Lobe Log publishes Hawks on Iran every Friday. Our posts highlight militaristic commentary and confrontational policy recommendations about Iran from a variety of sources including news articles, think tanks and pundits.
Joe Lieberman, RFE/RL: The independent senator who said in April that if Iran ”is approaching a [...]]]>
Lobe Log publishes Hawks on Iran every Friday. Our posts highlight militaristic commentary and confrontational policy recommendations about Iran from a variety of sources including news articles, think tanks and pundits.
Joe Lieberman, RFE/RL: The independent senator who said in April that if Iran ”is approaching a nuclear weapons capability, then we have to act militarily” reiterates his stance more explicitly:
“So, we’re coming to a point where there will only be two choices for not just the U.S and Israel but other countries.” Lieberman said. “Will we simply sit back and let Iran become a nuclear power and destabilize the region and start a nuclear arms race in the Middle East? Or will we be compelled to take some military action to delay or destroy that program?”
He said it “doesn’t make any sense” to wait until Iran actually possesses nuclear weapons to take military action. “What we are saying,” he said, “is [that] we have to be ready, if all else fails — economic sanctions, diplomacy, etc.”
…
But many, even in the intelligence community, have suggested that an attack on Iran would not totally eliminate the Islamic republic’s ability to produce nuclear weapons, since Iran’s nuclear facilities are believed to be located deep underground or inside mountains.
Asked about that, Lieberman replied that a military strike would at least delay Tehran’s nuclear ambitions and buy time until a new Iranian regime, possibly more amenable to negotiations, came to power.
“I think we have the capability either to eliminate the Iranian nuclear weapons program or to disable it in a way that it will be delayed for enough years that we may hope and pray that there will be a regime change and that there will be a more democratic and friendly regime,” he said.
Elliott Abrams, Council on Foreign Relations: While referencing a poorly sourced and unverifiable Wall Street Journal report alleging that Iran is militarily involved in Syria, Abrams agrees with a Washington Post editorial board op-ed calling American policy today “reprehensible” and “morally indefensible” for its passivity”:
We appear to have concluded that passivity is the best policy, that nothing important is at stake, and that an Iranian victory is nothing much to be concerned about. We appear unconcerned as well about public opinion in the Arab world, where people can hear Syrian rebels criticizing the United States for providing only rhetorical support and being indifferent to their slaughter. The president who traveled to Cairo in 2009 to court Arab opinion has apparently decided that speeches are one thing, and action another.
I have little to add to the Post’s rhetoric in its editorial today. This is a shameful, and damaging, moment in American foreign policy.
John McCain, Republican National Convention: Even NBC’s Chris Matthews was taken aback by the former presidential candidates militarist speech at the RNC this week. Here’s what McCain had to say about Iran (and Syria):
]]>When Iranians rose up by the millions against their
repressive rulers, when day beseeched our president, chanting in
English, “Are you with us or are you with them?” When the
entire world watched as a brave young woman named Neda was shot
and bled to death in a street in Tehran, the president missed an
historic opportunity to throw America’s full moral support
behind an Iranian revolution that shared one of our highest
interests: ridding Iran of a brutal dictatorship that terrorized
the Middle East and threatens the world.
(APPLAUSE)
…
In other times, when other courageous people fought for
their freedom against sworn enemies of the United States,
American presidents, both Republicans and Democrats, have acted
to help them prevail.
(APPLAUSE)
Sadly — sadly for the lonely voices of descent in Syria
and Iran and elsewhere in the world will feel forgotten in their
darkness and sadly for us, as well. Our president is not being
true to our values.
(APPLAUSE)
For the sake of the cause of freedom, for the sake of
people who are willing to give their lives so their fellow
citizens can determine their own futures and for the sake of our
nation, the nation founded on the idea that all people
everywhere have the right to freedom and justice. We must
return to our best traditions of American leadership and support
those who face down the brutal tyranny of their oppressors and
our enemies.
Iran watchers are no doubt aware that recently Iran’s “Shabake-ye Khabar” news network of the Islamic Republic’s official “Seda va Sima” television and radio network, conducted an internet poll regarding Iran’s nuclear programme.
Respondents were asked whether Iran should cease uranium enrichment in exchange for sanctions relief. [...]]]>
Iran watchers are no doubt aware that recently Iran’s “Shabake-ye Khabar” news network of the Islamic Republic’s official “Seda va Sima” television and radio network, conducted an internet poll regarding Iran’s nuclear programme.
Respondents were asked whether Iran should cease uranium enrichment in exchange for sanctions relief. 58% of respondents called for the cessation of uranium enrichment in exchange for sanctions relief. A screen shot can be found here.
In a screen shot posted on Radio Free Liberty in any article by Golnaz Esfandiari, the percentage against nuclear enrichment exceeds 60%. No doubt due to the respective sites taking their screen shots at different times. According to Ms. Esfandiari, Radio Free Liberty took the screen shot shortly before the poll’s removal.
As the news site realised its bungle, and the story was picked up by international outlets, it replaced the nuclear internet poll, with another one, asking respondents whether they would support the Majles plan to close the Strait of Hormuz in response to the EU oil embargo. 89% of respondents stated that they were against the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Here’s the relevant screen shot.
After this second gaff, the network steered clear of the nuclear issue and sanctions altogether and instead posted a poll relating to Iranian football.
This wasn’t a scientific opinion poll, and according to the news site about 2,000 people participated. Iranian state media later and rather bizarrely accused BBC Persian service of hacking their site and doctoring the opinion poll. BBC Persian firmly rejected this charge.
That being said, I would not be surprised if many Iranians are questioning the wisdom of the current nuclear policy. Many are under immense pressure because of the currency crisis, rampant inflation and many other economic ailments, all exacerbated by economic and financial sanctions.
In Iran there has not been a genuine, frank and open discussion of the nuclear file and the costs involved with the government’s programme in the face of several UNSC resolutions and extreme pressure from the US and its European allies. If a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis were placed before Iranians in the public area, it would be most interesting to see and hear what they might conclude. That being said, we very rarely, if ever, see foreign, national security and nuclear energy policy considered in accordance with Iranian public opinion. Another debate for another time, no doubt.
–Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi is an Iran researcher at the Oxford Research Group and a third year doctoral candidate at the University of Oxford. He has published widely on Iran. His latest with Paul Ingram and Gabrielle Rifkind is “Iran’s Nuclear Impasse: Breaking the Deadlock”. Follow him on twitter: @essikhan
]]>I urge that, given the example of the campaign for the Iraq War and the reliance [...]]]>
I urge that, given the example of the campaign for the Iraq War and the reliance on faulty single-source intelligence reports, the United States ought to be more cautious when looking at what amounts to the same sort of documentation coming out of Iraq.
Here’s an excerpt (I encourage you to read the whole thing):
]]>A source provides details to the American government about the nefarious activities of a Middle Eastern country. That information ends up in scores of secret U.S. government documents. Subsequently, the information winds up on the front pages of major newspapers, and is heralded by war hawks in Washington as a casus belli.
Sound familiar? It should, but perhaps not in the way you’re thinking. Here’s a hint: It’s not 2003, but 2010. This is the story of what happened recently to Iran in the wake of the latest WikiLeaks document release, where U.S military field reports from Iraq made their way into major national newspapers and painted the Islamic Republic as a force out to murder U.S. soldiers in Iraq.
While the WikiLeaks document dump provided a useful way to glean historic details of the seven-year-old occupation, much of the prominent media coverage focused closely on the extent of Iranian support for anti-U.S. forces in Iraq and Iran’s alleged role.
“Leaked Reports Detail Iran’s Aid for Iraqi Militias,” blared the headline on a front page story in The New York Times, which went on to report on several incidents recounted in WikiLeaks documents that journalist Michael Gordon called “the shadow war between the United States and Iraqi militias backed by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.”
“The field reports also provide a detailed account of what American military officials on the ground in Iraq saw as Iran’s shadowy role training and equipping Iraqi Shiite militias to fight the U.S.,” wrote Julian Barnes in The Wall Street Journal. “American intelligence believed the training was provided not only by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in Iran, but also by Hezbollah, their Lebanese ally.”
And the hawks went wild.
Iraq war supporter and Newsweek Middle East regional editor Christopher Dickey wondered about the inevitability of the U.S. getting ready to “strike back with a vengeance.” Neoconservative journalist Jamie Kirchick wrote a piece on his Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty blog headlined “How WikiLeaks Makes Confrontation With Iran More Likely.” He went on to say that “what is now beyond dispute is that it clearly sees itself as engaged in a war against the United States.”
But, despite Kirchick’s assertions, the details in the WikiLeaks document dump were not actually “beyond dispute.”
The Journal’s take hinted at the problem, and the Times mentioned that the reports were based on events “as seen by American units in the field and the United States’ military intelligence.” These reports are accounts—and often single-source accounts—by U.S. military officials, based largely on unnamed sources whose motivations cannot even be guessed at, let alone their version of events confirmed.
“What the documents reflect is the American military’s view of what was happening,” NYU Center on Law and Security fellow Nir Rosen told the radio show Democracy Now! “If they record a death, if they record a torture incident, then that’s a factual incident that occurred and we know it’s true historically.”
“But a lot of the other allegations about Iranian involvement or various plots, people have been giving them too much credence,” he continued. “The New York Times, for example, has been really celebrating the alleged role of Iran simply because American guys on the ground have been reporting the role of Iran.”
“This is the same American intelligence that thought Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and thought that Saddam had connections to September 11,” said Rosen, who just finished a second book chronicling his time in Iraq. “We need to be skeptical about some of the allegations.”
Indeed, if one amended the above opening paragraph to say, ‘the U.S. launched an invasion of said nefarious Middle Eastern country,’ this tale would obviously be the story of Curveball, the famously fraudulent defector source who provided details of Iraq’s alleged biological weapons program to German intelligence, which passed it on to their U.S. counterparts.