If two major newspapers in, say, Russia published major articles openly advocating the unprovoked bombing of a country, say, Israel, the U.S. government and news media would be aflame with denunciations about \u201caggression,\u201d \u201ccriminality,\u201d \u201cmadness,\u201d and \u201cbehavior not fitting the Twenty-first Century.\u201d<\/p>\n
But when the newspapers are American \u2013 the New York Times and the Washington Post \u2013 and the target country is Iran, no one in the U.S. government and media bats an eye. These inflammatory articles \u2013 these incitements to murder and violation of international law \u2013 are considered just normal discussion in the Land of Exceptionalism.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, the New York Times printed an op-ed that urged the bombing of Iran as an alternative to reaching a diplomatic agreement that would sharply curtail Iran\u2019s nuclear program and ensure that it was used only for peaceful purposes. The Post published a similar \u201cwe-must-bomb-Iran\u201d op-ed two weeks ago.<\/p>\n
The Times\u2019 article by John Bolton, a neocon scholar from the American Enterprise Institute, was entitled \u201cTo Stop Iran\u2019s Bomb, Bomb Iran.\u201d It followed the Post\u2019s op-ed by Joshua Muravchik, formerly at AEI and now a fellow at the neocon-dominated School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins. <\/p>\n
Both articles called on the United States to mount a sustained bombing campaign against Iran to destroy its nuclear facilities and to promote \u201cregime change\u201d in Tehran. Ironically, these \u201cscholars\u201d rationalized their calls for unprovoked aggression against Iran under the theory that Iran is an aggressive state, although Iran has not invaded another country for centuries.<\/p>\n
Bolton, who served as President George W. Bush\u2019s ambassador to the United Nations, based his call for war on the possibility that if Iran did develop a nuclear bomb \u2013 which Iran denies seeking and which the U.S. intelligence community agrees Iran is not building \u2013 such a hypothetical event could touch off an arms race in the Middle East.<\/p>\n
Curiously, Bolton acknowledged that Israel already has developed an undeclared nuclear weapons arsenal outside international controls, but he didn\u2019t call for bombing Israel. He wrote blithely that \u201cIronically perhaps, Israel\u2019s nuclear weapons have not triggered an arms race. Other states in the region understood \u2014 even if they couldn\u2019t admit it publicly \u2014 that Israel\u2019s nukes were intended as a deterrent, not as an offensive measure.\u201d<\/p>\n
How Bolton manages to read the minds of Israel\u2019s neighbors who have been at the receiving end of Israeli invasions and other cross-border attacks is not explained. Nor does he address the possibility that Israel\u2019s possession of some 200 nuclear bombs might be at the back of the minds of Iran\u2019s leaders if they do press ahead for a nuclear weapon.<\/p>\n
Nor does Bolton explain his assumption that if Iran were to build one or two bombs that it would use them aggressively, rather than hold them as a deterrent. He simply asserts: \u201cIran is a different story. Extensive progress in uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing reveal its ambitions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pulling Back on Refinement<\/p>\n
But is that correct? In its refinement of uranium, Iran has not progressed toward the level required for a nuclear weapon since its 2013 interim agreement with the global powers known as \u201cthe p-5 plus one\u201d \u2013 for the permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany. Instead, Iran has dialed back the level of refinement to below 5 percent (what\u2019s needed for generating electricity) from its earlier level of 20 percent (needed for medical research) \u2014 compared with the 90-plus percent purity to build a nuclear weapon.<\/p>\n
In other words, rather than challenging the \u201cred line\u201d of uranium refinement that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu drew during a United Nations speech in 2012, the Iranians have gone in the opposite direction \u2013 and they have agreed to continue those constraints if a permanent agreement is reached with the p-5-plus-1.<\/p>\n
However, instead of supporting such an agreement, American neocons \u2013 echoing Israeli hardliners \u2013 are demanding war, followed by U.S. subversion of Iran\u2019s government through the financing of an internal opposition for a coup or a \u201ccolored revolution.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bolton wrote: \u201cAn attack need not destroy all of Iran\u2019s nuclear infrastructure, but by breaking key links in the nuclear-fuel cycle, it could set back its program by three to five years. The United States could do a thorough job of destruction, but Israel alone can do what\u2019s necessary. Such action should be combined with vigorous American support for Iran\u2019s opposition, aimed at regime change in Tehran.\u201d<\/p>\n
But one should remember that neocon schemes \u2013 drawn up at their think tanks and laid out on op-ed pages \u2013 don\u2019t always unfold as planned. Since the 1990s, the neocons have maintained a list of countries considered troublesome for Israel and thus targeted for \u201cregime change,\u201d including Iraq, Syria and Iran. In 2003, the neocons got their chance to invade Iraq, but the easy victory that they predicted didn\u2019t exactly pan out.<\/p>\n
Still, the neocons never revise their hit list. They just keep coming up with more plans that, in total, have thrown much of the Middle East, northern Africa and now Ukraine into bloodshed and chaos. In effect, the neocons have joined Israel in its de facto alliance with Saudi Arabia for a Sunni sectarian conflict against the Shiites and their allies. Much like the Saudis, Israeli officials rant against the so-called \u201cShiite crescent\u201d from Tehran through Baghdad and Damascus to Beirut. <\/p>\n
Since Iran is considered the most powerful Shiite nation and is allied with Syria, which is governed by Alawites, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, both countries have remained in the neocons\u2019 crosshairs. But the neocons don\u2019t actually pull the trigger themselves. Their main role is to provide the emotional and political arguments to get the American people to hand over their tax money and their children to fight these wars.<\/p>\n
The neocons are so confident in their skills at manipulating the U.S. decision-making process that some have gone so far as to suggest Americans should side with al-Qaeda\u2019s Nusra Front in Syria or the even more brutal Islamic State, because those groups love killing Shiites and thus are considered the most effective fighters against Iran\u2019s allies.<\/p>\n
The New York Times\u2019 star neocon columnist Thomas L. Friedman ventured to the edge of madness as he floated the idea of the U.S. arming the head-chopping Islamic State, writing this month: \u201cNow I despise ISIS as much as anyone, but let me just toss out a different question: Should we be arming ISIS?\u201d<\/p>\n
I realize the New York Times and Washington Post are protected by the First Amendment and can theoretically publish whatever they want. But the truth is that the newspapers are extremely restrictive in what they print. Their op-ed pages are not just free-for-alls for all sorts of opinions.<\/p>\n
For instance, neither newspaper would publish a story that urged the United States to launch a bombing campaign to destroy Israel\u2019s actual nuclear arsenal as a step toward creating a nuclear-free Middle East. That would be considered outside responsible thought and reasonable debate.<\/p>\n
However, when it comes to advocating a bombing campaign against Iran\u2019s peaceful nuclear program, the two newspapers are quite happy to publish such advocacy. The Times doesn\u2019t even blush when one of its most celebrated columnists mulls over the idea of sending weapons to the terrorists in ISIS \u2013 all presumably because Israel has identified \u201cthe Shiite crescent\u201d as its current chief enemy and the Islamic State is on the other side.<\/p>\n
But beyond the hypocrisy and, arguably, the criminality of these propaganda pieces, there is also the neocon record of miscalculation. Remember how the invasion of Iraq was supposed to end with Iraqis tossing rose petals at the American soldiers instead of planting \u201cimprovised explosive devices\u201d \u2013 and how the new Iraq was to become a model pluralistic democracy?<\/p>\n
Well, why does one assume that the same geniuses who were so wrong about Iraq will end up being right about Iran? What if the bombing and the subversion don\u2019t lead to nirvana in Iran? Isn\u2019t it just as likely, if not more so, that Iran would react to this aggression by deciding that it needed nuclear bombs to deter further aggression and to protect its sovereignty and its people?<\/p>\n
In other words, might the scheming by Bolton and Muravchik \u2014 as published by the New York Times and the Washington Post \u2014 produce exactly the result that they say they want to prevent? But don\u2019t worry. If the neocons\u2019 new schemes don\u2019t pan out, they\u2019ll just come up with more.<\/p>\n
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America\u2019s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). You also can order Robert Parry\u2019s trilogy on the Bush Family. The trilogy includes America\u2019s Stolen Narrative.<\/em> <\/p>\n Source: Consortium News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The New York Times continues its slide into becoming little more than a neocon propaganda sheet as it followed the Washington Post in publishing an op-ed advocating the unprovoked bombing of Iran, reports Robert Parry<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,10],"tags":[1180,174,2471,1388,11361,198,1638],"class_list":["post-18292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-united-states","tag-bombing","tag-iran","tag-iraq","tag-middle-east","tag-robert-parry","tag-syria","tag-us"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18292"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18292\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18293,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18292\/revisions\/18293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}