by Jasmin Ramsey
It’s not unusual for evidence supposedly indicating an Iranian nuclear weapons program to be leaked to the press, but how credible is that evidence and how should the press be handling it? For example, late last year, the Associated Press reported on a graph, allegedly from [...]]]>
by Jasmin Ramsey
It’s not unusual for evidence supposedly indicating an Iranian nuclear weapons program to be leaked to the press, but how credible is that evidence and how should the press be handling it? For example, late last year, the Associated Press reported on a graph, allegedly from Iran, that they said was indicative of Iranian nuclear weapons work. It was quickly revealed, however, that there were multiple errors in the graph, casting doubt on its credibility, authenticity and provenance. In that case, the Associated Press admitted the error promptly. More recently, a Washington Post headline declared, “Iran’s Bid to Buy Banned Magnets Stokes Fears about Major Expansion of Nuclear Capacity.” But according to nuclear physicist Yousaf Butt, the evidence for that claim may be thin at best.
During this interview with Prof. Butt, currently a research professor and scientist-in-residence at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, we discussed these issues and the Iranian nuclear standoff more generally.
Q: What do you make of recent claims that Iran may have ordered magnets for its centrifuge program?
Yousaf Butt: The first thing to note is that there is no evidence of any actual magnets. The Washington Post story mentions “purchase orders” for some ceramic ring magnets but there are no “purchase orders”. The whole story is based upon a web-inquiry someone in Iran allegedly made for 100,000 ceramic ring magnets. So this is a simple mischaracterization. The evidence presented (Figures 3 and 4 in the source report) merely show a web inquiry, but we don’t know whether the supplier had any interest in discussing the question further. Such a web-inquiry is one step above a google-search. There is no mention of money, delivery dates or letters of credit, all of which would be part of a formal “purchase order”.
The other problem is in jumping to the conclusion that such magnets can only be used for centrifuges. This is a fault both in the source document as well as the news story. Such magnets have a host of other applications, for instance, in loudspeakers, DC motors, in the blower fan units of car radiators, military field telephones, etc. The article characterizes these magnets as “highly specialized” — they are not. They are common magnets. As I mention in my piece in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, “Although magnets with an energy product of 3 MGO could be consistent with applications in suspension bearings of the older IR-1 centrifuges, they are also consistent with a host of other applications.”
The story is not necessarily completely wrong — it is simply based on very thin evidence (which it exaggerates) and it’s unbalanced because it does not mention the various possible uses of these very common magnets.
Q: If these magnets are so common why would Iran need to import them?
Yousaf Butt: Again, there is no evidence that Iran was importing or even trying to import such magnets — there is merely an alleged web-inquiry, possibly to check prices. In fact, Iran can and does make such magnets within the country. For example, the Taban Magnetic Materials Development Co. has a website where they advertise the fact that they “produce ceramic permanent magnet (hard ferrite)”.
Q: Let’s assume for a moment that this story is correct and Iran does intend to add 50,000 centrifuges — is that a violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to which Iran is a signatory?
Yousaf Butt: No, not at all. So long as enrichment is done under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards, it is legal, regardless of the number or type of centrifuges. Enrichment does not equate to a bomb factory. The Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov has been quite explicit about this and Russia is one of the major P5+1 nations negotiating with Iran. Lavrov has made clear the distinction between what is legally required of Iran and what is being politically requested: “We were told by the IAEA that they (the Iranians) will install next generation centrifuges. However, (Iran) is doing everything in line with their commitments under the Safeguards Agreement. The IAEA has been notified, and the IAEA will be there and will supervise this, but I’d like to repeat that this is a legal aspect of the matter, while the political aspect is that we, along with the other Security Council members, have called on Iran to freeze enrichment operations during the negotiations.”
Q: What about the fear – expressed most strongly by Israel — that Iran may quickly accumulate the material needed for a bomb?
Yousaf Butt: Just last week, the US Director of National Intelligence came out with a brand new Worldwide Threat Assessment, which says quite explicitly: “we assess Iran could not divert safeguarded material and produce a weapon-worth of WGU [weapons grade uranium] before this activity is discovered.” As for Mr. Netanyahu’s red line on Iran: his track-record on predicting Iranian weaponization has been notoriously bad. As I point out in a recent piece for Reuters, in 1992 Mr. Netanyahu said Iran was three to five years from a bomb.
Q: But doesn’t Iran have a history of being less than forthright on nuclear issues?
Yousaf Butt: That’s a very subjective question, but there are often “feelings” and “concerns” voiced informally that Iran has been sneaky in the past, hence it cannot be trusted. Indeed, this may have been the case in the past, but one has to dig deeper into history to find out why. Among the very first things Iran did after the revolution in 1979 was stop its nuclear program because of opposition to nuclear power by its new leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. (Ironically, Iran’s nuclear program was kicked off in the 1950s with the full encouragement and support of the United States, under the auspices of Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace program.) In 1982, Iran decided to resume work on the Bushehr reactors, partly because it was financially complex to just drop the project.
In 1983, Iran went to the IAEA in an overt, non-sneaky way, to solicit help in setting-up a research-level facility for uranium enrichment. The IAEA agreed and was very receptive to the idea, since helping member nations with such work is part of its duties. However, when US government officials caught wind of this, they intervened politically to stop the IAEA from helping Iran. This was documented by Mark Hibbs in an article for “Nuclear Fuel” which is excerpted here.: “…the U.S. government then ”directly intervened” to discourage the IAEA from assisting Iran in production of UO2 and UF6. ”We stopped that in its tracks,” said a former U.S. official.”
One can debate whether or not that was a smart move on the part of the US, but what is beyond question is that it constitutes politicization of the IAEA. So, indeed, Iran may have done some sneaky things in the past, but their hand has also, to some extent, been forced.
The IAEA is a technical agency and, in my view, it should steer clear of all politics. And this is not just my view, many people in the technical and legal arms control community feel this way. For example, Robert Kelley, who twice served with the IAEA as a director of the nuclear inspections in Iraq has said that “IAEA work to date, including the mischaracterization of satellite images of Parchin, is more consistent with an IAEA agenda to target Iran than of technical analysis.”
Unfortunately, a possible consequence of business as usual at the IAEA is the loss of faith in, and the subsequent collapse of, the non-proliferation regime. One way to start afresh would be to think about an “NPT 2.0” which would demand more of both Nuclear Weapon States as well as of non-Nuclear Weapons States, as I outlined in an article for Foreign Policy.
Photo: Iran’s Arak IR-40 Heavy Water Reactor. Credit: Nanking2012
]]>The suspect graph of a nuclear explosion reportedly provided to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as evidence of Iranian computer modeling of nuclear weapons yields appears to have been adapted from a very similar graph in a scholarly journal article published in January 2009 and available on the internet.
[...]]]>The suspect graph of a nuclear explosion reportedly provided to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as evidence of Iranian computer modeling of nuclear weapons yields appears to have been adapted from a very similar graph in a scholarly journal article published in January 2009 and available on the internet.
Graph published by the scholarly journal Nuclear Engineering and Design, Volume 239, Issue 1, January 2009, Pages 80–86.
The graph, published in a Nov. 27 Associated Press story but immediately found to have a mathematical error of four orders of magnitude, closely resembles a graph accompanying a scholarly article modeling a nuclear explosion. It provides a plausible explanation for the origins of the graph leaked to AP, according to two nuclear physicists following the issue closely.
The graph in the scholarly journal article was well known to the IAEA at the time of its publication, according to a knowledgeable source.
That means that the IAEA should have been able to make the connection between the set of graphs alleged to have been used by Iran to calculate yields from nuclear explosions that the agency obtained in 2011 and the very similar graph available on the internet.
The IAEA did not identify the member countries that provided the intelligence about the alleged Iran studies. However, Israel provided most of the intelligence cited by the IAEA in its 2011 report, and Israeli intelligence has been the source of a number of leaks to the AP reporter in Vienna, George Jahn.
Graph published by the Associated Press on Nov. 27, 2012, reportedly as evidence of Iranian computer modeling of nuclear weapons yields.
The graph accompanying an article in the January 2009 issue of the journal Nuclear Engineering and Design by retired Swiss nuclear engineer Walter Seifritz displayed a curve representing power in a nuclear explosion over fractions of a second that is very close to the one shown in the graph published by AP and attributed by the officials leaking it to an Iranian scientist.
Both graphs depict a nuclear explosion as an asymmetrical bell curve in which the right side of the curve is more elongated than the left side. Although both graphs are too crudely drawn to allow precise measurement, it appears that the difference between the two sides of the curve on the two graphs is very close to the same in both graphs.
The AP graph appears to show a total energy production of 50 kilotonnes taking place over about 0.3 microseconds, whereas the Seifritz graph shows a total of roughly 18 kilotonnes produced over about 0.1 microseconds.
The resemblance is so dramatic that two nuclear specialists who compared the graphs at the request of IPS consider it very plausible that the graph leaked to AP as part of an Iranian secret nuclear weapons research programme may well have been derived from the one in the journal article.
Scott Kemp, an assistant professor of nuclear science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), told IPS he suspects the graph leaked to AP was “adapted from the open literature”. He said he believes the authors of that graph “were told they ought to look into the literature and found that paper, copied (the graph) and made their own plot from it.”
Yousaf Butt, a nuclear scientist at the Monterey Institute, who had spotted the enormous error in the graph published by AP, along with his colleague Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress, said in an interview with IPS that a relationship between the two graphs is quite plausible, particularly given the fact they both have similar asymmetries in the power curve.
“Someone may just have taken the Seifritz graph and crudely adapted it to a 50-kilotonne yield instead of the 18 kilotonnes in the paper,” Butt said.
He added that “it’s not even necessary that an actual computer model was even run in the production of the AP graph.”
Apparently anticipating that the Seifriz graph would soon be discovered, the source of the graph given to AP is quoted in a Dec. 1 story as acknowledging that “similar graphs can be found in textbooks, the internet and other public sources.”
Butt said that he doesn’t know whether the AP graph is genuine or not, but that it could well be a forgery.
“If one wanted to plant a forgery,” he wrote, “it would make sense to manufacture something that looked like the output from the many unclassified ‘toy-models’ available on-line or in academic journals, rather than leak something from an actual high-fidelity classified study.”
The Seifritz graph came to the attention of the IAEA secretariat soon after it was published and was referred to the staff specialist on nuclear weapons research, according to a source familiar with the IAEA’s handling of such issues.
The source, who refused to be identified, told IPS the reaction of the official was that the graph represented fairly crude work on basic theory and was therefore not of concern to the agency.
The agency was given the alleged Iranian graph in 2011, and a “senior diplomat” from a different country from the source of the graph said IAEA investigators realised the diagramme was flawed shortly after they received it, according to the Dec. 1 AP story.
The IAEA’s familiarity with the Seifritz graph, two years before it was given graphs that bore a close resemblance to it and which the agency knew contained a huge mathematical error, raise new questions about how the IAEA could have regarded the Israeli intelligence as credible evidence of Iranian work on nuclear weapons.
Yukiya Amano, the director-general of the IAEA, refused to confirm or deny in an appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington Dec. 6 that the graph published by AP was part of the evidence of Iranian “activities” related to nuclear weapons cited by the agency in its November 2011 report. .
Amano responded to a question on the graph, “I can’t discuss this specific information.”
In its November 2011 report, the IAEA said it had “information” from two member states that Iran had conducted “modeling studies” aimed at determining the “nuclear explosive yield” associated with components of nuclear weapon. It said the “information” had identified “models said to have been used in those studies and the results of these calculations, which the Agency has seen”.
The “senior diplomat” quoted by AP said the IAEA also had a spreadsheet containing the data needed to produce the same yield as shown on the graph – 50 kilotonnes – suggesting that the spreadsheet is closely related to the graph.
Butt observed, however, that the existence of the spreadsheet with data showing the yield related to a 50 kilotonne explosion does not make the graph any more credible, because the spreadsheet could have been created by simply plugging the data used to produce the graph.
Kemp of MIT agreed with Butt’s assessment. “If it’s simply data points plotted in the graph, it means nothing,” he told IPS.
After Butt and Dalnoki-Veress identified the fundamental error in the graph AP had published as evidence of Iranian work on a 50-kilotonne bomb, the Israeli source of the graph and an unidentified “senior diplomat” argued that the error must have been intentionally made by the Iranian scientist who they alleged had produced the graph.
A “senior diplomat” told AP the IAEA believed the scientist had changed the units of energy used by orders of magnitude, because “Nobody would have understood the original….”
That explanation was embraced by David Albright, who has served as unofficial IAEA spokesman in Washington on several occasions. But neither Albright nor the unidentified officials quoted by Jahn offered any explanation as to why an accurate graph would have been more difficult for Iranian officials to understand than one with such a huge mathematical error.
Further undermining the credibility of the explanation, Jahn’s sources suggested that the Iranian scientist whom they suspected of having devised the graph was Dr. Majid Shahriari, the nuclear scientist assassinated by the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad in 2010.
No evidence has been produced to indicate that Shahriari, who had a long record of publications relating to nuclear power plants and basic nuclear physics, had anything to do with nuclear weapons research.
*Gareth Porter, an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy, received the UK-based Gellhorn Prize for journalism for 2011 for articles on the U.S. war in Afghanistan.
]]>Beginning with a reference to a contentious report by the AP that used an alleged Iranian document provided by an “unnamed country” to suggest “that Iran is working on a bomb,” Mark Hibbs, a senior associate in Carnegie’s Nuclear Policy Program, writes that increasing reliance by the International [...]]]>
Beginning with a reference to a contentious report by the AP that used an alleged Iranian document provided by an “unnamed country” to suggest “that Iran is working on a bomb,” Mark Hibbs, a senior associate in Carnegie’s Nuclear Policy Program, writes that increasing reliance by the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) on third-party data can compromise the agency’s political credibility:
The true significance of this document is that it landed in our e-mailboxes in the midst of renewed internal debate about how the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) should determine whether member states are in compliance with their nonproliferation obligations. Beginning two decades ago, the IAEA started relying less on information it gathers during its own field inspections alone and more on information that others provide, most of which is open-source, but some of which is not. This third-party data has become central to the IAEA’s work, and it is about to become even more so. The leak of the graph to the AP underscores that if this data isn’t rigorously vetted and handled carefully, the IAEA’s technical and political credibility will be seriously compromised.
Meanwhile the Guardian reports that the IAEA has attempted to tighten internal security by “narrowing the circle of officials and analysts who deal with the most sensitive material.” The measures apparently include prohibiting any Persian speakers from working in the safeguards department to fulfil the imperative task of analyzing documents about Iran’s nuclear program.
]]>That Associated Press story displaying a graph alleged to be part of an Iranian computer simulation of a nuclear explosion — likely leaked by Israel with the intention of reinforcing the media narrative of covert Iranian work on nuclear weapons – raises serious questions about the International Atomic [...]]]>
That Associated Press story displaying a graph alleged to be part of an Iranian computer simulation of a nuclear explosion — likely leaked by Israel with the intention of reinforcing the media narrative of covert Iranian work on nuclear weapons – raises serious questions about the International Atomic Energy Association’s (IAEA) claim that it has credible evidence of such modeling work by Iran.
The graph of the relationship between energy and power shown in the AP story has now been revealed to contain absurdly large errors indicating its fraudulence.
Those revelations indicate, in turn, that the IAEA based its publication of detailed allegations of nuclear weapons-related Iranian computer modeling on evidence that should have been rejected as having no credibility.
Former senior IAEA inspector Robert Kelley, who has challenged the accuracy of IAEA reporting on Iran, told Lobe Log in an e-mail that “It’s clear the graph has nothing to do with a nuclear bomb.”
“The pretty, symmetrical bell shaped curve at the bottom is not typical of a nuclear explosion but of some more idealized natural phenomena or mathematical equation,” he said. “Clearly it is a student example of how to perform integrals to which someone has attached some meaningless numbers.”
Nuclear physicists Yousaf Butt and Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress also pointed out that the graph depicted by AP is not only so rudimentary and crude that it could have been done by an undergraduate student, but is based on a fundamental error of mind-numbing proportions.
The graph shown in the AP story plots two curves, one of energy versus time, the other of power output versus time. But Butt and Dalnoki-Veress noted that the two curves are inconsistent. The peak level of power shown in the graph, they said, is nearly a million times too high.
After a quick look at the graph, the head of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Cal State Sacramento, Dr. Hossein Partovi, observed, “[T]he total energy is more than four orders of magnitude (forty thousand times) smaller than the total integrated power that it must equal!” Essentially, the mismatch between the level of total energy and total power on the graph is “more than four orders of magnitude”, which Partovi explained means that the level of energy is 40,000 times too small in relation to the level of power.
One alert reader of the account of the debunking of the graph at the Mondoweiss blog cited further evidence supporting Kelley’s observation that the graph shown by AP was based on an another graph that had nothing to do with nuclear explosions.
The reader noted that the notation “kT” shown after “energy” on the right hand scale of the graph does not stand for “kilotons” as Jahn suggested, but “Boltzmann constant” (k) multiplied by temperature (T). The unit of tons, on the other hand, is always abbreviated with a lower case “t”, he pointed out, so kilotons would be denoted as “kt”.
The reader also stated that the “kT” product is used in physics as a scaling factor for energy values in molecular-scale systems, such as a microsecond laser pulse.
The evidence thus suggests that someone took a graph related to an entirely different problem and made changes to show a computer simulation of a 50 kiloton explosion. The dotted line on the graph leads the eye directly to the number 50 on the right-hand energy scale, which would lead most viewers to believe that it is the result of modeling a 50 kiloton nuclear explosion.
The graph was obviously not done by a real Iranian scientist — much less someone working in a top secret nuclear weapons research program — but by an amateur trying to simulate a graph that would be viewed, at least by non-specialists, as something a scientist might have drawn.
Although AP reporter George Jahn wrote that officials who provided the diagram did so “only on condition that they and their country not be named”, the country behind the graph is not much of a mystery.
Blogger Richard Silverstein has reported that a “highly-placed Israeli source” told him the diagram “was stolen by the Mossad from an Iranian computer” using one of the various malware programs deployed against Iran.
Whether one chooses to rely on Silverstein’s reporting or not, it is clear that the graph is part of a longer stream of suspicious documents supposedly obtained by Israeli intelligence from inside Iran’s nuclear program and then given to the IAEA over the past few years.
Former IAEA Secretary General Mohammed ElBaradei refers in his memoirs to documents provided by Israel in 2009 “purportedly showing that Iran had continued with nuclear weapons studies until at least 2007.” ElBaradei adds that the Agency’s “technical experts” had “raised numerous questions about the documents’ authenticity”, and suggested that US intelligence “did not buy the “evidence” put forward by Israel” in its 2007 National Intelligence Estimate.
Jahn’s story indicates that this and similar graphs were the basis for the IAEA’s publishing charges by two unnamed states that Iran had done computer modeling that the agency said could only have been about nuclear weapons.
Jahn cites a “senior diplomat who is considered neutral on the issue” as confirming that the graph accompanying his story was one of “a series of Iranian computer-generated models provided to the IAEA by the intelligences services of member nations.”
Those “computer generated models” were discussed in the November 2011 report, which referred to “[i]nformation provided to the Agency by two Member States relating to modelling [sic] studies alleged to have been conducted in 2008 and 2009 by Iran….” The unnamed member states were alleging that the Iranian studies “involved the modelling [sic] of spherical geometries, consisting of components of the core of an HEU nuclear device subjected to shock compression, for their neutronic behaviour at high density, and a determination of the subsequent nuclear explosive yield.”
Nothing in that description of the alleged modeling is documented by the type of graph shown by the AP story.
The IAEA report concludes by saying, “The information also identifies models said to have been used in those studies and the results of these calculations, which the Agency has seen.”
In other words, the only evidence that the IAEA had actually seen was the graphs of the alleged computer modeling, of which the graph shown in the AP story is alleged to be an example. But the fact that data on that graph has been credibly shown to be off by four orders of magnitude suggests that the Israeli claim of Iranian computer modeling of “components of the core of an HEU nuclear device subjected to shock compression” was completely fabricated.
Former IAEA Inspector Kelley also told Lobe Log that “We can only hope that the claim that the IAEA has relied on this crude hoax is false. Otherwise their credibility has been shattered.”
- Gareth Porter, an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy, received the UK-based Gellhorn Prize for journalism for 2011 for articles on the U.S. war in Afghanistan.
]]>Those unnamed officials “from a country critical of Iran’s nuclear program” are at it again. This week they leaked an illustration to to the Associated Press which supposedly demonstrates that “Iranian scientists have run computer simulations for a nuclear weapon that would produce more than triple the explosive [...]]]>
Those unnamed officials “from a country critical of Iran’s nuclear program” are at it again. This week they leaked an illustration to to the Associated Press which supposedly demonstrates that “Iranian scientists have run computer simulations for a nuclear weapon that would produce more than triple the explosive force of the World War II bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.” The AP headline is sure to bring in hits, but is it accurate reporting?
“The diagram leaked to the Associated Press this week is nothing more than either shoddy sources or shoddy science,” write physicists Yousaf Butt and Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. “In either case, the world can keep calm and carry on,” say the experts, whose article should be read in full.
Butt and Dalnoki-Veress use the word “shoddy”, but that may be an understatement when evaluating the central point of George Jahn’s “exclusive” report:
The graphic has not yet been authenticated; however, even if authentic, it would not qualify as proof of a nuclear weapons program. Besides the issue of authenticity, the diagram features quite a massive error, which is unlikely to have been made by research scientists working at a national level.
The image released to the Associated Press shows two curves: one that plots the energy versus time, and another that plots the power output versus time, presumably from a fission device. But these two curves do not correspond: If the energy curve is correct, then the peak power should be much lower — around 300 million ( 3×108) kt per second, instead of the currently stated 17 trillion (1.7 x1013) kt per second. As is, the diagram features a nearly million-fold error.
This diagram does nothing more than indicate either slipshod analysis or an amateurish hoax.
…this graph – which is only slightly less hilariously primitive than the one Benjamin Netanyahu infamously touted with a straight face at the UN – has Farsi written under it to imbue it with that menacing Iranian-ish feel, but also helpfully uses English to ensure that US audiences can easily drink up its scariness. As The Atlantic’s Robert Wright noted: “How considerate of the Iranians to label their secret nefarious nuke graph in English!”. It’s certainly possible that Iranian scientists use English as a universal language of science, but the convenient mixing of Farsi and English should at least trigger some skepticism.
…the Associated Press story does not change the U.S. Government’s assessment that Iran would require, not a few weeks, but many months to build a deliverable nuclear weapon, if it decided to do so. Secretary of Defense Panetta recently estimated that it would take two to three years, similar to the estimate made by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. In order to implement such a crash program, Iran would need to expel IAEA inspectors, use existing facilities and stockpiles to produce weapons grade uranium, and probably test a nuclear device, all of which would raise the alarm to the international community.
And Greenwald reminds us why journalists need to be especially accurate and skeptical when reporting on Iran’s nuclear program:
The case for the attack on Iraq was driven, of course, by a mountain of fabricated documents and deliberately manipulated intelligence which western media outlets uncritically amplified. Yet again, any doubts that they are willing and eager to do exactly the same with regard to the equally fictitious Iranian Threat should be forever dispelled by behavior like this.
As always, the two key facts to note on Iran are these: 1) the desperation to prevent Iran from possessing a nuclear weapon has nothing to do with fear that they would commit national suicide by using it offensively, but rather has everything to do with the deterrent capability it would provide - i.e., nukes would prevent the US or Israel from attacking Iran at will or bullying it with threats of such an attack; and 2) the US-led sanctions regime now in place based on this fear-mongering continues to impose mass suffering and death on innocent Iranians. But as long as media outlets like AP continue to blindly trumpet whatever is shoveled to them by the shielded, unnamed “country critical of Iran’s atomic program”, these facts will be suppressed and fear levels kept sky-high, thus enabling the continuation and escalation of the hideous sanctions regime, if not an outright attack.
Today reporter Matthew Lee asked questions beyond the official script during a press session with U.S. State Department spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, following the Obama administration’s announcement that it would be cutting funding for the U.N. cultural agency, UNESCO, after its member countries overwhelmingly approved a Palestinian bid for full membership. Nuland said [...]]]>
Today reporter Matthew Lee asked questions beyond the official script during a press session with U.S. State Department spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, following the Obama administration’s announcement that it would be cutting funding for the U.N. cultural agency, UNESCO, after its member countries overwhelmingly approved a Palestinian bid for full membership. Nuland said UNESCO’s decision was “regrettable, premature and undermines our shared goal to a comprehensive, just and lasting peace” between Israelis and Palestinians, adding that the U.S. would not be making it’s scheduled $60 million payment in November as a result. Over 100 countries voted for the bid or abstained and only 14 voted against it.
Following is an excerpt and here is Lee’s report in the Associated Press.
Victoria Nuland: …This was, as I said, regrettable, premature and undermines the prospect of getting where we want to go and that’s what we’re concerned about.
Matthew Lee: Exactly how does it undermine the process of getting where you want to go?
Victoria Nuland: The concern is that it creates tensions when all of us should be concerting our efforts to get the parties back to the table–
Matthew Lee: The only thing that it does is upset Israel and it triggers this law that you said will require you to stop funding UNESCO. Is there anything else? There’s nothing that changes on the ground, is there?
Victoria Nuland: Our concern is that this could exacerbate the environment which we’re trying to work through so that the parties can get back to the table–
Matthew Lee: How does it exacerbate the environment if it changes nothing on the ground, unlike, say, the construction of settlements. That changes nothing on the ground. It gives Palestine membership in UNESCO which is a body that the U.S. was so unconcerned about for many years that it wasn’t even a member.
Victoria Nuland: Well, I think you know that this administration is committed to UNESCO, rejoined UNESCO, wants to see UNESCO’s work go forward–
Matthew Lee: Well, actually the last administration joined UNESCO, not this one, but I need to have some kind of clarity on how this undermines the peace process other than the fact that it upsets Israel.
Victoria Nuland: Again, we are trying to get both of these parties back to the table, that’s what we’ve been doing all along, that was the basis for the president’s speech in May, basis of the diplomacy that the quartet did through the summer, the basis of the statement that the quartet came out with in September, so in that context we’ve been trying to improve the relationship between these two parties and improve the environment between them and we are concerned that we exacerbate tensions with this, and it makes it harder to get the parties back to the table.
Matthew Lee: Since the talks broke off last September until today, how many times have they met together, with all your effort?
Victoria Nuland: How many times have the parties met? I think you know the answer to that question, that doesn’t change the fact that we all are committed to trying–
Matthew Lee: Correct, so how can things get worse than they already are?
Victoria Nuland: Matt, I think you’re engaged in a polemic here rather than questions, Saeed please?
]]>- Reuters: John Irish reports that French President Nicolas Sarkozy has warned Iran that, “If a credible agreement [over its nuclear program] cannot be reached, Iran’s isolation would only worsen.” Sarkozy continued, “And in the face of worsening threat, we would have to organize ourselves to protect and defend states that feel threatened.” Sarkozy has said he supported the start up of the new nuclear power plant at Bushehr, fueled by Russian fuel rods, as long as it adheres to international law. (Commentary‘s Jennifer Rubin is encouraged, calling Sarkozy’s comments “Better Than Nothing.”)
- Associated Press (via Yahoo): Nasser Karimi reports that Tehran is proposing to jointly assemble nuclear fuel for the Bushehr nuclear plant alongside Russian technicians. The U.S. and Western allies agreed to lift their opposition to the Bushehr on the condition that Russia handle all the nuclear fuel. “We have made a proposal to Russia to create a consortium under Russian license to do part of the work in Russia and part in Iran,” the head of Iran’s atomic energy agency, Ali Akbar Salehi, told the Iranian state-run Press TV. Moscow is reported to be studying the new proposal.
- International Herald Tribune: Avner Cohen and Marvin Miller make the case for Israel ending its longstanding policy of nuclear opacity. “International support for Israel and its opaque bomb is being increasingly eroded by its continued occupation of Palestinian territory and the policies that support that occupation. Such criticism of these policies might well spill over into the nuclear domain, making Israel vulnerable to the charge that it is a nuclear-armed pariah state, and thus associating it to an uncomfortable degree with today’s rogue Iranian regime,” they write. “Indeed, while almost all states publicly oppose the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran, there is also growing support for dealing with this problem in an ‘evenhanded’ manner, namely, by establishing a nuclear weapons free zone across the entire region.” The authors emphasize that international support for Israel and its policy of opacity is eroding as Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories drags on. (Ali wrote about Cohen and Miller’s op-ed yesterday.)
- Washington Post: Columnist David Ignatius sat in on a journalists’ session with President Barack Obama. Obama related that he was ready to resume negotiations with Iran over the nuclear issues as well as the situation in Afghanistan, albeit on different diplomatic tracks. Background briefers from the administration who followed Obama’s chat with reporters said the renewed U.S. enthusiasm for talks is due to an intelligence perception that, as Ignatius put it, sanctions are “beginning to bite” and that Iran may be having technical troubles with it’s nuclear program, therefore buying time for diplomacy. Obama restated his policy that he is not opposed to a peaceful Iranian nuclear program so long as there are “confidence-building measures” that show there are no moves towards weaponization.
- The Atlantic: Marc Ambinder was in the same session with Ignatius, and posted a lengthy account to his blog. Obama said that if “national pride” doesn’t allow Iran to give up an alleged nuclear weapons program, then there will be a “cost.” The use of “all options available to us to prevent a nuclear arms race in the region and to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran,” Ambinder reports Obama as saying, pointing out that this is a euphemism for military strikes. Obama also spoke frankly about his difficulties getting Russia and China on board for sanctions, but said that the Iranians were “surprised by how successful” the U.S. push for international sanctions has been. Ambinder quoted an unnamed senior official who acknowledged that Obama intends to pursue a dual track in dealings with Iran: “Given the technical problems they’re running into, I think we have time to play out the diplomatic strategy that the president laid out, both engagement and pressure.”
- The Atlantic: Jeffery Goldberg was also in on the surprise presidential briefing (Obama’s presence was not announced in advance). Goldberg interprets the session as a “victory lap” for the U.S.’s effectiveness in passing sanctions, but remains personally skeptical that they will work to dissuade Iran from its nuclear program. In his interpretation of Obama’s mention of “all options” remaining available, Goldberg writes, “There is no chance Obama will take the military option off the table; there is a small chance, in my opinion, that he would one day resort to the use of military force against Iran’s nuclear facilities.” Goldberg also notes that, despite Obama’s upbeat presentation, negotiations might not work both because, “one of the pillars of Islamic Republic theology is anti-Americanism,” and because the Iranian leadership has effectively suppressed the opposition Green Movement, removing a threat from within that might have caused the regime there to bend to economic pressure.
- Commentary: On the Contentions blog, Max Boot picks up on Goldberg’s skepticism (quoting him at length) and lambastes the notion of a “victory lap.” Boot blames Obama for the intransigence of the Iranian leadership in negotiations thus far, proclaiming that they won’t deal “especially because Obama continues to talk of his burning desire to strike a deal with the mullahs, which only encourages their sense of invulnerability.” Boot suggests that negotiations should be abandoned because three decades of dealing with Iran have demonstrated that “that the mullahs aren’t misunderstood moderates who are committed to “peaceful co-existence.”
- Washington Post: The Washington Post published an unsigned editorial which appears to echo the recent White House talking points which were also mentioned by Geoffrey Goldberg, Marc Ambinder and Max Boot. Obama is eager to show that the multilateral sanctions for which he finally gained Chinese and Russian support in June are bearing fruit. But the Post’s editorial was quick to mention that “all options” are still on the table. “Yet, as Mr. Obama acknowledged, Iran is still pursuing nuclear weapons,” and “changing their calculations is very difficult. . . . It may be that their ideological commitment to nuclear weapons is such that they are not making a cost-benefit analysis,” the president said. That, he added, is why the administration continues to say that “all options” for stopping an Iranian bomb are on the table,” the editorial reported.
- National Review Online: Cliff May, at NRO, reviews a new report from the hawkish neocon-associated American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC). A task force there, which includes two staffers from May’s own Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, among other neoconservatives, recently came out with a report that calls for “An Economic Warfare Strategy Against Iran” (PDF). May calls the program “sanctions plus.” While the report was being drafted, May says task force participants briefed members of Congress, resulting in some of the report’s recommendations already being codified in the latest round of U.S. sanctions signed into law last month. May concludes that the Iranian leadership is “no more eager to attend diplomatic soirees than Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri,” and therefore the report’s path of “economic warfare” is “the only chance we have to avoid more ‘kinetic’ and lethal forms of conflict later.” (Ed.’s note: Expect more from LobeLog on the AFPC report in the coming days.)
- Weekly Standard: Gabriel Schoenfeld gets all his facts wrong. He blames Hamas for a late July rocket strike on Askhelon in southern Israel, then blames Hezbollah for the latest clash at the Lebanese border between the IDF and Lebanese Army troops. “Hamas and Hezbollah are Iranian proxies. [...] Are the ayatollahs preparing preemptive action of their own, taking the battle to the borders of the Zionist enemy?” he asks tendentiously.
- Associated Press (via WaPo): George Jahn of the AP, writing from Vienna, gets an exclusive look at two letters that Iran sent out to diplomats. Iran’s head nuclear negotiator wrote the EU foreign policy chief, saying that the imposition of a fourth round of UN sanctions during diplomatic talks on Iran’s nuclear program was “astonishing,” U.S. and EU sanctions “even more astonishing,” and the whole situation “absolutely unacceptable.” Iran’s International Atomic Energy Agency representative wrote a second letter to the IAEA demanding, among other things, that Israel’s covert nuclear arsenal be publicly discussed.
- The Washington Institute for Near East Policy: Patrick Clawson reports on claims that both Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his chief of staff have publicly mentioned plans to pursue 100-percent enrichment — the level required for a nuclear weapon. According to Clawson, the lack of a western response to these remarks has reinforced the Iranian leadership’s belief that they are changing “world management.” Clawson then goes on to report on unsubstantiated reports that Ahmadinejad intends to usurp the Supreme Leader with his hardliner movement. Clawson suggests that now is the time for the U.S. to encourage Green Movement leaders to debate Ahmadinejad and show that his hardline policies have only brought greater isolation for the Islamic Republic. While the WINEP scholar makes a good point that Iran’s domestic politics are more complex than many westerners understand, he fails to consider that Ahmadinejad’s boastful remarks may have exaggerated Iranian enrichment capabilities in order to mobilize domestic political support. On a day when reports are suggesting that Iran — partly due to technical difficulties with their nuclear program — is interested in restarting negotiations with the U.S., it’s unclear how Clawson’s claim that Iran can enrich to 100-percent can be explained.
But if you’ve been looking to the so-called “liberal” media for more balanced coverage of the events as they’ve unfolded in the international waters off the Gaza coast, you’ve probably gotten the yip-yap of a pro-Israel poodle.
As usual, the “fool’s gold” standard, at the core of most news coverage in the “no sooner done than said” era, begins (and too often ends) with the Associated Press. AP entrusted it initial Gaza report to Amy Teibel and Tia Goldenberg. Teibel , who provides a a good deal of AP’s Israel coverage, is not on CAMERA’s list of journalists who arouse its ire. That’s not to say that Teibel is immune from scrutiny or censure by the “guardians of Israel,” some of it bordering on the bizarre. Neverthless, her articles earn her an occasional whimper, while some of her AP colleagues get a nasty snarl.
Teibel’s co-author, Tia Goldenberg, also isn’t on CAMERA’s journalistic hit list. Goldenberg is a Canadian-born Israeli and a former intern for the Canadian Jewish Congress. More to the point, either unnoticed or deliberately ignored by most newspapers, is that Goldenberg was reporting on the Gaza flotilla’s destruction from the Israeli warship INS Kidon. Not much chance of Goldenberg screwing the pooch, at least not from an Israeli perspective.
Reuters coverage of the confrontation between Israeli forces and the Gaza convoy has been authored or co-authored by Jeffrey Heller, currently the editor-in-charge of Reuters’ Jerusalem bureau. It’s instructive to contrast the development throughout the day in Heller’s online Feed with the one released later in the day.
In his first Feed entry today, Heller had written:
Israeli commandos stormed a convoy of Gaza-bound aid ships on Monday and more than 10 of the mostly international activists aboard were killed, provoking a diplomatic crisis and Palestinian charges of a “massacre.”
The violent end to a Turkish-backed attempt to break Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip by six ships carrying some 600 people and 10,000 tonnes of supplies raised an outcry across the Middle East and far beyond.
As the navy escorted the vessels into Israel’s port of Ashdod, accounts remained sketchy of the pre-dawn interception out in the Mediterranean, in which marines stormed aboard from dinghies and rappelled down from helicopters. Israel said “more than 10″ activists died. Israeli media spoke of up to 19 dead…
But the most recent Reuters version as of this writing (1:06 am IST June 1), co-authored with Alastair Macdonald, reads:
Israeli marines stormed a Turkish aid ship bound for Gaza on Monday and at least nine pro-Palestinian activists were killed, triggering a diplomatic crisis and an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council.
European nations, as well as the United Nations and Turkey, voiced shock and outrage at the bloody end to the international campaigners’ bid to break Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip.
Boarding from dinghies and rappelling from helicopters, naval commandos stopped six ships, 700 people and 10,000 tons of supplies from reaching the Islamist-run Palestinian enclave — but bloody miscalculation left Israel isolated and condemned…
The “commandos” have become “marines.” The ten “international activists” on board are now “pro-Palestinian activists.” The Gaza-bound aid ships are downsized to “a Turkish aid ship bound for Gaza.” The consequences are muzzled too: a diplomatic crisis and the accusation that a massacre has taken place” is parlayed into “a profound diplomatic crisis.” And poor Israel is standing alone, “isolated and condemned,” on account of a mere “miscalculation.”
Heller isn’t on the list of journalists CAMERA disapproves of either.
CNN‘s coverage of the fate of the Gaza convoy has had no bark and no bite. Its latest offering (as of this writing) begins with the pretense of “he said/she said” balance but slips easily into Israeli talking points:
Israel insisted Monday that its soldiers were defending themselves when they fatally shot nine activists aboard a ship in international waters that was laden with humanitarian goods for Gaza.
Israel’s assertion was denied by one of the groups that sponsored the boat. The competing claims could not be independently verified.
“They deliberately attacked soldiers,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters at a photo op in Ottawa, Canada, with his Canadian counterpart…
Not surprising that CAMERA was pleased by most of the coverage by the mainstream media, noting with satisfaction that:
AP, Reuters, CNN and the New York Times ran balanced stories, noting the participants are “pro-Palestinian activists,” that Israel is already assuring regular convoys of humanitarian supplies into Gaza and that Israel has additionally offered to transfer materials from the flotilla by land to Gaza. Some reported in detail the preparations in the Israeli city of Ashdod to house any possible detainees before returning them to their home countries.
This is not to say that media coverage of the recent events in Gaza has been ideal from CAMERA’s point of view. Hardly! It has fallen short of CAMERA standards of “objectivity” in several respects:
Missing from all coverage thus far is any indication of the radical nature of the organizations sponsoring the flotilla. To characterize them as “pro-Palestinian,” while accurate, hardly conveys adequately who they are and what they promote. The organizations include far-left individuals, such as members of the Communist Party in Sweden and members of the extremist International Solidarity Movement which advocates “armed struggle” against Israel as well as Islamist groups fronting for Hamas and with ties to the global jihad and Al Quaeda.
Furthermore, CAMERA insists, the flotilla’s sponsors are nothing but a bunch of lying “European and American radicals and pro-Hamas Muslims.” Gaza doesn’t even need any aid:
Contrary to allegations of Free Gaza, there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Convoys of trucks continuously bring food, clothing, medicine and other essentials to the population.
Unfortunately, the harsh and narrow standards of hardline “pro-Israel” media watchdogs like CAMERA, while they may not fully succeed in imposing all aspects of their agenda, have a stultifying effect not only on journalists’ choice of terminology but how they view–and depict–the context of the various conflicts in the Middle East.
At this point, the progressive reader may be thinking that the way to avoid “indogtrination” is to entrust one’s news leash to one or more of the larger progressive media sites.
How about Alternet? As of this morning, the only news coverage was a home page link to an early French Press Agency (Agence France-Presse–AFP) reproduced in full on Raw Story, which was based exclusively on a not-particularly-informative Israeli television report.
According to Israel’s private channel 10 television, Israeli marine commandos had opened fire after being attacked with axes and knives by a number of the passengers on board the aid ships, the television said, without giving the source of its information.
The station did not say whether the dead and injured were passengers or members of the Israeli navy.
Israel’s army radio said between 10 and 14 people had been killed in clashes which broke out after the passengers allegedly tried to grab weapons off the naval commandos who tried to storm one of the boats.
It was not clear whether the clashes were taking place on just one of the six boats making up the aid convoy, and the Israeli army had no immediate comment on the incident.
Shortly afterwards, the Israeli military censor ordered a block on all information regarding those injured or killed during the storming of the ship.
Raw Story also provides video footage courtesy of the Israel Defense Forces.
The main story featured on the Huffington Post home page for most of the day has been AP’s report, no byline for Teibel and Goldenberg. To its credit, HP did interject a link to video footage by Al Jazeera reporter Jamal Elshayyal, recorded while he was on board the aid ship Mavi Marmara. This afternoon an AP Analysis by Karin Laub and Matthew Lee, headlined High Seas Raid Deepens Israel’s Isolation, became Huffington Post’s lead story. CAMERA, which has a litany of grievances against Laub, isn’t going to like its first sentence, which Huffington Post included in in its own headline for the piece, making it a bit more juicy:
Israel’s bloody, bungled takeover of a Gaza-bound Turkish aid vessel is complicating U.S.-led Mideast peace efforts, deepening Israel’s international isolation and threatening to destroy the Jewish state’s ties with key regional ally Turkey.
The Daily Beast’s Cheat Sheet of “must reads” is a teaser that provides a link to CNN’s coverage, complemented by IDF video footage. More insightfully, Reza Aslan posted a new entry in his Daily Beast blog this afternoon headlined “An Israel Raid’s Deadly Toll.”
The well-known English proverb “every dog has his day” is rendered Kul kalb bi’gi yomo in Arabic, Kol kelev ba yomo in Hebrew. Yizhar Be’er, writing on the Ir Amim website, points out that “unlike the phrase’s English cousin, which rosily promises that even the lowest among us will have a day of good fortune,” the Semitic form of the proverb is more along the lines of (quoting the author of the Forward‘s On Language column) “Every scoundrel will receive his comeuppance.” In other words, karma will eventually run over dogma.
When it does, don’t expect to find it out much from the coverage from the “liberal” media.
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