of half-facts and fiction

The Associated Press has an analysis piece entitled US making plans for Iran nuke strategy by Robert Burns that reads like the ravings of a lunatic or non-Earth resident.

Iran has just agreed in principle to allow its low-enriched uranium (which cannot be used to make bombs) to be taken abroad in batches, but Burns at the AP is has already skipped ahead in talking about how Iran is to be "deterred from using atomic weapons."

What "atomic weapons?" Can fantasy and reality be any further apart? Not once does the piece mention that there's no actual evidence of nuclear weapons programs in Iran, and that US intelligence agencies themselves admit that they don't know if Iran even wants nukes. In Burns' universe, Iran has built nukes and is planning on using them, and so has to be deterred. In short, Iran is the new Soviet Union.

Burns apparently lives in a parallel universe in which Iran has used its stock of low-enriched uranium to make nuclear weapons. And, in this parallel universe, the role of the US is to "nudge Iran into agreeing not to use its nuclear facilities to build atomic weapons" -- because apparently the Non-Proliferation Treaty and 6 years of intensive IAEA inspections which have failed to turn up any nuclear weapons program, simply do not exist in Burns' parallel universe.

But then I realized that Burns is probably writing a Tom Clancy-esque novel or something, and has confused reporting the news for pushing a plotline according to which Iran is about to or has already built nukes, and the US has to "deter" Iran from using them. Ah, see? When you buy into the fictional context, Burns suddenly makes sense.

Leverett's new blog on Iran

Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett have launched  The Race for Iran, a new blog on Iran’s geopolitics.

Cyrus Cylinder is "Babylonian artifact"??

Since when did the Cyrus Cylinder become a "Babylonian" artifact?

Iran as the "Persian Empire"

I just love how the meme that Iran is a "Persian Empire" made up of un-integrated ethnicities is being touted in the media by mostly uninformed people who have never set foot in the country and until now had probably never even heard of the Balouch or other Iranian ethnicities.

The assumption -- previously promoted by the likes of Ledeen -- is that since Iran is multiethnic therefore it must be susceptible to breaking apart. Here, let me complicate your life for you a bit more: About a quarter of Iranians are "Azeris" meaning they are descendants of a Turkic-speaking peoples. In fact I am part "Azeri" and so is the Supreme Leader of Iran and lost of other folks.  Yet I also speak Persian and so do my Azeri relatives& I've never had any reason to identify as such. And that doesn't mean I am keen to see the break up of Iran.

Fact is, Iran is no more of an "Empire" than modern day Britain or the many other countries that are multi-ethnic. The novelty of this "discovery" of the multiethnic characteristic of Iran by some is in the fact that they've grown too used to viewing Iranians as a homogeneous, Borg-like Evil "Them" -- a mass of crazy, uncivilised creatures living in a space imaginatively consisting of nothing but deserts and camels--  so much so that the discovery that Iran is a multicultural society comes as a shock and surprise to them. Even more shocking when they realize that there are "Asian" and "Black" Iranians, as well as blonde ones. (This ultimately is due to the way that Americans in particular tend to classify other people in the world by racial categories, which they assume are universally-applicable.)

Jeff Huber: claptrap published about Iran.

I recommend Jeff Huber's post at At-Largely on the media coverage of the Iran nuclear swap (not-yet-)deal

It doesn’t take a professor of literature to figure out that you can’t “slow” the making of nuclear bombs if you’re not making any. But journalism, at least the kind being practiced by Sanger in this [NY Times] article, isn’t exactly literature. His “delay for about a year” line should have read, “delay for another year, pushing the earliest possible date Tehran could build a bomb to 2016.”

But that would be getting the facts straight.

Israel’s ynet news takes things a step further: “Israel Official: Bomb Threat Still Alive.” An unnamed official said, "The expected deal takes care of Iran's openly available uranium which it enriches for seemingly civilian aims, while it continues to secretly enrich uranium for military aims.” No proof was given and none, apparently, was asked for.

It seems that all journalism is tabloid journalism now. Everyone has been access poisoned. Anyone will print anything their unnamed, official sources tell them. Misinformation, disinformation, covert propaganda, it all gets poured into our mainstream media under the guise of “news.”

You said it Jeff!

Press freedoms in Iran, US

So according to the Reporters Without Borders' annual ranking of press freedom worldwide, Media freedoms shrink in Iran, rise in US. But apparently this additional "freedom" of the press in the US has actually harmed the credibility of the press  since nearly two-thirds – 63 percent – of Americans surveyed by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press believe that news stories are often inaccurate.

Anyway, let me explain to you what "press freedom" in the US means: only 5 huge corporations -- Time Warner, Disney, Murdoch's News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany, and Viacom (formerly CBS) -- control almost all of the media industry in the U.S. They ensure that US media maintains a pro-governemt, pro-Corporate tilt. You see, "Freedom" means very little when your range of choices is so restricted as to be essentially meaningless. It is sort of like being forced to choose between Pepsi and Coke. Sure, you're "free" to make that choice...but not really.

That's how media repression works in the US: they don't tell you what to think, they tell you what to think about. They don't have to throw journalists in jail for the simple reason that all the journalists work for the same 5 corporations, who so dominate the market that they drown out competing voices and ensure that they will not have a meaningful impact. And if you want proof of this, just remember: "WMDs in Iraq". 

Israel corrects EU's Solana over Iran

The EU's Solana is being corrected and disciplined by the Israelis:

Kadima chairperson Tzipi Livni met in Jerusalem with the EU's Foreign Policy Chief Javier Solana Tuesday, and told him that Western countries should not be conducting any dialog with Iran at all. The fact that the West had decided not to allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons was not sufficient; there should be no discussions on allowing Iran any nuclear program at all.

Now you know where the "zero enrichment" goal of the US comes from too.

Dollar decline part deux

CFR Senior Fellow Benn Steil says continued weakness in the dollar could be costly for the U.S. economy since the United States will spend more on critical imports like energy, which it cannot produce enough of domestically to meet demand, and so ...

From the perspective of America's major creditors in Asia and the Middle East, the current fear is that the U.S. is printing far too many dollars, and that this will seriously undermine the future purchasing power of their huge stock of dollar assets. The U.S. created the same problem in the 1960s, and crushed global confidence in the dollar. It was fortunate not to have had viable competitors in the 1970s and '80s; there are alternatives today.

Iran backing out of nuclear swap agreement?

Monday morning and the media is promoting the meme that Iran is backing out or retreating on a supposed agreement to ship its nuclear fuel abroad for further enrichment.

For example according to the Christian Science Monitor:

Earlier this month, Iran initially accepted the idea of sending as much as three-quarters of its low-enriched uranium stockpile out of the country. The material would be further refined to a higher-enriched form that's needed for a Tehran research reactor. But in the run-up to Monday's meeting with American, French, and Russian officials, Iran sent mixed signals.

Of course, the fact is that Iran never "initially agreed" to any such thing contrary to what the CSM claims-- yet -- and is under absolutely no obligation to agree to any such thing anyway, especially when the other side has made it clear that any compromise by Iran on this point is only to be viewed as an opportunit to buy time to continue pressuring Iran to give up her absolute, unquestionable, inalienable and sovereign right to enrich uranium on Iranian soil.

Politicized Iran Intelligence Estimate turns with the wind

So the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) about Iran's nuclear program is going to be revised to reach a difference conclusion, according to a new article from the Wall Street Journal.  And the article tries to bolster its case by reasserting a false claim about how German intelligence agencies supposedly also disagree with the previous NIE conclusions - despite the fact that the same organization had refuted this allegation.

So just as in the buildup to the Iraq war, the spinning of intelligence continues.. and proves that you just can't rely on any of it.

If you remember, in the 2007 NIE, US intelligence agencies had concluded "with high confidence" that Iran had given up a nuclear weapons program in 2003. This was a contradiction of their 2005 NIE report, which had concluded that Iran had an on-going nuclear weapons program. I wrote about this previously:

The 2005 NIE claimed with a "high degree of confidence" that Iran had an on-going nuclear weapons program. The following year, the NIE does a radical 180-degree turn and says that Iran does not have an active nuclear weapons program. What does that tell you about the NIEs?

So, according to the WSJ at least, now the NIE is going to complete the 180 degree turn into a full 360 degree turn! Iran is making nukes -- no wait, they're not -- oh yes, they are.  

So I think my question still stands: What does that tell you about the reliability of NIEs? Of course, the intelligence agencies will swear up and down that they're not politicizing the intelligence and their conclusions are the result of only totally objective analysis of the full facts...I mean, after all, if you can't trust an intelligence agency, who can you trust, right?

The truth of the matter is that:

1- THE NIE IS THE SUBJECT OF EXTREME POLITICAL PRESSURES

The Israelis and the NeoCons were offended by the 2007 NIE's inconvenient conclusions that Iran had stopped a nuclear weapons program, and since them have been desperately trying to bring political pressure to have that conclusion changed. So much so that Bush himself had to run off to Israel and reassure the Israelis that he didn't believe the conclusions of his own intelligence agencies, and the US spy chief was obligated dance and pivot on the report by emphasizing his belief that regardless of what the NIE said, Iran's continued enrichment program was reason enough for suspicion (which it isn't, since the program is under IAEA safeguards.)

2- THE IAEA HAS FOUND NO EVIDENCE OF AN IRANIAN NUCLEAR PROGRAM AT ALL 

Regardless of what NIEs say, there's still no actual evidence that Iran EVER had a nuclear weapons program -- not now, not in 2005, not in 2003, not ever. That's according to the IAEA inspectors. The same IAEA inspectors who said they found no secret WMDs in IRaq, quite contrary to the 2002 Iraq NIE -- which everyone admits was politicized baloney. And if the US did have any actual evidence of a nuclear weapons program in Iran, they would be crowing from rooftops with it. But instead, all they have done was  shop around a questionable "Laptop of Death" which has never been verified.

3- CLAIMS THAT GERMAN  INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES DISAGREE WITH THE 2007 NIE ARE NOT RELIABLE, NOR MEANINGFUL: Finally, note that the new WSJ article (in an attempt to bolster doubts about the 2007 NIE) claim that "European" intelligence agencies that had supposedly disagreed with the 2007 NIE too - eventhoug this has been disproven as hype:

Germany's intelligence service, the BND, publicly challenged the U.S. NIE by disclosing information during a court case this year that pointed to ongoing Iranian nuclear-weapons work. The BND gave specifics on Iranian purchases of high-speed cameras and radiation detectors that could be used in testing atomic detonations.

That's a reference to another, earlier article by the same Wall Street Journal which had reported that the BND had gathered evidence to refute the National Intelligence Estimate. But what the WSJ didn't tell you then, and doesn't tell you now, is that the BND itself denied the reports  that Iran was supposedly continuing its nuclear weapons program and would be able to make nukes soon:  

But there appears to be conflicting reports from BND officials. A BND spokesman told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday that "we are not talking about months, but years." He said a six-month threshold is a "shortened" period that does not correspond with the BND's assessment of Teheran's atomic bomb program.

And the as TheMajlis.org previously reported, court case mentioned by the WSJ article was dismissed -- another detail the WSJ leaves out. (though the case was reinstated on appeal and continues to drag out.)

But in any case, who cares what the BND says either way? It is not as if the BND has proven itself totally objective and immune to political pressure either - quite the contrary. If the consensus opinion of 16 American intelligence agencies is so politicized as to be totally unreliable -- as proven previously in the case of the 2002 Iraq NIE as well as this case -- then why assume that the BND is any more objective? You do remember the "key conclusions" of the 2002 Iraq NIE, right?

We judge that Iraq has continued its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs in defiance of UN resolutions and restrictions. Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons as well as missiles with ranges in excess of UN restrictions; if left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade...

LOL!!!

Ebadi is wrong on human rights and Iran

So Shirin Ebadi thinks that the US should emphasize human rights in engaging Iran. I think Glenn Greenwald puts it best though:

The Washington Post thinks the U.S. should vigorously object to Iran's "obvious lack of due process" as a central part of these negotiations.  What would be the purpose of doing that?  Creating a jovial mood for the negotiations at the outset by provoking a massive group laughing fit?

I can just imagine the conversation Obama will hold with the Iranians:

OBAMA: You know you really shouldn't have harmed post-election demonstrators.

IRANIANS: gee, your best friend in the Middle East, Hosni Mubarak, makes a regular habit of shooting voters in the streets whenever he doesn't like how they're voting.

OBAMA: Nevermind that, you shouldn't execute juvenile offenders.

IRANIANS: Hmm... until the practice was prohibited in 2005 by the US Supreme Court, the country that held the record for the execution of juvenile offenders was the United States. In fact, all of the conservative judges on the US Supreme Court voted in favor of the practice. Furthermore, it was only in 1989 that the US set 16 as the minimum age for executions.

OBAMA: Yes, well...you really should respect international law.

IRANIANS: Well, lets see...invading Iraq was against international law...

OBAMA: THat's got nothing to do with anything...Anyway I think we can all agree: torture is bad.

IRANIANS: Ummm...but waterboarding isn't torture, right?

I can go on but you get the picture.

Yes, human rights is a valid concern for Iran as well as many other countries.

No, the fact that the US violates human rights is no excuse for others.

And no, the US is in no position to do anything about human rights in Iran and is not the least bit interested in human rights except for its own cynical uses, so injecting the issue into US-Iran negotiations will accomplish nothing for human rights except to further politicize and dicredit the issue.

Clinton (f)ails Russia over Iran

So Clinton goes to Russia to try to convince them to back sanctions, she fails, and so she hails it as a victory anyway, then goes home.

Scott Ritter on Iranian nuclear hype

"This is about political hype -- the United States hyping up a threat that does not exist."

Silverstein: MISunderstanding the "Iranian Threat" to Israel

Richard Silverstein of Tikun Olam asks for your support in publishing an advertisement in a newspaper representing Seattle's Jewish community regarding a conference on "Understanding the Iranian Threat" that is to be held there soon:

Apparently, the newspaper of record for Seattle’s Jewish community finds no reason to present an alternative to the hawkish panel speaking on October 21st at Temple DeHirsh Sinai.  This program will present the Israeli consul general from San Francisco, the Jerusalem Post’s security correspondent, and an Aipac lobbyist as “experts” on Iran.  It will be moderated by KIRO’s Dave Ross, who will give it a moderate gloss.  Speakers will advocate draconian sanctions and possibly a military attack if those don’t work.  Even more importantly, they will be at odds with the current policy of the U.S. administration.  None of this the JTNews finds worthy of publication.

As a result, I’ve been compelled to pay for an ad in the coming issue. In light of the latest AJC survey finding that 65% of American Jews favor an attack on Iran by Israel, if you feel this message is an urgent one for Jews to read, please support my effort with a contribution.

UPDATE: Since then, the paper has apparently agreed to publish his op-ed. However, you should still show your support.