Reality Check: de Nederlandse Bomb Iran-lobby

14 september in Trouw:

"Het Westen verdenkt Iran ervan het atoomprogramma te gebruiken voor de productie van kernwapens."

Dit zinnetje is zo normaal geworden dat de leugen niet eens meer opvalt. Want wie zijn "het Westen" die dat denken? De Bomb Iran lobby is niet "het Westen", maar een club van oorlogzuchtige en immer oliehongerige neoconservatieven plus de illegale kernwapenmacht Israël.

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4 september Radio Nederland Wereldomroep:

"...Iran, dat mogelijk in het geheim aan kernwapens werkt."

Een vileine leugen met in het woord "mogelijk" het venijn. Een venijn dat hier voor journalistieke ethiek door moet gaan. Uit de categorie "naar vermeend" en "volgens [anonieme] bronnen", dat je alleen in tabloids en derderangs roddelblaadjes zou verwachten.

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Op 1 september liegt ene Ehsan Kermani de hele boel aan elkaar in Trouw, en begint al in zijn eerste zin:

"De internationale gemeenschap zet Iran van alle kanten onder druk vanwege zijn kernwapenprogramma."

Welk kernwapenprogramma? Kermani is een gevluchte Iraniër en voorzitter van een van de lobbyclubs die er naar streeft om het regime in Iran zo kwaadaardig mogelijk te presenteren, om zodoende de weg tot en consensus voor bombardementen en oorlog te plaveien (zie ook: Irak). De man doet niet eens de moeite om wat hij beweert in een "opinie" te verhullen, bijvoorbeeld omdat hij schrijft in de wij-vorm: "Laten wij duidelijk zijn. Alle kernwapens de wereld uit, te beginnen met de (toekomstige) kernwapens van Iran." Over Israël natuurlijk geen woord.

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Op 25 augustus schrijft Rutger van der Hoeven in de Groene Amsterdammer (ja, ook die):

"Zo bouwt Iran een eigen machtspositie op ... en Teheran zicht krijgt op een eigen kernwapen"

Maar hij gaat verder:

"...een nucleair bewapend Iran dat de sluimerende kernwapenprogramma's van Saoedi-Arabië, Egypte, Turkije en Syrië kan aanzwengelen."

Het meest alarmerende vind ik nog dat Van der Hoeven niet alleen als propagandeur door de massamedia wordt ingehuurd, maar dat hij ook nog geschiedenis doceert aan de Universiteit van Utrecht.

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Etcetera.

In Christian Science Monitor legt journalist Scott Horton bloot hoe onze zelfbenoemde "kwaliteitspers" onderdeel uitmaakt van het Bomb Iran propaganda apparaat, en hoe wij reeds jarenlang gebrainwashd worden door de dames en heren van de redactie.

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Reality Check: Iran is Not a Nuclear Threat
Forget the neoconseratie hype. The facts show Iran is not and has not been a nuclear threat to either the United States or Israel.

CSM -- Sept, 17, 2010 - - Politicians, lobbyists, and propagandists hae spent nearly two decades pushing the lie that Iran poses a nuclear weapons threat to the United States and Israel. After a brief respite in the intensity of the wolf cries oer the past two years, the neoconseratie moement has decided to relaunch the "Must Bomb Iran" brand.

The fact that Iran is not and has not been a nuclear threat to either nation is rendered irreleant by a narratie of uniersal "concern" about its nuclear program.

US media distortions
In mid-August, for example, after The New York Times quite uncharacteristically ran a piece diminishing the supposed danger of Iranian nukes, the story was misrepresented in newspapers and on T stations across the country in the most frightening terms. As MSNBC's news reader put it that afternoon: "Intelligence sources say Iran is only one year away from a nuclear bomb!"

On August 13, on Fox News, former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton implicitly urged Israel to attack Iran's new light-water reactor at Bushehr before it began "functioning," the implication being that the reactor represented some sort of dire threat. But the facts are not on Mr. Bolton's side. The Bushehr reactor is not useful for producing weapons-grade plutonium, and the Russians hae a deal to keep all the waste themseles.

On September 6, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) released a new paper on the implementation of Iran's Safeguards Agreement which reported that the agency has "continued to erify the non-diersion of declared nuclear material in Iran to any military or other special purpose."

Yet despite the IAEA report and clear assertions to the contrary, news articles that followed were dishonest to the extreme, interpreting this clean bill of health as just another wisp of smoke indicating nuclear fire in a horrifying near-future.

A Washington Post article published the ery same day led the way with the aggressie and misleading headline "UN Report: Iran stockpiling nuclear materials," "shorthanding" the facts right out of the narratie. The facts are that Iran's terrifying nuclear "stockpile" is a small amount of uranium enriched to industrial grade leels for use in its domestic energy and medical isotope programs, all of it "safeguarded" by the IAEA.

More sensational claims

If the smokescreen wasn't thick enough, late last week a group of Marxist holy warrior exiles called the Mujahadeen-e-Khalq, working with the ery same neoconseraties who sponsored Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress - which manufactured so much of the propaganda that coninced the American people to support the inasion of that country - accused the Iranian goernment of building a secret nuclear enrichment facility buried deep in tunnels near Qazin.

Headlines once again blared in total negligence and without erification that here indeed was, an official told Fox News, proof that Iran has a "hidden, secret nuclear weapons program.'" T news anchors on eery channel furiously mopped sweat from their brows, hearts-a-tremor. When will the forces of good rise to stop this eil?!

Yet een US officials quickly admitted that they'e known about these tunnels for years. "[T]here's no reason at this point to think it's nuclear," one US official said - a quote that appeared in Fox's article, but only after fie paragraphs of breathless allegations. All day long, top-of-the-hour news updates on T and radio let the false impression stand.

IAEA inspectors hae had open access to the gas conersion facility at Isfahan, the enrichment facility at Natanz, and the new lightwater reactor at Bushehr, as well as the secondary enrichment facility under construction at Qom.

An ignored clean bill of health

The September 6 IAEA report confirming for the zillionth time the non-diersion of nuclear material should be the last word on the subject until the next time they say the same thing: Iran, a long-time signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), is not in iolation of its Safeguards Agreement.

So what's all the hubbub about Iran's "nuclear defiance" and "danger"?

The IAEA's latest report does note that Iran has "not proided the necessary cooperation to permit the Agency to confirm that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful actiities." Indeed, the agency's frequent mentions of Iran's "lack of full cooperation" is a big reason why US media reports portray Iran in ominous terms.

But here, too, US media frequently miss the point. Neer mind that 118 nations around the world hae signed a statement criticizing the IAEA's "peaceful actiities" conclusion as a departure from standard erification language. More broadly, Iran's "lack of full cooperation" by itself is an outcome of Western bullying and propaganda.

Real reason for lack of cooperation

The US and the UN, acting upon no legitimate authority whatsoeer, hae demanded that Iran submit to an Additional Protocol to the Safeguards Agreement, which would ban any further enrichment on Iranian soil, as well as demanded they submit to an endless regime of IAEA inspections and questioning, based mostly on the "alleged studies" documents, which seeral sources hae said are forgeries posing as a pilfered laptop of a dead Iranian nuclear scientist.

These separate, UN Security Council-mandated inestigations hae een demanded blueprints for Shahab 3 missiles - a subject far remoed from hexafluoride gas or any legitimate IAEA function. In 2003, Iran oluntarily agreed to the extra burden of the unratified Additional Protocol during "good faith negotiations" with the so-called "E-3," Britain, France, and Germany, acting on behalf of the US. When those negotiations broke down, Iran withdrew in 2006.

With these details left out of the discussion, the impression is left that Iran is refusing to abide by international law, when in fact, it is completely within its NPT obligations.

An outrageous standard

Meanwhile, Washington continues to apply to Iran the outrageous standard it used in the run-up to the Iraq war: an unfriendly nation must "proe" it doesn't hae dangerous weapons or a secret program to make them - or potentially face military action.

"Proing a negatie" is, to say the least, a difficult obligation to meet: You say you haen't read Webster's Dictionary coer to coer? Proe it!

The bottom line is that Iran is still within its unalienable rights to peaceful nuclear technology under the NPT and the Safeguards Agreement - a point een Tehran's fiercest critics (grudgingly) acknowledge. The only issues it is defying are the illegitimate sanctions and demands of the US and UN, which themseles defy logic and sense.

Journalists' ethical obligation

It is far past time for the members of the American media to get their act together and begin asking serious follow-up questions of the politicians, "experts," and lobbyists they interview on the subject of Iran's nuclear program.

Many of these same journalists still hae the blood of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis on their hands from the months they spent continuously and uncritically parroting the lies, half-truths, and distortions of agenda-drien Iraqi dissidents and their neocon champions who pushed us into the Iraq war.

Perhaps this is their shot at redemption.

Scott Horton is host of Antiwar Radio on the Liberty Radio Network and assistant editor at Antiwar.com.