Update: Iran

Shaping the Story on Iran

Which brings us to the tale being spun by the Associated Press (AP). If nukes are number one in the Iran narrative, terrorists are certainly number two. And if allegations about Hezbollah and Hamas don’t excite you what could be better than producing a link to the ultimate nasties, al-Qaeda? A week ago an investigative story was featured as an AP Exclusive: "CIA tracks al-Qaeda moving from Iran." The account is based on the fact that a handful of al-Qaeda officers, including at least one of Osama bin Laden’s sons, fled to Iran after the US invaded Afghanistan in 2001 and were subsequently placed under house arrest. They have been there ever since.

The AP story claims that there is intelligence suggesting that some of the detainees have now been released. The authors of the story opine that the change in policy is so al-Qaeda can "replenish its ranks." They cite a number of "current and former" intelligence officers as their sources but actually only quote two former CIA officers who apparently claim to have current knowledge about the movement of the terrorists. The other sources are anonymous and it is not even completely clear if they are all American. One of the cited authorities, Bruce Riedel, has been retired from the Agency since 2006 and now works at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institute. How Riedel would have access to highly sensitive information on the movement of al-Qaeda is by no means evident and the article does not reveal his connection to Haim Saban, a Hollywood billionaire whose deep attachment to Israel is well documented.

The second CIA officer is Clare Lopez, who is a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy, which claims to be non-partisan but is basically a pro-Israel Muslim-bashing organization, as revealed by its website. Leading neocon Frank Gaffney is the founder and president. Lopez retired from CIA at some point prior to 2005, so she has been out of the loop even longer than Riedel. Is the AP story being honest about the likely reliability and possible biases of its sources? Apparently not.

Before traveling to Iran, Brazil’s President Lula da Silva said that he believed that he had a 99 percent chance of a successful breakthrough in the talks with Iran, even as U.S. officials expressed extreme skepticism that anything could be accomplished. What Brazil and Turkey did is to get Iran to reaffirm the terms of the October, 2009, deal that was worked out in Geneva, by which Iran would have sent the bulk of its enriched uranium to Russia and France for reprocessing into fuel rods for a medical research reactor in Tehran. Under the new accord, worked out by Brazil and Turkey, Iran will send about half of its enriched uranium to Turkey, instead. True, Iran has more enriched uranium now than it had in October, but the very fact that Iran is still ready to ship some of its fuel abroad is a sign that diplomacy can still work.

In the United States, however, reaction is sharply negative. It’s almost as if the Obama administration is more concerned that it’s hard-fought battle to get Russian and Chinese support for more (useless) sanctions on Iran is unraveling than it is about a real solution to the problem.

The Washington Post, petulant and petty in its editorial today, called “Bad Bargain,” says that the Brazil-Turkey accord will “do nothing to restrain Tehran’s nuclear program,” that it might “derail” the Obama administration’s sanctions push, and that it represents a “major diplomatic coup for the regime of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.” In fact, it might have been a diplomatic coup for the United States, if Washington hadn’t foolishly insisted that the terms of the October deal were sacrosanct and couldn’t be altered in order to get the deal back on track, after Iran first accepted it and then rejected it. It could have been a diplomatic coup for President Obama if he’d encouraged Brazil and Turkey to go ahead, rather than having his spokesmen pooh-pooh the effort and issue ugly warnings to Brazil.

The New York Times reports that the Obama administration is angry over the deal, in part because Obama met personally with the Brazilian and Turkish leaders in Washington earlier this month and then sent them letters urging them to reject a deal with Iran.

First, Iran runs out of fuel this year for its reactor that produces medical isotopes. And despite Tehran’s braggadocio about making fuel rods itself out of its existing pile of uranium, there is no evidence Tehran is technically capable of this.

Iranians dying of cancer because Ahmadinejad failed to get those fuel rods would create enmity toward him, as well as hatred of us for denying them to Iranian cancer patients.

Second, as the U.S. intelligence community yet contends, there is no hard evidence Iran has decided to go nuclear. For this would instantly put Iran in the nuclear gun sights of the United States and Israel. And what benefit would Shi’ite and Persian Iran, half of whose population is non-Persian, gain by starting a nuclear arms race in a region that is predominantly Arab and Sunni?

Third, Ahmadinejad leads a nation that is united in insisting on all its rights under the Nonproliferation Treaty, including the right to enrich. But his nation is deeply divided over his regime’s legitimacy after last June’s flawed, if not fixed, election.

If the United States were to accept Iran’s counter-offer, it would be a diplomatic coup for Ahmadinejad.

Maybe that’s the problem. The powers that be don’t really want a deal with Iran. They want Iran smashed.