by Shervin Malekzadeh

Millions of Iranians will gather in the coming days to watch their country take on the world in something other than politics. Against the odds, against Argentina, and after a long, eight-year absence, Iran’s participation in the World Cup is a welcome break from usual state TV programming. While the people [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Shervin Malekzadeh

Millions of Iranians will gather in the coming days to watch their country take on the world in something other than politics. Against the odds, against Argentina, and after a long, eight-year absence, Iran’s participation in the World Cup is a welcome break from usual state TV programming. While the people of Iran ceaselessly hope for sanctions relief and a better economy, at least for now, sports will draw their interest more than their government’s wrangling with Western powers over Iran’s nuclear portfolio.

Missing out on the festivities will be the more than 1 million recent high school graduates studying for the dreaded konkoor, a yearly university entrance exam scheduled for June 26. Tucked away in their bedrooms, poorly sheltered against the frantic shouts and exhortations just outside their doors, the temptation of the World Cup could not have come at a worse time for these students. They face a cruel calculus: an entire year of preparation to take a four-hour test focusing on five subject areas — the only way to gain college admission. The cost of failure will be an entire year of waiting just to retake the test. Those students who pass, on the other hand, will have no way of knowing beforehand where they will be placed (there are no campus visits in Iran) nor whether they will be able to enroll in their preferred course of study (their ranking on the konkoor determines both).

What is not uncertain is that most of the successful test-takers will complete their university education without securing a job or an obvious career path. More than 21 percent of all young people with a college degree were unemployed according to last year’s state figures, more than double the official national average. An astounding 43 percent of college-educated women are without work. Young, overqualified, and unemployed, most of Iran’s college graduates will continue to live at home and toil away at jobs unrelated to their degrees and majors, a state of adolescent suspension that the political scientist Diane Singerman has memorably labeled, “waithood.”

It is an inconsistency that youth and the possession of a university degree have become the strongest predictors for unemployment in Iran today. The great mystery is that none of this seems to matter. Despite considerable outrage in the media and amongst the general public about the inability of Iran’s educational system to funnel graduates into the workforce, the demand for college amongst ordinary Iranians remains insatiable.

The single-minded pursuit of credentialed merit in Iran persists against dim prospects. Since 2005, the percentage of 18-24-year-olds attending college has nearly tripled, rising from just over 20 percent to the current 55 percent, a demand fueled in part by an Ahmadinejad administration determined to establish its populist bona fides through education. State planners keen on expanding the government’s reach have been met more than halfway from below, by a society obsessed with the distinction and opportunities that “getting the paper” supposedly brings. “Learn and study what you will,” writes one long time observer of Iran’s educational system, “but above all get a university degree!”

So why participate in a system in which the odds, if not the system itself, appear to be stacked against you? This question is not limited to academia. Iranians take part in all kinds of “games,” be they educational (attending college to gain employment), political (voting in presidential elections), or athletic (the World Cup), despite very low chances of success.

Indeed, almost exactly a year ago today, more than 18 million Iranians, over 70 percent of the voting age population, participated in Iran’s presidential election despite the turmoil of the 2009 election and violent suppression of the Green Movement. Though polling and anecdotal evidence showed that many Iranians believed their vote “would not matter” and that the election would be rigged, an absolute majority turned up at the ballot box in June 2013 to vote Hassan Rouhani into office, shocking even the most astute of observers and creating a “political earthquake.”

The politics of participation in Iran is not without explanation. Disappointment and fatigue with a revolution that remains wedded to large and unwieldy promises have left many people inclined to seek their advantage in the small and manageable, to get what they can from revolutionary strictures. A college degree is unlikely to produce a job, just as a vote for Hassan Rouhani will surely not lead to Jeffersonian democracy. But while both are uncertain opportunities for progress, nonparticipation guarantees failure.

Something similar is happening with Iran’s Team Melli. The national team qualified for the World Cup just days after Rouhani’s election, the celebratory crowds for which dwarfed even the widespread street celebrations following Rouhani’s presidential win. Today, every Iranian knows the chances of the national team making it to the second round, much less winning the tournament, are almost zero. That does not mean, however, that Iranians will turn off the TV when Iran plays against Lionel Messi and the formidable Argentinian team on Saturday, or that young people won’t find a way to sneak away from their books to watch the match, all in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, the odds will turn their way.

This article was first published by LobeLog and was reprinted here with permission. Follow LobeLog on Twitter and like us on Facebook

Photo: Iranian youth celebrating in northern Tehran after Team Melli qualified for the 2014 Brazil World Cup on June 18, 2013, just days after Hassan Rouhani was elected president. Credit: Kosoof

via The National Interest

In the long story of the evolving Iran nuclear issue, we naturally tend to focus on whatever is the chapter immediately before us. Right now that mainly involves the negotiation-subverting Kirk-Menendez sanctions bill, which President Obama in his State of the Union address explicitly threatened to [...]]]> by Paul Pillar

via The National Interest

In the long story of the evolving Iran nuclear issue, we naturally tend to focus on whatever is the chapter immediately before us. Right now that mainly involves the negotiation-subverting Kirk-Menendez sanctions bill, which President Obama in his State of the Union address explicitly threatened to veto if Congress passed it. But we also ought to keep a longer-term view of how opponents of an agreement with Iran have kept changing their tune and changing their arguments as their earlier arguments have become inoperative.

Back when the Iranian president everyone loved to loathe, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was still in office, the go-to tactic for opponents was to cite whatever was the most recent outrageous rhetoric that had come out of Ahmadinejad’s mouth, whether or not it had anything to do with the substance of the nuclear issue. That tactic did not work so well after Hassan Rouhani replaced Ahmadinejad, although there still seems to be little hesitation in repeatedly going to the well of mistranslated vintage Ahmadinejad “wipe Israel off the map” comments. The emphasis has now become less on what Iranian leaders say than on what nefarious intentions supposedly lurk behind what they say—hence Benjamin Netanyahu’s “wolf in sheep’s clothing” formulation.

There also once was much doubt expressed about whether the Iranian leadership would ever want to negotiate seriously. Then when serious negotiations got under way last fall, there was doubt expressed about whether Iran would make significant concessions about its nuclear program. Then when Iran made major concessions in the Joint Plan of Action concluded in November, opposition tactics had to be adjusted again.

The tactics in the wake of the JPA have taken several forms. One is outright misrepresentation about this preliminary agreement, including talk about its unbalanced and disproportionate nature—which is true, except that it was Iran that made disproportionately large concessions. Another is sabotage disguised as support for negotiations, which is what the Kirk-Menendez bill is all about. Another tactic is the moving of goalposts, and in particular the deal-killing demand to end totally any Iranian enrichment of uranium. Yet another is in effect to change the subject and to pretend that the question is not the pros and cons of a prospective nuclear agreement but instead a popularity contest about the Iranian regime—and anything else it may be doing that we don’t like.

Netanyahu provided in a speech this week [4] a particularly vivid example of complete abandonment of a previous argument that has been negated by accomplishment at the negotiating table. His centerpiece imagery used to be the famous cartoon bomb he displayed before the United Nations General Assembly. That cartoon would be an excellent prop for describing what has been achieved with the Joint Plan of Action, with its end to 20 percent enrichment of uranium and elimination of existing stocks enriched to that level. Except that the lines on the cartoon are moving down, not up. As Joseph Cirincione has put it, the Joint Plan of Action “drained” Netanyahu’s bomb.

So Netanyahu is now arguing that what matters is not the level to which Iran is enriching, but instead the sophistication of its centrifuges. And he has changed his imagery to railroads. Netanyahu puts it this way: “What the Iranians did, and this is what the agreement determined, is that they would return the train to the first station, but at the same time, they are upgrading the engine and strengthening it so that they will be able to break through all at once, without any stations in the middle, straight to 90%.” Boris and Natasha have been replaced by Thomas the Tank Engine.

Several lessons should be drawn from all this argumentative shape-shifting. One is that those making the arguments have repeatedly been proven wrong. Another is that much of what we hear from them does not reflect genuine views or any analysis but is simply flak shot up to try to impede or kill the process at whatever place it happens to be at the moment. Yet another lesson is that the opposition will never end, no matter the terms of an agreement, because the opponents want no agreement at all. If it’s not one thing we are hearing about, such as enrichment levels, it will be something else, such as the particular models of centrifuge.

And if it’s not nuclear weapons, it will be other things disliked about Iran. If a final agreement based on the terms of the Joint Plan of Action gels, making it harder than ever to argue against the concept that such an agreement is the best way to preclude an Iranian nuclear weapon, expect to hear more about how, with or without a nuclear weapon, the Islamic Republic of Iran is so bad that it must be kept pressured and ostracized. Netanyahu laid some groundwork for such a future position in his speech when he said, “Now of course the Iranian threat is not just an unconventional threat.”

One of the unfortunate effects of the endless opposition is that it constitutes another form of sabotage. The Iranians may be understandably reluctant to make more concessions knowing there are elements on the other side determined to destroy any deal no matter what the terms, no matter how long it takes, and no matter what new arguments have to be conjured up.

After intense negotiations between Iran and world powers (chiefly among them the United States), November 24 saw a historic breakthrough. In a six-month interim agreement, Tehran has committed itself to a substantial freezing of its nuclear program in return for “modest relief” — according to US [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Ali Fathollah-Nejad*

After intense negotiations between Iran and world powers (chiefly among them the United States), November 24 saw a historic breakthrough. In a six-month interim agreement, Tehran has committed itself to a substantial freezing of its nuclear program in return for “modest relief” — according to US President Barack Obama — in sanctions. The agreement will be a first step towards achieving a comprehensive solution, with which the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program will be ensured while all sanctions against the country would be lifted.

There has been much speculation over the degree in which the decade-long transatlantic Iran strategy of coercive diplomacy was responsible for reaching this diplomatic victory. Was it the permanent threats of war or the increasingly crippling sanctions which, in the eyes of many Western observers, led Iran to “give in”?

Arguably, it rather was a shift away from that policy of threats and pressure, and towards serious diplomacy aiming at a reconciliation of interests (especially during the month of November), which rendered the deal possible. But yes, without any doubt the sanctions did have an impact.

The sanctions have severely deepened Iran’s economic malaise, considerably harmed a variety of social groups, while part of the power elite quite comfortably adjusted to the situation. Consequently, the power gap separating the state and (civil) society was even boosted.

Yet, the immense damage that sanctions have done to society does not bear much relevance for policy-makers. However, what has gone largely unnoticed by supporters of the sanctions policy is the realpolitik fact that, contrary to its stated goal, the escalation of sanctions was accompanied by an escalation in Iran’s nuclear program. When Obama entered the White House, there were not even 1,000 centrifuges spinning in Iran; today, the figure stands at almost 19,000.

The reason for this is that the West views sanctions through a cost-benefit lens, according to which it can only be a matter of time until the sanctioned party will give in. In contrast, Tehran sees sanctions as an illegitimate form of coercion, which ought to be resisted, for the alternative would be nothing less than capitulation.

Nonetheless, many commentators sardonically insist on praising the sanctions’ alleged effectiveness for aiding diplomacy. This is not only a sign of analytical myopia, but also constitutes the not-so-covert attempt to shed a positive light on the coercive diplomacy that was pursued so far.

In reality, Iran’s willingness to offer concessions is rooted within a wider context.

Firstly, Iran already demonstrated its readiness to compromise over the last three years [28], which the Obama administration did not dare to accept due to domestic political pressures (i.e., his re-election).

Secondly, and this is likely to have been crucial in achieving the agreement in Geneva, Iran’s current foreign policy is primarily not a result of pressure through sanctions. Instead, it is embedded within a specific foreign-policy school of thought which is characterized by realism and a policy of détente.

Notably, with Hassan Rouhani’s election, the “defensive realist” school of thought reasserted power, which had previously been ascendant during Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani’s and Mohammad Khatami’s administrations. Their prime objective was a policy of détente and rapprochement, especially with the West, but also with neighboring Arab states — specifically, Iran’s geopolitical adversary, Saudi Arabia.

In contrast to the “offensive realists” who took the lead under the Ahmadinejad administration, “defensive realists” do not view foreign policy as a zero-sum game but instead as an arena where win-win situations ought to be explored – especially with the United States. Another pivotal difference between these schools of thought is their estimation of US power.

While “offensive realists” see the superpower’s power-projection capabilities rapidly declining, the “defensive” camp rightly acknowledges that even a US in relative decline can inflict substantial damage on weaker countries like Iran. The historically unprecedented Iran sanctions regime is a prime illustration of the veracity of the latter view.

Ultimately, the nuclear agreement in its core has to be seen as a U.S.-Iranian one, which expresses the will of both sides to secure their interests in a rapidly changing regional landscape. To what extent this will affect Washington’s traditional regional allies in Tel Aviv and Riyadh will be highly interesting to watch.

Normal
0

false
false
false

MicrosoftInternetExplorer4

*  Ali Fathollah-Nejad is a PhD candidate in international relations at both the University of Muenster in Germany and the School of African and Oriental Studies (SOAS) at the University of London.

st1:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) }

/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:”Table Normal”;
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-parent:”";
mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0in;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:”Times New Roman”;
mso-ansi-language:#0400;
mso-fareast-language:#0400;
mso-bidi-language:#0400;}
[Note: A version of this article will be published in the next issue of the German Middle East journal, Inamo [29]. This article was translated from German into English by Manuel Langendorf [30].]

by Mohammad Ali Kadivar

It took only a few months after president Hassan Rouhani’s inauguration for the broad but fragile alliance behind him to face challenges after the shutdown of a reformist newspaper as well as the harassment of the daughters of Mir Hossein Mousavi and [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Mohammad Ali Kadivar

It took only a few months after president Hassan Rouhani’s inauguration for the broad but fragile alliance behind him to face challenges after the shutdown of a reformist newspaper as well as the harassment of the daughters of Mir Hossein Mousavi and Zahra Rahnavard, two leaders of the opposition Green Movement who are still under house arrest.

Reformists and supporters of the Green Movement that had voted for Rouhani in June 2013, outraged from these incidents, urged him to take a more aggressive and confrontational stance against hardliners. Ayatollah Dastgheib, the most outspoken clerical supporter of the Greens who had also endorsed Rouhani in his presidential campaign, reminded the President that his vote for him had been on the condition that  political prisoners be released and Rouhani should do anything to fulfill that condition. Jaras, a major website of the Green Movement, also published multiple articles with a similar theme. One of those articles warned Rouhani that if he stayed silent and did not join popular forces, he would be defeated from that point forward. The Organization of Iran’s Republicans, an elite opposition group in exile that has an astute strategic vision, concluded that these actions show that Iran’s Leader and governmental organizations under his supervision are determined to abort Rouhani’s policies, similar to what they did in paralyzing the reformist administration of Mohammad Khatami from 1997 to 2005.

Responding to this wave of criticism on Oct. 30, former president Khatami, a key supporter of Rouhani in the 2013 election, stated that hardliners “want to detach Rouhani from his social backbone, and pretend that his administration is inefficient.” Khatami also highlighted the positive role of the Leader Ali Khamenei in the outcome of the 2013 election, and asked the youth in particular to be patient and maintain realistic expectations for Rouhani. Political commentators in the opposition received this speech rather differently. While some urged the people to stay moderate and take Khatami’s advice seriously, others recalled that during his presidency, Khatami’s approach to demobilizing his popular supporters and following reformist demands through established institutions and elite negotiations was ultimately unsuccessful.

As different sides of the debate draw analogies and examples from the Reform Era (1997-2005), the content of their arguments resonate a great deal with hot discussions during that eight year period. In a recently published article in the American Sociological Review, I explain the major strategic debates within the Reform Movement and how these strategic chasms derived coalition changes within the movement. I argue that the positions of reformist actors in these debates can be better understood and classified along the lines of three different dimensions: optimism about the incumbent elite in the Islamic Republic of Iran, optimism about the possibility of reform through the institutions of the Islamic Republic, and optimism about the viability and consequences of popular mobilization. The convergence or divergence of reformist groups’ perceptions along these three dimensions drove the formation and disintegration of alliances in the Reform Movement.

The Reform Movement took off in Khatami’s landslide victory in the 1997 presidential election. It hoped to promote the rule of law, hold officeholders accountable, and strengthen civil society. Three major actors backed Khatami’s campaign and later constituted the grand reformist alliance that supported Khatami’s policies and plans: a clerical reformist party (the Assembly of Militant Clerics), two lay reformist parties (the Organization of the Mujahedin of the Islamic Revolution and the Participation Front), and the student movement (represented by the Office for Strengthening Unity).

These three groups all shared a strategic assessment of the political context in Iran at the time that was key to sustaining the alliance. This assessment, the political negotiation model, was based on optimism toward the incumbent elite in the Islamic Republic, optimism about reforming the regime through its own institutions, and pessimism about the consequences of popular mobilization for the Reform project. This model indicated that dialogue and negotiation with hardliners would finally convince them of the benefits of reformism.

“The best way to engage the enemies of civil society is to give them this opportunity to rethink and to let them readjust,” one affiliated newspaper suggested. “We should show them in practice that transition to democracy presents greater opportunities than threats” (Hayat-e No, June 1, 2000). This model was also credited with stating that institutions of the Islamic Republic were capable of reforming the regime from within (Asr-e Ma, December 1999/January 2000). As a journalist affiliated with the lay reformist parties put it, the political institutions of the Islamic Republic were not “dead-ends.” Indeed, he continued, “there is no way to change the world than to act within legal institutions” (Neshat, July 13, 1999). In addition, supporters of this model feared that because of deep grievances, mass mobilization would stir up emotions, spawning radicalism and provide hardliners with an excuse for repression, possibly leading to civil war. In addition, these reformists felt the Reform Movement lacked the organizational capacity to keep public demonstrations under control.

This model was dominant among the clerical reformist party, lay reformist parties, and the major organization of the student movement between 1997 and 2000, and even survived earlier waves of repression. At the same time, the nationalist opposition — the Iran Liberation Movement, and the Nationalist-Religious Activists — were the one set of reform organizations that did not share this view of political opportunities. Their perception profile, which I call the political-activist model, was not optimistic about persuading the conservative elite of the Islamic Republic to accept democratization, and stressed the possibility and necessity of contentious collective action to confront the regime. Nationalist groups encouraged Khatami to adopt the political style of Mohammad Mossadeq, the democratically elected prime minister who mobilized mass support for the nationalization of Iran’s oil industry in 1950, forcing his better-placed opponents within Iran’s political institutions to accept his programs (Iran Liberation Movement, statement #1369, May 19, 1999). At the same time, the nationalist opposition shared the political-negotiation view that Iran’s political institutions offered opportunities for democratization. Nonetheless, nationalist groups did not act in alliance with the other three reformist groups. The alliance in this period was only between groups that shared the political-negotiation model.

The escalation of repression against the movement in 2000 triggered new strategic debates within, disillusioned many reform movement supporters about the political-negotiation model and transformed their political perception. The most radical reaction came from the student movement. They became discouraged about the prospects of convincing hardliners through dialogue as well as reforming the regime through its own political institutions. The statement of the Unity Office (the main organization of the student movement) after the 2003 municipal elections explained this position: “To speak of the ineffectiveness of the May 23 Front is to acknowledge the reality that the strategy of ‘self-reforming’ the regime has reached a dead-end. Of course, this is not just because of the weaknesses of the reformists. The fact that the hard core of power does not surrender to the process of reform has been one of the root causes of this dead-end” (Asr-e No, March 10, 2003). Accordingly, they did not participate in any elections from 2000 to 2005.

Lay Reformist parties ultimately lost their optimism about Iran’s dominant elite and stated that reformists in the government should take a confrontational position and use all of their institutional and legal authorities in their struggle with the hardliners. This new perception brought these groups closer to the Nationalist groups who were also pessimistic about Iran’s incumbent elite but optimistic about the capacities of Iran’s political institutions. At the same time, president Khatami and his allies in the clerical reformist party maintained the negotiation profile even after the Guardian Council disqualified thousands of reformist candidates from the 2004 parliamentary elections, including dozens of incumbents.

Shifting perception profiles resulted in a new set of alliances during the 2005 presidential election. Adherents of the political-negotiation model supported Mehdi Karroubi, who emphasized his pragmatism and bargaining skills. The student movement’s Unity Office boycotted the election based on its radical perception profile that saw no chance of reforming the regime through institutions such as elections. Lay reformist groups nominated Mostafa Mo’in, who stressed his confrontational stance, and promised for example that he would never hold elections with mass candidate disqualifications, as Khatami had done in 2004 (ISNA, May 15, 2005).

When the Guardian Council disqualified the candidate of the Nationalist opposition, they entered into negotiations with the lay reformist parties and chose to support Mo’in’s candidacy, formalizing the alliance between the lay reformist parties and the nationalist groups. They justified this decision by pointing to the threat they perceived if the hardliners were to solidify control of all political institutions, adding the executive branch to their control of parliament, the municipal councils, and the unelected branches of government. Late Ezzatollah Sahabi, head of the Nationalist-Religious Activists at the time said that “if we do not participate in the election, the right faction will win the election, and that will be a disaster for the country, as we can observe in the behavior of the mayor of Tehran [Mahmoud Ahmadinejad]” (ISNA, June 6, 2005). This marked the first time the nationalist opposition had allied with other opposition groups since the 1979 revolution and resulted in a coordinated electoral campaign on behalf of Mo’in. Although this short-term coalition was not successful in the 2005 election, it became the pioneer strategic cooperation among pro-democratic forces of different ideologies and backgrounds within Iranian politics.

The outcome of the 2005 election was disastrous for reformists though; their votes were divided between multiple candidates and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad managed to win the election in two rounds.

The 2009 massive protests reshuffled the perception profiles of many reformist groups and individuals. However, eight years after the end of the Reform Era, we again observe that supporters of democratic change in Iranian politics are debating similar themes about the possibility of reform through negotiation with Iran’s incumbent elite, participation in political institutions, and popular mobilization.

Are these debates and quarrels going to create fractures in the alliance behind Rouhani? Is the moderation project repeating the fate of the Reform Movement, as several well-known commentators fear? While there are definite similarities between Iran’s political landscapes now and the period between 1997 and 2005, there are also important disparities. One distinctive feature of these two eras is the fact that now we have the experience of the Reform Era for reference. While multiple political actors draw examples from the Reform Era to make sense of the current situation, they are also working to avoid the same mistakes by charting a new way to the future rather than engaging in a tragic repetition of history.

by Jim Lobe & Daniel Luban

For much of the past few years, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has described the ruling regime in Iran as “messianic” and “apocalyptic”, a talking point he repeated over and over again last week during his latest trip to the United States.

“You don’t [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Jim Lobe & Daniel Luban

For much of the past few years, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has described the ruling regime in Iran as “messianic” and “apocalyptic”, a talking point he repeated over and over again last week during his latest trip to the United States.

“You don’t want to be in a position where this messianic, apocalyptic, radical regime that has these wild ambitions but a nice spokesman gets away with building the weapons of mass death,” he told NBC’s Andrea Mitchell on Oct 2. The following day, he was at it again, insisting to Stephen Inskeep of NPR that “Iran’s doctrinaire, messianic, apocalyptic regime” was also a “terrorist regime bent on world domination.”

Of course, it was much easier to make such claims when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the public face of the Islamic regime — particularly during his annual appearances at the UN General Assembly, where he craved the spotlight and often made deeply provocative statements in order to gain it. As Netanyahu himself has argued, it’s much more difficult to make that case now that Ahmadinejad has been replaced by Hassan Rouhani, who has explicitly rejected much of the style and substance of his predecessor. So far, Rouhani has been an unqualified hit — Newsweek’s Christopher Dickey suggested that he came across as a kind of “Santa Clause in a turban” during his maiden visit to the UN — and his much-publicized phone call with President Obama at the end of his visit has raised hopes of a rapprochement over the Iranian nuclear issue.

Hopes for some, at least. Politically speaking, such a rapprochement would be Netanyahu’s worst nightmare — both in terms of potentially legitimizing some Iranian nuclear enrichment and, perhaps more importantly, in returning attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which Netanyahu has effectively relegated to the back burner with his repeated threats of war against Iran. It’s therefore hardly surprising that Netanyahu, who has called Rouhani a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” since the beginning of the President’s new term, feels compelled to repeat ad nauseam the “messianic, apocalyptic” nature of the “cult” for which Rouhani serves as a mere “clerk.” (As LobeLog noted several years ago, this is a familiar dance for Iran hawks: when the Iranian president is a radical like Ahmadinejad, they play up his power; when it’s a moderate like Rouhani, they deride him as a mere figurehead.)

We do not doubt that there may be “messianic” and “apocalyptic” currents within the Iranian regime. But even a cursory examination of Netanyahu’s rhetoric indicates that there may be more than a little projection at work here.

A quick look at definitions helps demonstrate what we mean. “Messianic,” according to Merriam-Webster, means “supporting a social, political, or religious cause or set of beliefs with great enthusiasm and energy” — a description that certainly applies to Netanyahu’s Likudist faith. “Messianism,” according to the Free Dictionary, may include a “belief that a particular cause or movement is destined to…save the world.”

Consider in that connection what Netanyahu himself told the UN General Assembly in his speech last week:

I want there to be no confusion on this point. Israel will not allow Iran to get nuclear weapons. If Israel is forced to stand alone, Israel will stand alone. Yet, in standing alone, Israel will know that we will be defending many, many others.

In the Weekly Standard’s lead editorial this week, Bill Kristol and Michael Makovsky argued that Netanyahu was referencing Winston Churchill’s remarks in July 1940 during the Battle of Britain: “And now it has come to us to stand alone in the breach…We are fighting by ourselves alone; but we are not fighting for ourselves alone” as London “enshrines the title deeds of human progress.” Thus we are made to understand that Netanyahu sees himself as Churchill (indeed, the authors tell us that he has a photo of the great man on his office wall behind his desk) standing alone and defiant against the barbarity of Nazism — whose modern-day equivalent, of course, is the Islamic Republic of Iran (or the Biblical Amalek). Who knows if Netanyahu, in his heart of hearts, really sees his conflict with Iran in the same light as Churchill’s conflict with Nazi Germany. In any case, “messianic” would certainly be one way of describing both his rhetoric and its historical allusions.

As for “apocalyptic,” Netanyahu’s descriptions of Iran, particularly an Iran armed with a nuclear weapon, would seem apt. Merriam-Webster defines the word as “of, relating to, or involving terrible violence and destruction” and “of or relating to the end of the world.”

“A nuclear Iran is an existential threat on the State of Israel and also on the rest of the world,” he said at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, last year, arguing that those who dismiss the Iranian threat “have learned nothing from the Holocaust.” He posed a similar question just last week in his UN speech, leaving little doubt that he was paralleling Iran with Nazi Germany:

Now, I know that some in the international community think I’m exaggerating this threat. Sure, they know that Iran’s regime leads these chants, “death to America, death to Israel,” that it pledges to wipe Israel off the map. But they think that this wild rhetoric is just bluster for domestic consumption. Have these people learned nothing from history? The last century has taught us that when a radical regime with global ambitions gets awesome power, sooner or later its appetite for aggression knows no bounds.

That’s the central lesson of the 20th century. And we cannot forget it. The world may have forgotten this lesson. The Jewish people have not.

Elsewhere, Netanyahu has dropped the insinuations and veiled parallels, however obvious they might be, and stated his position baldly: “It is 1938,” he told the Jewish Federations of North America back in 2006 when he was chairman of Likud. “Iran is Germany, and it is about to arm itself with nuclear weapons.” One really can’t get more apocalyptic than that.

Again, it’s difficult to tell whether Netanyahu actually believes any of this or is just trying to rally support for Israel’s hard-line positions and deflect international attention from the Palestinian question. While we are inclined to view his rhetoric as mostly cynical, his recently-espoused claim that Iranians are not permitted to wear jeans or listen to western music suggests that we can’t completely discount sheer ignorance or a Manichaean worldview that can’t reconcile blue jeans with his image of the Islamic Republic. In either case, we can probably expect his rhetoric to become increasingly messianic and apocalyptic if and when the possibility of peace between the US and Iran increases.

by Marsha B. Cohen

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as of last week, planned on hitting the “refresh” button on the Iranian threat to Israel and the world, juxtaposing the callow grimace of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s ubiquitous smile.

Israeli media on Sunday — after President [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Marsha B. Cohen

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as of last week, planned on hitting the “refresh” button on the Iranian threat to Israel and the world, juxtaposing the callow grimace of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s ubiquitous smile.

Israeli media on Sunday — after President Barack Obama’s historic 15-minute phone call with Rouhani — reported Netanyahu was furiously rewriting his UN speech, “vowing to expose ‘the truth’ in the wake of Iranian President Hasan Rouhani’s recent overtures to the United States.”

“Like North Korea before it, Iran will try to remove sanctions by offering cosmetic concessions, while preserving its ability to rapidly build a nuclear weapon at a time of its choosing,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement explaining the Israeli delegation’s decision to boycott Rouhani’s address last week to the UN General Assembly (UNGA).

Can Netanyahu successfully revive the Bush administration’s lumping together of Iran with North Korea into a new “axis of evil”? He’s done it before, and, according to numerous reports, he’s certainly going to try again on Tuesday. At least this was the plan prior to the phone conversation between Obama and Rouhani on Friday, about which Netanyahu has not commented on and banned his government’s ministers, staff and Israel’s ambassadors from discussing. Israel’s Channel 2 reported on Saturday night that Israel was advised in advance that the phone call would take place, but “there was no advance coordination of positions” between Israel and the US on the content of the talk, according to the Times of Israel.

Netanyahu’s own UNGA speech on Oct. 1 is expected to chronicle the failure of diplomacy to deter North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons, arguing that North Korea’s case demonstrates the futility of diplomatic engagement with Iran. The Israeli daily Israel Hayom reports:

Netanyahu will try to teach the Americans a history lesson involving a not so distant affair that culminated with another big con job: North Korea. The West held talks with that country as well. Promises were made. Then, one morning, the world woke up to a deafening roar of thunder: the regime had conducted a nuclear test. The North Koreans proved that a radical regime can fool the world. Do not create a new North Korean model, Netanyahu will say.

An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the New York Times last week, “Iran must not be allowed to repeat North Korea’s ploy to get nuclear weapons””

“Just like North Korea before it,” he said, “Iran professes to seemingly peaceful intentions; it talks the talk of nonproliferation while seeking to ease sanctions and buy more time for its nuclear program.”

The official said Netanyahu’s speech would highlight the active period of diplomacy in 2005 when the North Korean government seemingly agreed to abandon its nuclear weapons program in return for economic, security and energy benefits.

A year later, North Korea tested its first nuclear device. Israeli officials warn something similar could happen if the United States were to conclude too hasty a deal with Mr. Rouhani. As Iran is doing today, the North Koreans insisted on a right to a peaceful nuclear energy program.

To make his case, Netanyahu’s talking points may well refer to some of the parallels he has drawn in the past between North Korea and Iran. Whether he focuses on the North Korea parallel or not, Netanyahu’s arguments will boil down to: 1) Diplomacy isn’t bad, but it won’t work; 2) we need more sanctions; 3) only a credible threat of force will stop Iran from pursuing nuclear weapons; and 4) the talks will be used by the Iranians to delay and deceive. Let’s dig a little deeper into these points.

Diplomacy won’t work:

Immediately after North Korea’s underground nuclear test on May 25, 2009, and less than a month before Iran’s contentious 2009 presidential election, Netanyahu declared that North Korea was a textbook case of what Obama could expect if he insisted on wasting time engaging in dialogue with Iran. Taking no chances about the outcome of the election, in which  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s rivals included two reformist candidates, Netanyahu said the latest Israeli intelligence estimate showed that Iran was engaged in a “national nuclear project” that was more than a one-man show. In other words, even if Ahmadinejad were to lose, Iran’s nuclear weapons program would continue. Netanyahu expressed no hope that Obama (at that point in office for just over 3 months) would ever succeed in talking Iran out of its pursuit of nuclear weapons. However, he generously agreed to give the U.S. President until the end of the year to try.

Sanctions don’t work — but we need more:

Netanyahu has flip-flopped about the efficacy of sanctions in stopping Iran’s alleged quest for a nuclear weapon. In January 2012 he told The Australian that there were signs that sanctions were finally working: “For the first time, I see Iran wobble under the sanctions that have been adopted and especially under the threat of strong sanctions on their central bank.” A week later, he complained to the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that “The sanctions employed thus far are ineffective, they have no impact on the nuclear program. We need tough sanctions against the central bank and oil industry. These things are not happening yet and that is why it has no effect on the nuclear program.”

According to an issue brief on “The Global Nonproliferation Regime” published by the Council on Foreign Relations this past June:

Although three states (India, Israel, and Pakistan) are known or believed to have acquired nuclear weapons during the Cold War, for five decades following the development of nuclear technology, only nine states have developed—and since 1945 none has used—nuclear weapons. However, arguably not a single known or suspected case of proliferation since the early 1990s—Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya, or Syria— was deterred or reversed by the multilateral institutions [i.e. sanctions] created for this purpose.

The question then becomes, if sanctions haven’t historically deterred states from seeking nuclear weapons, why invest so much time and energy imposing and demanding more of them on Iran?

The credible military threat:

In February 2013, a week after North Korea carried out its third nuclear test (UN resolutions notwithstanding), Netanyahu warned the Jewish Agency’s International Board of Governors that sanctions, no matter how crippling, could not stop Iran from developing a nuclear bomb. “Have sanctions, tough sanctions, stopped North Korea? No. And the fact that they produced a nuclear explosion reverberates everywhere in the Middle East, and especially in Iran.” Without a “robust, credible military threat,” backing up economic sanctions, Iran could not be deterred from seeking nuclear weapons, he argued.

Yet Netanyahu’s repeated calls for sanctions against Iran to “be coupled with a robust, credible military threat” fail to point out a single example where the threat — or actual use — of military force with or without sanctions has successfully deterred any state, including North Korea, from developing nuclear weapons. That’s because there are none.

“Operation Opera,” in which Israeli planes destroyed an Iraqi nuclear reactor in Osirak, is often cited by hawks as a precedent for a similar attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. Numerous security studies experts and counter-proliferation specialists agree that the operation was not nearly as successful as the Israelis claimed in preventing Saddam Hussein’s access to weapons of mass destruction. In fact, it may have accelerated, rather than stymied, Hussein’s quest for nuclear weaponry. (As a related side note, it’s doubtful Netanyahu will claim credit in his UN speech for Israel’s alleged counter-proliferation efforts in Syria, or invoke them as a model for dealing with Iran, but one never knows.)

Talks a tactic to “delay and deceive”:

Speaking during a visit to Prague in May 2012, Netanyahu stated that he had seen “no evidence whatsoever” that Iran was serious about halting its nuclear weapons program:

“It looks as though they (Iran) see these talks as another opportunity to deceive and delay, just like North Korean did for years,” Netanyahu said. “They may try to go from meeting to meeting with empty promises. They may agree to something in principle but not implement it. They may even agree to implement something that does not materially derail their nuclear weapons program,” he said.

But no credible US or Western intelligence estimate has provided evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapons program, or that it is pursuing a nuclear weapon. According to the US intelligence community’s annual worldwide threat assessment, the US believes Iran has the technical capability to make nuclear weapons, but does not know if Iran will decide to do so. However, the assessment also states that the US would know in time if Iran attempted to break out to produce enough highly enriched uranium for a bomb (implying that Iran has not made the decision yet). It goes on to note that Tehran “has developed technical expertise in a number of areas—including uranium enrichment, nuclear reactors, and ballistic missiles—from which it could draw if it decided to build missile-deliverable  nuclear weapons,” making “the central issue its political will to do so.”

Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes was widely quoted last week by numerous media sources including the New York Times in such a way as to imply the U.S. also saw significant similarities between the Iranian and North Korean cases. Only the South Korean News Agency Yonhap quoted enough of Rhodes’ statement to convey his entire message. In fact, Rhodes actually said that the two cases require different strategies: “the international community needs to take different approaches toward North Korea and Iran with regard to their nuclear programs.”

Ultimately though, the bottom line remains: however fervently and persuasively Netanyahu argues that Iranian nuclear weapons capability has been achieved or is imminent, he has yet to offer any solution that will effectively address the problem. Reframing the Iranian nuclear issue in such a way that allows a pragmatist like Rouhani to make substantial and effective nuclear, economic and political reforms in Iran offers the best — and perhaps the only — chance at achieving greater Middle East stability and security. That, unfortunately, will not be among Netanyahu’s recommendations on Tuesday.

by Jasmin Ramsey

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, LobeLog

by Jasmin Ramsey

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Amazing things have been happening on the US-Iran front, which began to defrost following Hassan Rouhani’s presidential inauguration this summer. I’ve listed some of them in my last two reports for IPS News (here and here) but today’s news is monumental.

You’ve probably heard something about a letter exchange between Presidents Obama and Rouhani. Well, this has not only been confirmed by both administrations, we’re also learning some of the details now, which I touch on below. Before I do so it’s worth noting that after news of the letter exchange and ahead of the United Nations General Assembly next week where Rouhani will give a speech, Iran released today a group of political prisoners, including lawyer and human rights advocate Nasrin Sotoudeh, who ended a 49-day hunger strike in December 2012 after Iran’s authorities lifted a travel ban on her 12-year-old daughter. Here is Sotoudeh’s interview in English with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour and some truly heart-warming photographs of her reunion with her family.

As shown in the clip above, Ann Curry has also conducted Rouhani’s first interview with an American news outlet as Iran’s president, which will air on NBC’s Nightly News tonight at 6:30 EST. (I think Curry hasn’t been to Iran since 2011 when she interviewed former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.) Only bits of the interview have been released so far, and while Rouhani won’t likely say anything earth-shattering so early on, he did describe the “tone” of Obama’s letter as “positive and constructive“. Of course, yesterday Obama also described Rouhani in a positive light. ”There are indications that Rouhani, the new president, is somebody who is looking to open dialogue with the West and with the United States, in a way that we haven’t seen in the past. And so we should test it,” Obama told Telemundo. That’s a dramatic change in tone from White House statements marking Rouhani’s inauguration.

All this is good news and there’s going to be a lot of expert analysis on what it all means, but I can’t get into it now as I’m getting ready to travel to New York where I will be reporting on Obama’s and Rouhani’s speeches from the UN, among other things. For now, here’s an excerpt from Paul Pillar’s “The Stars Align In Tehran” (written before today’s exciting news), to keep in mind as these developments unfold:

The late Abba Eban, the silver-tongued Israeli foreign minister, once famously said that the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. The circumstances, and Palestinian preferences and policies, that underlay his remark changed greatly long ago. But his apothegm might apply to much of the history of the U.S.-Iranian relationship. It would, tragically, apply all the more if the current opportunity is missed, either because of the ammunition being supplied to Iranian hardliners or because the side led by the United States simply does not put on the negotiating table the sanctions relief necessary to strike a deal.

Photo Credit: ISNA/Abdolvahed Mirzazadeh

by Farideh Farhi

Paul Pillar has aptly explained why the vote this week in the House of Representatives for even more sanctions against Iran (H.R. 850) is at odds with the stated US foreign policy objective of changing Iran’s nuclear policies. While the Senate is unlikely to go along, at [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Farideh Farhi

Paul Pillar has aptly explained why the vote this week in the House of Representatives for even more sanctions against Iran (H.R. 850) is at odds with the stated US foreign policy objective of changing Iran’s nuclear policies. While the Senate is unlikely to go along, at least for now, the vote brings into question the motives for such a move.

I do not know whether the folks in the House wanted to remain in the good graces of the pro-Israel lobby, AIPAC, as Ali Gharib and M.J. Rosenberg suggest, or if they really do want to block any possibility of a deal with Iran to hasten regime change — which State Department folks keep telling me is not the official and stated policy of the US government. The bottom line is, however, that the motives are irrelevant to the chilling effect the vote’s outcome will have on negotiations and Iran’s skepticism about the Obama administration’s ability to “have the sanctions gone in a moment if it will substantively and constructively negotiate with the P5+1” as stated last month by Wendy Sherman, the US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs.

The vote is undoubtedly a signal that members of Congress are more interested in making the Iranian government cry uncle than negotiating. That’s not a smart move if the US government’s objective and stated policy is to convince Iran to limit its nuclear program and subject it to a more robust inspection regime. And let’s be clear: the message is not only to the Iranian government; it’s also to the Iranian people.

There is really no going around it. The House’s vote also shows the proverbial middle finger to the Iranian electorate, who went to the polls on June 14 in large numbers to the tune of 73 percent — a significantly higher participation rate than in years of US presidential elections — and voted for someone who was an unlikely victor because of his stated desire to reroute Iran’s foreign policy and improve relations with the world. That same electorate then treated Hassan Rouhani’s victory as a reflection of its will by celebrating in the streets.

Just to reiterate, in addition to the systemic odds against him, Rouhani was elected by an Iranian public who refused inaction despite the results of the contested 2009 election and the repression that followed. Prodded by two former presidents, centrist Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and reformist Mohammad Khatami, Iranian voters forcefully entered the fray to support Rouhani’s key promises of “prudent” economic management, interaction with the world and a relaxation of the highly securitized political atmosphere.

The vote ensures that Rouhani will be actively involved in convincing his Western interlocutors as well as skeptics inside Iran that through diplomacy, an agreement that respects Iran’s sovereignty — as well as the Islamic Republic’s legitimacy in protecting that sovereignty — and addresses Western concerns regarding the potential weaponization of Iran’s nuclear program is possible.

It is true that Rouhani will not be the sole decision-maker and has to negotiate with Iran’s other centers of power. An agreement must also receive broad support inside Iran and could be torpedoed by domestic forces framing it as a disproportionate concession to Western “bullying”.

But the need to convince other domestic stakeholders should not be confused with Rouhani not being given room to pursue, at least for a while, a “fair” agreement that also addresses the P5+1′s concerns. The fact that Rouhani is being told by no less than Leader Ali Khamenei not to trust Western powers should be construed as Khamenei’s fall-back “I told you so” position in case of failure and not an inhibitor of the attempt to reach an agreement.

Both reformist Khatami and hardline Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were given room to negotiate with Western powers during their presidencies. An agreement during Khatami’s presidency could not be reached because of the Bush administration’s insistence on “not a single centrifuge spinning.” A potential confidence-building agreement to transfer fissile material out of Iran during Ahmadinejad’s presidency was first rejected by a whole array of political forces inside Iran who were fearful that a deal with outsiders would pave the way for domestic repression in the tumultuous post-2009 election. Later, a similar agreement was rejected by the Obama administration, which did not want to abandon the success it was having in creating a willing coalition in favor of sanctions.

And herein lies the challenge for the folks who seem to have a voracious appetite for sanctions. In voting into office a reasonable face of Iran, the Iranian electorate is also counting on an encounter with the US’ reasonable face. Demanding significant confidence-building measures from Iran in exchange for vague promises of significant steps by Western powers in the future — promises that, given Congress’ stamp on many of the sanctions in place, are unlikely to be fulfilled soon — doesn’t seem all that reasonable.

The attitude and judgment of the Iranian electorate should not be taken lightly. In the midst of a region where hope about the positive impact of an Obama presidency has all but vanished, failure to reach an agreement with the reasonable face of Iran will be perceived as yet another clueless — and dangerous — US policy of heavy-handed demands without a clear understanding of the end game and the costs for achieving it.

With the Iranian government and electorate in the same corner, at least for now, it will be much harder to describe the sanctions regime as anything but a vindictive policy of collective punishment intended to not only bring down the Iranian government, but also destabilize the lives and livelihoods of the Iranian people. An academic who regularly visits Iran recently told me he was surprised by the extent of negative attitudes towards the US even in northern Tehran — the supposed bastion of secular and “westernized Iranians”. Things have really changed in a couple of years, he said.

I am not very keen on anecdotal evidence but the observation makes sense. Moves that reject the Iranian people’s efforts to change the course of their government’s policies and instead intensify policies of collective punishment will reap what they sow.

Photo Credit: Mona Hoobehfekr  

by Jim Lobe

Last Thursday, the highly respected, non-profit investigative news agency ProPublica featured a 2,400-word article, “The Terror Threat and Iran’s Inroads in Latin America”, by its award-winning senior reporter, Sebastian Rotella, who has long specialized in terrorism and national-security coverage. In support of its main thesis that Iran [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Jim Lobe

Last Thursday, the highly respected, non-profit investigative news agency ProPublica featured a 2,400-word article, “The Terror Threat and Iran’s Inroads in Latin America”, by its award-winning senior reporter, Sebastian Rotella, who has long specialized in terrorism and national-security coverage. In support of its main thesis that Iran appears to be expanding its alleged criminal and terrorist infrastructure in Venezuela and other “leftist, populist, anti-U.S. governments throughout the region,” Rotella quotes the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Lt. Gen. James Clapper (ret.), as telling a Senate hearing last year that Iran’s alliances with Venezuela and other “leftist, populist, anti-U.S. government” could pose

…an immediate threat by giving Iran – directly through the IRGC, the Quds Force [an external unit of the IRGC] or its proxies like Hezbollah – a platform in the region to carry out attacks against the United States, our interests, and allies.

Now, there is a serious problem with that quotation: Clapper never said any such thing. Indeed, the exact words attributed to the DNI were first spoken at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing entitled “Ahmadinejad’s Tour of Tyrants and Iran’s Agenda in the Western Hemisphere” (page 2) by none other than the Committee’s then-chair, Florida Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, whose hostility toward Iran is exceeded only by her views on Cuba and Venezuela.* It is, after all, one thing to have the head of the U.S. intelligence community tell Congress that the threat of an attack against the United States from various “platforms” in Latin America is “immediate.” It’s quite another for a far-right Cuban-American congresswomen from Miami to offer that assessment, particularly given her past record of championing Luis Posada Carriles and the late Orlando Bosch, both of whom, according to declassified CIA and FBI documents, were almost certainly involved in the 1976 mid-air bombing of a Cuban civilian airliner, among other terrorist acts.

I personally have no doubt that the misattribution was unintentional and merely the product of sloppiness or negligence. But negligence matters, particularly when it is committed in pursuit of a thesis that Rotella has long propagated (more on that in upcoming posts) and that comes amid an ongoing and well-orchestrated campaign against Iran that could eventually result in war, as Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu reminded us yet again Sunday. Of course, such a glaring mistake also detracts from the credibility of the rest of the article, much of which is based on anonymous sources whose own credibility is very difficult to assess.

The Iranian threat and anonymous sourcing

Most of the article concerns a hearing with the rather suggestive title, “Threat to the Homeland: Iran’s Extending Influence in the Western Hemisphere”, which was held July 9 by the Subcommittee on Oversight and Management Efficiency of the Republican-led House Homeland Security Committee with the apparent purpose of rebutting a still-classified State Department report, which included a two-page unclassified appendix concluding that Iran’s influence in the region is actually on the wane. In addition to reporting on the hearing, however, Rotella provides some original reporting of his own in the lede paragraphs, setting an appropriately dark and menacing tone for the rest of his story:

Last year, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited his ally President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, where the firebrand leaders unleashed defiant rhetoric at the United States.

There was a quieter aspect to Ahmadinejad’s visit in January 2012, according to Western intelligence officials. A senior officer in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) traveled secretly with the presidential delegation and met with Venezuelan military and security chiefs. His mission: to set up a joint intelligence program between Iranian and Venezuelan spy agencies, according to the Western officials.

At the secret meeting, Venezuelan spymasters agreed to provide systematic help to Iran with intelligence infrastructure such as arms, identification documents, bank accounts and pipelines for moving operatives and equipment between Iran and Latin America, according to Western intelligence officials. Although suffering from cancer, Chavez took interest in the secret talks as part of his energetic embrace of Iran, an intelligence official told ProPublica.

The senior IRGC officer’s meeting in Caracas has not been previously reported.

The aim is to enable the IRGC to be able to distance itself from the criminal activities it is conducting in the region, removing the Iranian fingerprint,” said the intelligence official, who requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak publicly. “Since Chavez’s early days in power, Iran and Venezuela have grown consistently closer, with Venezuela serving as a gateway to South America for the Iranians.”

The bold face, added for emphasis, is designed to illustrate Rotella’s heavy reliance on anonymous “intelligence officials”, none of whose nationalities are specified. In the context of an investigative report, that failure begs a series of questions that bear on the credibility of the account.

For example, does he include Israelis in his definition of “Western officials” or “Western intelligence officials?” After all, it would be one thing to cite a Swedish intelligence official who may tend to be somewhat more objective in describing Iranian-Venezuelan intelligence cooperation; it’s quite another to quote an Israeli “official” responsible to a government that has been aggressively promoting a policy of confrontation with Iran for many years now. And if his sources agreed to talk to Rotella only on the condition of being identified as “Western officials” or “Western intelligence officials”, why did they do so? (Indeed, the only identified “Western intelligence official” quoted — or misquoted — by Rotella in the entire article is Clapper.) Identifying at least the nationality of the officials with whom Rotella spoke with would help readers assess their credibility, but he offers no help in that regard.

Moreover, given the details about the meeting provided by Rotella’s sources, why was the senior IRGC officer who set up the purported joint intelligence program with the Venezuelans not named? That omission sticks out like a sore thumb.

But the problems in Rotella’s article go beyond the misattribution of the Ros-Lehtinen quote or his heavy reliance on anonymous sources. Indeed, it took all of about 30 minutes of Googling (most of which was devoted to tracking down the alleged Clapper quote) to discover that the story also includes distortions of the record in relevant criminal proceedings and a major error of fact in reporting the testimony of at least one of the hearing’s four witnesses — all of whom, incidentally, share well-established records of hostility toward Iran.

But before going into the results of my Google foray, let’s hear what a former top U.S. intelligence analyst had to say about Rotella’s article. I asked Paul Pillar, a 28-year CIA veteran who served as the National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005 (which means he was in charge of the analysis of those regions for the CIA and all other U.S. intelligence agencies), if he could read it. This was his emailed reply:

The article certainly seems to be an effort to go out of the way to raise suspicions about Iranian activities in the hemisphere, by dumping together material that is either old news or not really nefarious, and stringing it together with innuendo. Almost all of the specifics that get into anything like possible terrorist activities are old.  The Iranian efforts to make diplomatic friends in Latin America by cozying up with the regimes in Venezuela and elsewhere that have an anti-U.S. streak is all well known, but none of that adds up to an increase in clandestine networks or a terrorist threat.  The closest the article gets in that regard is with very vague references to Venezuela being used by “suspected Middle Eastern operatives” and the like, which of course demonstrates nothing as far as Iran specifically is concerned.  Sourcing to an unnamed “intelligence officer” is pretty meaningless.

As we will try to show in subsequent posts by Marsha Cohen and Gareth Porter (who both contributed substantially to this post), Pillar’s assessment could apply to a number of Rotella’s articles, especially about the Middle East and alleged Iranian or Hezbollah terrorism, going back to his years at the Los Angeles Times. What virtually all of them have in common is the heavy reliance on anonymous intelligence sources; a mixture of limited original reporting combined with lots of recycled news; a proclivity for citing highly ideological, often staunchly hawkish neoconservative “experts” on Middle East issues from such think tanks as the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC) without identifying them as such; a surprising deference (considering his status as a investigative reporter) toward “official” accounts or reports by friendly security agencies, some of which work very closely with their Israeli counterparts (see, for example, this 2009 story about an alleged plot against the Israeli embassy in Azerbaijan about which Gareth plans to write a post); and a general failure to offer critical analysis or alternative explanations about specific terrorist incidents or groups that are often readily available from academic or other more independent and disinterested regional or local specialists.

Iran in Latin America

In the meantime, it’s also important to set the context for Rotella’s latest article. It came amid an intense campaign over the past couple of years by Iran hawks, including individuals from the various neoconservative think tanks cited above, to highlight the purported terrorist threat posed by Iran and Hezbollah from their Latin American “platforms,” as Ros-Lehtinen put it. Those efforts culminated in legislation, the “Countering Iran in the Western Hemisphere Act of 2012,” approved overwhelmingly by Congress last December. Among other provisions, it required the State Department to report to Congress on Iran’s “growing hostile presence and activity in the Western Hemisphere,” along with a strategy for neutralizing it, within six months. That report, only a two-page annex of which were publicly released, was submitted at the end of last month.

To the disappointment of the bill’s chief sponsors, notably the Republican chairman of the subcommittee, Rep. Jeff Duncan, the report concluded that, despite an increase in Tehran’s “outreach to the region working to strengthen its political, economic, cultural and military ties, …Iranian influence in Latin America and the Caribbean is waning.” And while the rest of the report remains classified, its contents reportedly were consistent with those of the State Department’s 2013 Country Reports on Terrorism, also released last month, which found no evidence of Iranian or Hezbollah terrorist plotting or operations in the Americas, in contrast to what it described as a sharp increase of such activity in Europe, the Middle East and Asia during the past year.

Duncan, who, incidentally, spoke on a panel on Evangelical Christian support for Israel at AIPAC’s annual conference last year, and who in 2011 became the only member of Congress given a 100-percent rating on the Heritage Action for America legislative scorecard, expressed outrage at these conclusions, accusing the State Department of failing to “consider all the facts.” In particular, he charged that the State Department had not taken into account new evidence “documenting Iran’s [ongoing] terrorism activities and operations in the Western Hemisphere” compiled by an Argentine prosecutor, Alberto Nisman, in a 502-page report released (perhaps not entirely coincidentally) just one month before the State Department was due to submit its study.

The Nisman Report and the AMIA bombing

In 2006, Nisman, the chief prosecutor in the case of the 1994 bombing of the Argentine-Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA) building, released an even longer controversial report on that case in which he concluded that the bombing had been ordered by Iran’s top leadership and carried out by Hezbollah operatives under the direction of Iran’s cultural attaché at its Argentine embassy, Mohsen Rabbani. (Gareth wrote his own critique of the 2006 report for the The Nation in 2008, joining many Argentine journalists and researchers in questioning Nisman’s theory of the case. Last week he published a related story for IPS that noted the diminished credibility of Nisman’s primary source, a former Iranian intelligence operative named Abdolghassem Mesbahi. He plans a new series on the subject to begin later this month.) The State Department report, Duncan said at the hearing, “directly contradicts the findings from Mr. Nisman’s three-year investigation, which showed clear infiltration of the Iranian regime within countries in Latin America using embassies, mosques, and cultural centers.”

Indeed, according to Nisman’s new report, Iran, through Rabbani and other operatives, has established “clandestine intelligence stations and operative agents” throughout Latin America, including in Guyana, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Paraguay, Suriname, Trinidad & Tobago and Uruguay and, most especially in the Tri-Border Area (TBA) of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay, a region about which Rotella wrote rather darkly when he was Buenos Aires bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times in the late 1990’s. (In fact, a 15-year-old article on the TBA as a “Jungle Hub for World’s Outlaws” and a refuge for terrorists was cited by WINEP’s Matthew Levitt in written testimony submitted at last week’s hearing. Long one of Rotella’s favorite sources, Levitt, the subject of a rather devastating (pay-walled) profile by Ken Silverstein in Harper’s Magazine last year, has been a major figure in the U.S.- and Israeli-led campaign to persuade the European Union to list Hezbollah as a terrorist entity, a campaign that has been boosted by Rotella’s work, as reflected in this article published by ProPublica last April. (The symbiotic relationship between the two men may be the subject of a subsequent LobeLog post.)

Nisman, whose new report has been promoted heavily by neoconservative media and institutions over the past six weeks (see, for example, here, here, here, and here), had been invited by the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, Texas Rep. Michael McCaul, to testify at last week’s hearing. But, as noted by Rotella in the article, “his government abruptly barred him from traveling to Washington”, a development which, according to McCaul, constituted a “slap in the face of this committee and the U.S. Congress” and was an indication that Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner had no intention to “pursue justice and truth on Iranian involvement in the AMIA bombing.”

(In his message to me, Pillar noted that there were other good reasons why Kirchner would not want to see Nisman “being used as a prop in Duncan’s hearing …[given] other equities …regarding relations with Washington,” including the ongoing lawsuit against Argentina by a group of hedge funds — led by Paul Singer, a billionaire and major funder of hard-line pro-Israel organizations — that have sponsored full-page ads in the Washington Post and other publications highlighting, among other things, Argentina’s allegedly cozy relationship with Iran.)

In his article, Rotella, who appears to have accepted without question the conclusions of Nisman’s 2006 report on the AMIA bombing, also offers an uncritical account of the prosecutor’s latest report, quoting affirmations by Duncan, McCaul, as well as the four witnesses who testified at the hearing that the report’s main contentions were true — Iran and Hezbollah are indeed building up their terrorist infrastructure in the region. “The attacks in Buenos Aires in the 1990s revealed the existence of Iranian operational networks in the Americas,” Rotella’s writes. “The Argentine investigation connected the plots to hubs of criminal activity and Hezbollah operational and financing cells in lawless zones, such as the triple border of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay and the border between Colombia and Venezuela.”

The Nisman Report and the JFK Bomb Plot

After noting U.S. Treasury designations in 2008 of two Venezuelans as terrorists “for allegedly raising funds for Hezbollah, discussing terrorist operations with Hezbollah operatives, and aiding travel of militants from Venezuela to training sessions in Iran”, Rotella provides the purported Clapper quote about Venezuela and its allies offering “a platform in the region to carry out attacks against the United States, our interests, and allies”, suggesting (falsely) that the DNI himself endorsed Nisman’s view that Iran was behind a plot to attack JFK airport six years ago:

The aborted 2007 plot to attack JFK (airport) was an attempt to use that platform, according to the Argentine special prosecutor. A Guyanese-American Muslim who had once worked as a cargo handler conceived an idea to blow up jet fuel tanks at the airport. He formed a homegrown cell that first sought aid from al Qaida, then coalesced around Abdul Kadir, a Guyanese politician and Shiite Muslim leader.

The trial in New York federal court revealed that Kadir was a longtime intelligence operative for Iran, reporting to the Iranian ambassador in Caracas and communicating also with Rabbani, the accused AMIA plotter.

‘Kadir agreed to participate in the conspiracy, committing himself to reach out to his contacts in Venezuela and the Islamic Republic of Iran,’ Nisman’s report says. ‘The entry of Kadir into the conspiracy brought the involvement and the support of the intelligence station established in Guyana by the Islamic regime.’

Police arrested Kadir as he prepared to fly to Iran to discuss the New York plot with Iranian officials. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

But this account of the case is tendentious, to say the least, and here I am relying on Gareth’s research into the case, which he covered in an IPS story last week. While Rotella claimed that the would-be terrorist “cell” had “coalesced around” Kadir, the original criminal complaint that was submitted to the U.S. district court in New York on which the arrests of the four men accused in the plot were based makes clear that Kadir was a secondary participant at the time the arrest was made. In addition, the complaint made no mention of any ties between Kadir and Iran.

Moreover, Rotella’s assertion that the trial revealed Kadir to have been “longtime intelligence operative for Iran” is unfounded, apparently based on nothing more than a set of personal letters Kadir had sent by ordinary mail to Rabbani and the Iranian ambassador to Venezuela and the fact that some contact information for Rabbani was found in Kadir’s address book.

But Kadir’s letters to Rabbani were clearly not the work of an Iranian intelligence operative. They consisted of publicly available information about the political, social and economic situation in Guyana, where Kadir was a member of parliament. Indeed, the fact that they were sent by regular mail — and the lack of any known replies by the addressees — suggests that Kadir’s relationship to Iranian intelligence was even more distant and less interactive than that of George Zimmerman’s to the Seminole County sheriff’s office in Florida.

During the subsequent trial in 2010, the prosecution tried to play up the letters and even asked Kadir if he was a spy for Iran, which he denied strongly. No other evidence implicating Iran in the plot was introduced. Even the U.S. Attorney’s press release issued after Kadir’s sentencing (and discoverable within mini-seconds on Google) offers no indication that Iran had any knowledge of the plot at the time of his arrest. Finally, if indeed the U.S. government had acquired any evidence that Rabbani or any other Iranian official had a role in the plot, as asserted by Nisman, it seems reasonable to ask why he wasn’t indicted along with Kadir and the three others? Yet, in spite of all these factors, Rotella appears to accept Nisman’s argument that the Iranian government had a role in the case and that Kadir was its “long-time intelligence operative” presumably in charge of its “intelligence station” in Guyana.

Rotella next cites the purported testimony (of unknown origin) of Fernando Tabares, the former director of Colombia’s intelligence agency who

…described a mission by an Iranian operative to Colombia via Venezuela in 2008 or 2009. Working with Iranian officials based at the embassy in Bogota, the operative, according to Nisman’s report, ‘was looking at targets in order to carry out possible attacks here in Colombia,’ Tabares testified.

Apart from the vagueness of this account about the unidentified Iranian operative and his mission — as well as the absence of any corroborating evidence — Rotella omitted the easily discoverable fact (via Google) that Tabares himself was sentenced in 2010 to eight years in prison for abuse of trust and illegal wire-tapping, a detail that may reflect on the former intelligence chief’s credibility.

Iranian migrants (refugees?) to Canada

A couple of paragraphs later, Rotella cites the testimony of Joseph Humire, “a security expert” and one of the four witnesses who testified at last week’s hearing. According to Rotella, Humire, executive director at the Center for a Secure Free Society

…cited a report last year in which the Canadian Border Services Agency described Iran as the top source of illegal migrants to Canada, most of them coming through Latin America. Between 2009 and 2011, the majority of those Iranian migrants passed through Caracas, where airport and airline personnel were implicated in providing them with fraudulent documents, according to the Canadian border agency.

But Rotella misreports Humire’s testimony. Humire did not say that Iran was the top source of illegal migrants to Canada; he said Iran was the top source country of improperly documented migrants who make refugee claims in Canada — a not insignificant difference, particularly because the number of Iranian asylum-seekers who come to Canada each year averages only at about 300, according to the CSBA report, which noted that 86% won their asylum claims. In addition, the report, a heavily redacted copy of which was graciously provided to me by Humire, indicates that, between 2009 and 2012, more of these migrants flew into Canada from Mexico City and London than from Caracas.

Moreover, the picture painted by the redacted CSBA report is considerably less frightening than that offered by either Rotella or, for that matter, Humire’s testimony.

Many of these migrants use “facilitators” to enter Canada, according to the report. “…Information provided by the migrants on their smugglers suggest possible links to organized criminal elements both within and outside of Canada…Many people seeking refuge in Canada use fake documents and rely on middlemen to help them flee persecution in their homelands.“

“While Iranian irregular migrants mainly enter Canada to make refugee claims, it is possible that certain individuals may enter with more sinister motives”, the report cautioned, observing that 19 Iranian immigrants had been denied entry on security grounds since 2008.

So, instead of the flood of Iranian operatives pouring into Canada, as suggested by Rotella, what we are talking about is a relatively small number of Iranians who are seeking asylum from a repressive regime. And, like hundreds of thousands of other refugees around the world, they rely on traffickers who provide them with forged or otherwise questionable documents. A few of these may be entering Canada for “more sinister motives”, but Rotella offers no concrete evidence that they have done so.

Yet Rotella follows his brief — if fundamentally flawed — summary of Humire’s remarks about Iranian asylum-seekers in Canada with his own riff, going “out of the way to raise suspicions about Iranian activities,” as Pillar notes, and returning once again to those anonymous “security officials” as his sources.

Humire’s allegations are consistent with interviews in recent years in which U.S., Latin America and Israeli security officials have told ProPublica about suspected Middle Eastern operatives and Latin American drug lords obtaining Venezuelan documents through corruption or ideological complicity.

“There seems to be an effort by the Venezuelan government to make sure that Iranians have a full set of credentials,” a U.S. law enforcement official said.

Last year’s secret talks between Iranian and Venezuelan spies intensified such cooperation, according to Western intelligence officials who described the meetings to ProPublica. The senior Iranian officer who traveled with the presidential entourage asked Venezuelan counterparts to ensure access to key officials in the airport police, customs and other agencies and “permits for transferring cargo through airports and swiftly arranging various bureaucratic matters,” the intelligence official said.

Venezuelan leaders have denied that their alliance with Iran has hostile intent. They have rejected concerns about flights that operated for years between Caracas and Tehran. The State Department and other U.S. agencies criticized Venezuela for failing to make public passenger and cargo manifests and other information about secretive flights to Iran, raising the fear of a pipeline for clandestine movement of people and goods.

The flights have been discontinued, U.S. officials say.

ProPublica’s high standards

I personally believe that ProPublica, since it launched its operations in 2008, has performed an invaluable public service in providing high-quality investigative journalism at a time when the genre risked (and still risks) becoming virtually extinct. As a result, readers of the agency have come to expect its articles not only to compile existing information that is already publicly available in ways that connect the dots, but also provide important, previously unpublished material with important insights into the events of the day in ways that seriously challenge conventional wisdom as defined by mainstream media and, as ProPublica’s mission statement puts it, “those with power.”  The question posed by Rotella’s latest article — as well as other work he has published on alleged Iranian and Hezbollah terrorism — is whether it meets the mission and high standards that ProPublica readers expect.

Given the misattribution of a quotation critical to the story’s thesis; the prolific use of anonymous “Western intelligence sources” and the like; the citation of sources with a clear ideological or political axe to grind; the omission of information that could bear on those sources’ credibility; the more or less uncritical acceptance of official reports that are known to be controversial but that generally reflect the interests of the axe-grinders; and the failure to confirm misinformation that can be quickly searched and verified, one can’t help but ask whether Rotella’s work meets ProPublica’s standards.

That question takes on additional and urgent importance given the subject — alleged terrorist activities by Iran and Hezbollah — Rotella specializes in. All of us remember the media’s deplorable failure to critically challenge the Bush administration’s allegations — and those of anonymous “Western intelligence sources”, etc. — about Saddam Hussein’s links to Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, as well as his vast and fast-growing arsenal of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), including a supposedly advanced nuclear-weapons program. We now have, in many respects, a comparable situation with respect to Iran. Bearing that history in mind, any media organization — but especially one of ProPublica’s stature and mission — should be expected to make extraordinary efforts not only to verify its information, reduce its reliance on anonymous sources and avoid innuendo, but also to aggressively challenge “official” narratives or those that are quite obviously being promoted as part of a campaign by parties with a clear interest in confrontation — even war — with Iran. The stakes are unusually high.

Gareth Porter and Marsha Cohen contributed substantially to this report.

*Today, shortly before this blog post was published and one day after I contacted the DNI press office to confirm that the quotation had been misattributed to DNI Clapper, ProPublica issued the following correction: “Due to an error in testimony by a congressional witness, this story initially misattributed a statement made by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., to James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence. The story has been revised to correct the attribution and incorporate Clapper’s actual statement to a Senate committee.” In my view, the wording of the correction, suggesting that the misattribution was the fault of a witness, underlines the importance of scrupulous fact-checking when dealing with such a charged issue. As noted above, Clapper was the only identified Western intelligence official cited in the article, and his quotation — or non-quotation — is critical to the overall credibility of the underlying thesis: that Iran and Hezbollah are building a terrorist infrastructure in the Americas aimed at the U.S.

UPDATE: Apparently, the witness who misattributed the Ros-Lehtinen/Clapper quote was the AFPC’s Ilan Berman (who most recently misattributed the quote in a usnews.com op-ed co-authored by Netanel Levitt on July 15). Berman, a leading figure in the sanctions campaign against Iran, suggested shortly after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq that Washington should pursue regime change in Iran.

Photo Credit: Prensa Miraflores