by Jim Lobe
I was pretty surprised Monday when, in the front-page New York Times article about the implementation agreement reached Sunday between the P5+1 and Iran in Geneva, I read the following in the fourth paragraph:
“It [the agreement] comes as Tehran has sought to expand its influence in the [...]]]>
by Jim Lobe
I was pretty surprised Monday when, in the front-page New York Times article about the implementation agreement reached Sunday between the P5+1 and Iran in Geneva, I read the following in the fourth paragraph:
“It [the agreement] comes as Tehran has sought to expand its influence in the Middle East by providing weapons and sometimes members of its own paramilitary Quds Force, in what Western nations view as destabilizing activities in countries including Syria Bahrain and Yemen, according to interviews with intelligence, military, diplomatic and government officials.”
“Wait a minute,” I said to myself, “I know something about Iran’s activities in Syria, but Yemen and especially Bahrain, to which I’ve devoted substantial attention, I hadn’t heard so much about.
On the latter, the story picked up toward the end with the following assertions:
In Bahrain, where Iran has ties to several Shiite groups, including some that have carried out small-scale attacks on the police, security officials last week seized a ship headed for the country with 50 Iranian-made hand grenades and nearly 300 commercial detonators marked “made in Syria.”
The two Bahrainis captured told interrogators that they had been trained in Iran and were directed by Bahraini opposition figures based there.
The country’s public security chief, Tareq al-Hassan, said that information provided by the suspects had also led to the seizure of plastic explosives, detonators, bombs, automatic rifles and ammunition in a warehouse.
Now, the only place I’ve seen this story seriously promoted is on the website of the Council on Foreign Relations and, to be more precise, Elliott Abrams’ “Pressure Points” blog. In a Jan. 3 post entitled “Iran Continues Subversion Despite the Nuclear Negotiations,” Abrams suggested that the Obama administration had not publicized this incident so as not to jeopardize the nuclear negotiations in Geneva. He dutifully cited the “Bahraini authorities” about the discovery of various kinds of weapons — some Iranian-made, others Syrian-made — “in a warehouse and onboard a boat intercepted as it was heading to the country.”
“Is this just propaganda from the Government of Bahrain?” Abrams asked rhetorically. “No; I’ve checked with US authorities and these reports are accurate.”
Now, if you do a Google search, you’ll find that even the Bahraini authorities have not accused Iran of direct involvement in this case. Nor have other Gulf states, including the ruling al-Khalifa family’s chief protector, Saudi Arabia, made such an accusation. And what’s really remarkable is that Abrams in the past has rightly and repeatedly criticized Bahrain’s government for using trumped-up charges to arrest (in some cases torture), try, and imprison leaders of the majority Shia community there for political reasons. So why is Abrams so certain that a) the Bahraini authorities are telling the truth about this incident and not just trying to bolster their constant charges of Iranian subversion; and b) the import of weapons into Bahrain is being organized by Iran, as opposed to, for example, Shia militias in Iraq whose ties to the Bahraini Shia community have historically been much closer? Because he “checked with US authorities?” That seems a tad vague under the circumstances.
But now this same story has been picked up by the Times whose reporters, Michael Gordon and Eric Schmitt, assert without any qualification or attribution that Bahraini “security officials” did indeed seize a ship” laden with various kinds of arms and that two of the captured Bahrainis “told interrogators that they had been trained in Iran and were directed by Bahraini opposition figures based there.”
How do the two reporters know that these accounts are true? In this case, they don’t even cite the “US authorities” that Abrams allegedly check with. (This is the same Michael Gordon who sometimes co-authored pieces with Judith Miller in the run-up to the Iraq War, including the notorious Sep 8, 2002 article, “The U.S. Says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts,” in which they claimed that “Iraq has stepped up its quest for nuclear weapons and has embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb,” among them, the infamous “specially designed aluminum tubes.”) They report it as fact.
In any event, I decided I would ask our contributor, Emile Nakhleh, a former Senior Intelligence Service Officer and serious expert on Bahrain (and author of Bahrain: Political Development in a Modernizing Society, a classic study of the country first published in 1976 and re-printed in 2011) what he made of the Times‘ account and its assertions about Iran’s actions in the countries identified by Gordon and Schmitt as Iranian targets. This was his emailed reply:
I was a bit surprised to see the New York Times lump together Syria, Yemen, and Bahrain so cavalierly as objects of Iranian military adventurism. The veteran reporters Michael Gordon and Eric Schmitt should have known that Iran’s relations with these three countries are very different and driven by the particular conditions in each country.
On Yemen, former Yemeni dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh for years had accused Iran of stoking and supporting the Huthi rebellion in the north in order to get American and Saudi support in his fight against the Huthis. The Saudis went in, but the Americans had no convincing evidence of Iran’s unproven involvement with the Huthis.
Washington’s involvement in Yemen in recent years, even before Saleh was removed from power, was driven by al-Qa’ida’s presence in some parts of the country and not by claims about Iran’s unproven seeming support of the Huthis.
On Syria, Iran’s military support of Assad and physical presence in Syria are well known. The Iranians want Assad to stay in power because of the strategic triangular relationship that has existed between Iran, the Assad regime, and Hizballah for decades. Syria has been Iran’s linchpin in the Arab world.
The veracity of the NYT report on Bahrain is questionable. The two reporters should know better and should have been more nuanced. Perhaps their report was a nod to some hardliners in Washington who oppose any deal with Iran on the nuclear program. I am afraid the Gordon/Schmitt report might give the impression the NYT is falling in the same neocon-Israeli trap about Iran.
One should not discount the possibility that some Bahraini Shia radicals, who have given up on the possibility of dialogue with the regime, as I said in my recent op-ed on Bahrain, have had contacts with some elements of the Revolutionary Guard or the Quds Force in Iran for the purpose of committing violent acts in Bahrain. Iran’s main Shia connection in Bahrain, however, has been the al-Wefaq party.
This group supported the King’s reform program back in 2001-02, and many of its leaders, some of whom lived in Iran, returned from exile and expressed readiness to work with the regime to bring about genuine reform in Bahrain. They remain committed to meaningful dialogue with the regime and to a peaceful solution of the political crisis in the country.
There is no evidence to indicate that either Iran or al-Wefaq have made a shift away from dialogue with the regime to violent plotting against the ruling family.
It is disingenuous for the Times to lump the three countries together as if Iran’s support for Assad should be synonymous with military plotting against Al Khalifa. In fact, the Bahraini foreign minister several months ago criticized President Obama for clumping together Bahrain, Syria, and Iraq as countries where sectarianism is becoming vicious and bloody.
The weapons were seized on a boat, not a “ship” as the Times has claimed. They could have come from a location on the Iranian coast or from any other place in the northern Persian Gulf or the Shatt al-Arab estuary. We should be very careful lest we are duped by information or intelligence, which the Bahraini security services might have obtained through “interrogations” of the people arrested on the boat. It’s disappointing the Times did not take a more strategic look at Iranian-Bahraini relations and published, as fact, a claim about Iranian weapons heading toward Bahrain.
Photo: Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Khalid bin Ahmad Al Khalifa meets with his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, on Sept. 30, 2013 in New York.
]]>Just look at some of the Americans who took [...]]]>
Just look at some of the Americans who took the trip this year: Noah Pollak, Jennifer Rubin (whose trip was paid for by Pollak’s organization), Judith Miller, Scooter Libby, Danielle Pletka, Reuel Marc Gerecht, and so on and so on.
Duss tells it better than I could. Marvel at the madness:
To be sure, drumbeating on Iran still dominated the official conference agenda. But, as if to demonstrate that everyone has limited bandwidth for worry, almost every discussion eventually circled back to Egypt. There was growing anxiety that while Israel continued to confront the threat from the East—the growth of a “poisonous crescent” (as one member of the Israeli government put it to me) consisting of Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Lebanon—the peace on its western border could no longer simply be taken for granted. Egypt was raining on everything.
The drummers were already going to have trouble keeping the beat in the wake of outgoing Mossad chief Meir Dagan’s and Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon’s recent statements that efforts at sabotage and international sanctions had likely delayed an Iranian nuke for several years. Egypt only made things more complicated. Still, it was odd to hear neoconservative doyenne Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute dismiss as “propaganda” former Mossad head Efraim Halevi’s assertion that “the US and Israel are winning the war against Iran.” “If Iran is losing, I’d like to be that kind of loser,” Pletka said, reminding the audience that, “Khomeini referred to Israel as a one-bomb country.”
“What I’m saying is not propaganda,” Halevi shot back. “The danger is believing the propaganda of others.”
Now that you’ve read the excerpt, go back and read the whole thing. Really. Think about when an Israeli general says, “In the Arab world, there is no room for democracy.” Ask yourself is these are the people we should be listening to about bombing Iran.
]]>Others have [...]]]>
Others have also described Ross as more skeptical [than Mitchell] about the chances of peace, based on his decades-long experience with trying to bring together the parties.
I don’t want to get all new-agey, but if you think something is difficult or impossible to do, the chances of being able to do it are greatly diminished from the get-go.
So why does this Ross guy keep getting jobs that he doesn’t think are possible? I picked up Ross’ book off of my shelf here in D.C., and it amazed me how many times he says you cannot make any kind of deal with the Iranians. Then, Obama put him in charge of making a deal with the Iranians. Ross, we now learn, doubts that a peace deal can be reached in Israel-Palestine, and Obama gives him a job making peace in Israel-Palestine.
On the Middle Eastern conflict, Ross’s credentials for the job are impeccable. After all, he’s been involved in decades — decades! — of failed peace processes. Ross has worked at the Washington Institute (WINEP), an AIPAC-formed think tank, and also chaired the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI), an Israeli organization dedicated to “ensur(ing) the thriving of the Jewish People and the Jewish civilization.” (The organization seems to oppose intermarriage with racist-sounding statements like “cultural collectivity cannot survive in the long term without primary biological foundations of family and children.”)
Ross was thought responsible for crafting Obama’s presidential campaign AIPAC speech — yes, the one with the line about an “undivided” Jerusalem that would spike a peace deal if implemented. Ross later reiterated the notion of an undivided Jerusalem as a “fact” in an interview with the Jerusalem Post.
Ross was recently in the news following a secret but not-so-secret visit to the Middle East, which was fleshed out on Politico by Laura Rozen. Rozen was the reporter who carried a rather shocking anonymous allegation about Ross:
“[Ross] seems to be far more sensitive to [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s coalition politics than to U.S. interests,” one U.S. official told POLITICO Saturday. “And he doesn’t seem to understand that this has become bigger than Jerusalem but is rather about the credibility of this administration.”
In an update, Rozen carried NSC CoS Denis McDonough’s defense of Ross:
“The assertion is as false as it is offensive,” McDonough said Sunday by e-mail. ”Whoever said it has no idea what they are talking about. Dennis Ross’s many decades of service speak volumes about his commitment to this country and to our vital interests, and he is a critical part of the president’s team.”
But the new Forward article, as MJ Rosenberg points out, backs up the notion that Ross was extremely concerned with “advocat[ing]” for Israel. The source is none other than Israel-advocate extraordinaire Abe Foxman (who doesn’t negotiate on behalf of the U.S. government):
“Dennis is the closest thing you’ll find to a melitz yosher, as far as Israel is concerned,” said the Anti-Defamation League’s national director, Abraham Foxman, who used the ancient Hebrew term for ‘advocate.’”
Do you get the feeling that Ross advocated for Iran? Or, as the Forward article put it (with my strikethrough), has “strong ties to Israel” Iran? Guttman writes that Ross is considered to have a “reputation of being pro-Israeli.” As for Iran? Not quite: Ross’s Iran experience seems to boil down to heading United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), a group that pushes for harsher, broad-based sanctions against Iran (despite a stated goal to not hurt ordinary Iranians) and that has criticized Obama’s policy of engagement. Ross left the gig, as with JPPI, when he took the job with the administration.
The group also launched an error-filled fear-mongering video (while Ross was still there; he appears in the video) and a campaign to get New York hotels to refuse to host Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he comes to town each year for the U.N. General Assembly, which hardly lays the groundwork for good diplomacy.
Oh, and about the Iran engagement designed by Ross: The administration’s approach has been questioned by several leading Iran experts. “It is unlikely that the resources and dedication needed for success was given to a policy that the administration expected to fail,” National Iranian American Council (NIAC) president Trita Parsi observed. In December, Ross publicly defended the administration against charges that engagement was less than sincere from the U.S. side. But it is Ross himself who has apparently long held a pessimistic outlook on engagement.
Ross’s 2007 book, “Statecraft: And How to Restore America’s Standing in the World“, is fascinating in light of where Ross has come from, and where he’s taken Iran policy. I was struck at a five-page section of the first chapter called “Neoconservatism vs. Neoliberalism,” in which Ross writes, “[Neoconservatism's] current standard-bearers — such as Richard Perle, David Frum, William Kristol, and Robert Kagan — are serious thinkers with a clear worldview,” (with my links).
Later, in several long sections about the run-up to George W. Bush’s Iraq war, Ross notes that Paul Wolfowitz was highly focused on Iraq before and after 9/11. He also mentions “political difficulties” in the push for war: “Once [Bush] realized there might be a domestic problem in acting against Iraq, his administration focused a great deal of energy and effort on mobilizing domestic support for military action.”
But Ross never acknowledges that some of his neoconservative “serious thinkers” — such as Kristol and his Weekly Standard magazine — were involved in the concerted campaign to mislead Americans in an effort to push the war… just as the same figures are pushing for an attack on Iran. Frum, who does seem capable of serious thinking, was the author of the “axis of evil” phrasing of Bush’s 2002 State of the Union address. The moniker included both Iraq and Iran, despite the fact that the latter was, until the speech, considered a potential ally in the fight against Al Qaeda. (Marsha Cohen chronicled an Israeli effort to squash the alliance, culminating in Frum’s contribution to the Bush speech.)
Ross never mentions that neocon Douglas Feith, a political appointee in the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans (OSP), was responsible for cherry-picking intelligence about Iraq within the administration, and whose office was feeding cooked information to the public via Scooter Libby in Vice President Dick Cheney‘s office. Through Libby, the distorted information made its way into the hands of the Standard and sympathetic journalists like ideologue Judith Miller at the New York Times. In August of 2003, Jim Lobe wrote (with my links):
[K]ey personnel who worked in both NESA [the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia bureau] and OSP were part of a broader network of neo-conservative ideologues and activists who worked with other Bush political appointees scattered around the national-security bureaucracy to move the country to war, according to retired Lt Col Karen Kwiatkowski, who was assigned to NESA from May 2002 through February 2003. …
Other appointees who worked with… both offices included Michael Rubin, a Middle East specialist previously with the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI); David Schenker, previously with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP); Michael Makovsky; an expert on neo-con icon Winston Churchill and the younger brother of David Makovsky, a senior WINEP fellow and former executive editor of pro-Likud ‘Jerusalem Post’; and Chris Lehman, the brother of the John Lehman, a prominent neo-conservative who served as secretary of the navy under Ronald Reagan, according to Kwiatkowski.
Ross has personal experience with many OSP veterans, working with them at WINEP and signing hawkish reports on Iran authored by them.
During the 2008 presidential campaign, Ross was a member of a task force that delivered a hawkish report apparently co-authored by two veterans of OSP, Rubin and Michael Makovsky. (Ross reportedly recused himself as the presidential campaign came into full swing.) Lobe, noting Ross’s curious involvement, called the report a “roadmap to war with Iran,” and added, a year later, that the group that put out the report was accelerating the plan, calling for a military build-up and a naval blockade against Iran.
After taking his position within the Obama administration, Ross released a book, co-authored with David Makovsky, that was skeptical of the notion that engagement could work. Nathan Guttman, in a review of the book for the Forward, wrote:
The success of diplomatic engagement, according to Ross, is not guaranteed and could be unlikely. Still, he and Makovsky believe that negotiations will serve a purpose even if results are not satisfying. “By not trying, the U.S. and its refusal to talk become the issue,” said Makovsky in a June 1 interview with the Forward. “What we are saying is that if the U.S. chooses engagement, even if it fails, every other option will be more legitimate.”
The attitude of Ross and Makovsky seems closer to that of the Israeli government then to that of the Obama administration.
OSP, Feith, the Makovsky brothers, and Rubin are not listed in the index of “Statecraft,” nor have they appeared in the many sections that I’ve read in full.
In his book, Ross does have many revealing passages about concepts that have been worked into the Obama administration’s Iran policy. One such ploy, which has not been acknowledged or revealed publicly, is using Israel as the crazy ‘bad cop’ — a potentially dangerous game. Ross also writes that international pressure (through sanctions) must be made in order to cause Iran “pain.” Only then, thinks Ross, can concessions such as “economic, technological and security benefits” from the U.S. be offered:
Orchestrating this combination of sticks and carrots requires at this point some obviously adverse consequences for the Iranians first.
This view does not comport with the Obama plan for a simultaneous dual-track policy toward Iran — which holds that engagement and pressure should occur simultaneously — and serves to bolster critics who say that engagement has not been serious because meaningful concessions have not been offered. But it does hint at another tactic that Ross references at least twice in the book: the difference between “style” and “substance.” With regard to Iran, he presents this dichotomy in relation to public professions about the “military option” — a euphemism for launching a war. But publicly suppressing rhetoric is only used as a way to build international support for pressure — not also, as one might expect, a way to assuage the security fears of Iran.
But those aren’t the only ideas from the 2007 book that seem to have made their way into U.S. policy toward Iran. In “Statecraft,” Ross endorses the use of “more overt and inherently deniable alternatives to the use of force” for slowing Iran’s nuclear progress. In particular, he mentions the “fragility of centrifuges,” which is exactly what is being targeted by the Stuxnet virus, a powerful computer worm thought to be created by a state, likely Israel, and perhaps with help from the U.S., according to the latest revelations.
Some critics of this website complain that the level of attention given to neoconservatives is too great, but they should consider this: Look at Dennis Ross. He works extensively with this clique, and no doubt has the occasional drink or meeting with them. And, most importantly, he writes approvingly about neoconservatives, noting that their viewpoint affects political considerations of “any political leader.” Because of these neocon “considerations,” he writes, this is how we should view the Islamic Republic: “With Iran, there is a profound mistrust of the mullahs, and of their perceived deceit, their support for terror, and their enduring hostility to America and its friends in the Middle East. … No one will be keen to be portrayed as soft on the Iranian mullahs.”
This from the man that formulated a policy that has offered “adverse consequences” but so far no “carrots.” Ross’s predictions are a self-fulfilling prophecy — and since he gets the big appointments, he gets to fulfill them. Taking reviews of his book with Makovsky, the Bipartisan Policy Committee report, and “Statecraft” as a whole, I’m not at all surprised that little progress has been made with Iran.
But, at least, that was his first try. He’s a three-time-loser on Israeli-Palestinian peace-making. With Iran, I had to put the pieces together, whereas with the Israeli-Palestinian issue, his record is right there for all to see. Putting Ross in charge of peace-making between the two seems to perfectly fit Einstein’s definition of insanity.
]]>You should read the whole thing, but here’s an excerpt:
]]>With the sights of Washington’s hawks now focused squarely on Iran, many critics feel they’ve seen the movie before as the Islamic Republic’s alleged nefarious activities in Iraq are relentlessly trotted out. And many of them even have their roots in the same journalist, Michael Gordon, who played a central role in the Times’ catastrophic abdication of its responsibility to the public in 2002 and 2003. [...]
Gordon, rather than exercising caution with the information he was receiving, seemed to go beyond what he reported and what he was handed. Investigative journalist Gareth Porter documented for the American Prospect how it was not Gordon’s sources, but Gordon himself who “articulated the narrative of an Iranian-inspired attack on Americans” in a briefing reported for a mid-2007 New York Times story.
And you might also be forgiven for considering Gordon a reporter with a less than savory record on matters that might drive the nation to war. He was the reporting and writing partner of none other than Judith Miller, the former New York Times reporter whose cozy relationships with Iraqi defectors and administration officials were instrumental in rousing public opinion against Iraq. Miller has since been dispatched by the Times and has staked out a more overtly ideological position writing for outlets like Fox News, where her distortions and use of almost exclusively neoconservative-aligned sources don’t prompt questions.
In 2002, however, Miller and Gordon were working together on stories about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction for theTimes. On Sunday, September 8, they had a front-page story on Iraq’s attempts to acquire aluminum tubes. Miller and Gordon wrote that the tubes were intended for centrifuges aimed at producing highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon. [...]
That Judith Miller was dismissed at all is something of an aberration. Gordon’s treatment is more par for the course. [Glenn] Greenwald notes that even after his error-laced Iraq reporting, [Jeffrey] Goldberg was lured away from the New Yorker, presumably with “bags full of cash,” by the Atlantic. He and Michael Gordon have now moved on to reporting about Iran — Goldberg through the eyes of the hawkish Israelis, and Gordon from Iraq, through single-source raw intel and unnamed military and administration officials.
This is not looking forward nor looking back, but not looking at all — a collective aversion of the eyes — as those same journalists responsible for enabling an aggressive war on questionable premises do so once again from their perch atop the journalistic establishment.
The run-up to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent visit to Lebanon called forth a barrage of comment from neoconservative circles. Unlike the savvy campaign for war in Iraq, [...]]]>
The run-up to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent visit to Lebanon called forth a barrage of comment from neoconservative circles. Unlike the savvy campaign for war in Iraq, however, they now tend to make straightforward claims that are self-evidently at odds with reality.
In other words, they’re not even telling very good lies any more.
A case in point was Iraq War propagandist Judith Miller’s Fox News article, whose central complaint seems to be that Ahmadinejad’s trip came at the behest of a single party, the Shia party/militia Hezbollah, rather than in response to an official invitation from the Lebanese government; “Who Invited You?” her headline indignantly blared.
Two problems undermined this approach. The first was that then-Foreign Minister Fawzi Salloukh quite publicly relayed just such an invitation to Ahmadinejad from his Lebanese counterpart, Michel Sleiman, in July 2008. The other was that Sleiman travelled to the Islamic Republic in November of that same year, making a reciprocal visit by Ahmadinejad what should have been a foregone conclusion.
That likelihood was placed in considerable doubt by the U.S. government’s having presumed the right to draw up Lebanon’s diplomatic schedule. While Miller rightly reported that Washington viewed the visit as “provocative,” she neglected to mention that heavy American pressure was applied on Beirut to cancel the visit. The U.S. demand was made in the name of Lebanese sovereignty (yes, really), which is rather ironic coming from a country that has supplied the tools for Israel’s occupation and violation of Lebanese territory, airspace and maritime boundaries for decades.
Undaunted by the untruths at the core of her position, Miller proceeds to expand on it. She asserts that other than the Iran’s close allies, Hezbollah, “Lebanon’s other political leaders … undoubtedly don’t share the love” for Ahmadinejad. Another falsehood: by any genuinely democratic standard, Lebanon’s most important political leaders do share that love. The parties that represent Lebanon’s largest sectarian community – its Shia population — are Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s Hezbollah and Speaker Nabih Berri’s AMAL, both of which enthusiastically welcomed Ahmadinejad. In addition, the Christian politician with the strongest bloc in Parliament, former Army Commander Michel Aoun, also supported the visit. Together, these parties and their allies received well over 50 percent of the vote in the last parliamentary elections.
Next we are treated to a brazen description of Ahmadinejad as “the man whose country is indirectly responsible for having killed [current Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s] father, former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.” Until the recent thaw between the top suspect — Syria — and the Hariri family’s benefactors in the Saudi royal family, no serious analyst even mentioned Hezbollah as a possible participant in the 2005 assassination. Now, in the absence of charges or hard public evidence, we are to presume Hezbollah’s guilt – and, by association, Iran’s – as established fact.
We are then told that the Hariri killing “sparked massive protests throughout Lebanon. This so-called ‘Cedar Revolution’ succeeded in forcing Syria, Iran’s neighbor and main Sunni Muslim ally, to withdraw the 14,000 ‘peace-keeping’ forces it had been keeping in Lebanon since the end of that country’s bloody civil war in 1990.” A few more problems. There were huge demonstrations (both for and against Syria), but all of the protests of any notable size took place in Beirut. Also, the term “Cedar Revolution” was coined by someone at the U.S. State Department. Would someone please tell American journalists to stop using it? In addition, unless someone has radically altered the map of the region (again), Syria and Iran do not share a border — they are neighbors in the same way that Iran and Lebanon are. And one more thing: Syria sent about 25,000 troops into Lebanon in 1976 — not 1990 – at the request of the latter’s president and with an Arab League mandate to foster stability amid the raging civil war.
Next, Hariri the younger is dismissed as “turning out to be anything but his father’s son.” In support, Miller trots out an Israeli journalist, Smadar Perry, to belittle Saad for having met with “Nasrallah (his father’s executioner)” and the “mastermind,” Syrian President Bashar Assad. Neither the American nor the Israeli, apparently, knows anything about the late Rafik Hariri, who made a career out of seeking and reaching accommodations with and among all the powerbrokers – both foreign and domestic, including, for years, the Syrians – in Lebanon’s cramped and chaotic political arena.
At this point we are apprised of the role of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), which is supposed to look into the assassination. It is described, however, as a “UN panel,” which it is not: instead, the STL is a hybrid court whose judges will include Lebanese jurists and whose legality under the UN Charter is highly debatable owing to several factors — not least its having been created without the acquiescence of Lebanon’s Parliament.
Then another unabashedly pro-Israeli source — a report from the AIPAC-formed Washington Institute for Near East Policy — is put forth to assert that Ahmadinejad’s trip is intended to apply pressure on Saad Hariri “and his Lebanese and Western allies” to cancel Lebanon’s support for the court, “which Lebanon has been financing.” Actually, Lebanon is responsible for just 49% of the bill – and not a few Lebanese question the value of the investment because the court is widely viewed as a political tool of the pro-Western camp.
Next we are treated to a quote attributed to Nasrallah by yet another rabidly pro-Israeli actor, MEMRI, which tries to smear the cleric by tying him to a favorite American bogeyman, the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Not very artful, and even less relevant given that the date of its alleged provenance was more than two decades ago.
Then Miller hauls out a fellow neoconservative journalist, Lee Smith, who is used to a) make the point that Hezbollah’s real targets are Israeli and Arab public opinion; b) dredge up the familiar lie that Ahmadinejad has threatened to ‘wipe Israel off the map’; and c) reduce Nasrallah (leader of Hezbollah since 1992) to a “creation” of Ahmadinejad.
Finally, near the end of this avalanche of error, another point from Lee Smith is then applied which almost (however inadvertently) recovers the whole article: “By continuing to fight to liberate Jerusalem,” he is quoted as telling us, Tehran has “picked up the banner of Arab nationalism [sic] that the Sunni Arab regimes had tossed by the wayside. Here was another reason for the Arab masses to despise their cruel and now obviously cowardly rulers – and admire a Shia and Persian power they might otherwise fear and detest.” Some of those Arab regimes never took up the banner of Arab nationalism in the first place, and Iran’s emphasis is on Islamic solidarity, but the point is the same – by all but the most warped definitions of international law, at least half of Jerusalem is an occupied city, a fact which plenty of Arabs and other Muslims regard as unacceptable.
Here, then, is the real reason why America and Israel fret over the likes of Ahmadinejad: their policy has always been to divide and control (Arab vs. Persian, Sunni vs. Shia, oil producer vs. consumer, monarchist vs. republican, etc.) and anyone who even speaks about uniting these elements – regardless of how unsuccessful he is likely to be – threatens to expose the glaring weakness at the heart of their position.
Marc J. Sirois is an independent analyst based in Beirut, where he was managing editor of The Daily Star newspaper from 2000-2003 and 2006-2009.
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