Apr 25 2013

Guardian removes claim about Iran’s nuclear “weapons” program from ‘the pages of time’

If you go to the Guardian’s business page you’ll see a report by Rupert Neate about a British company which allegedly earned millions of pounds selling goods to Iran, “including to a state-owned firm that supplies the regime’s nuclear programme”

The title of the report, as it now appears, is “Glencore traded with Iranian supplier to nuclear programme”.

However, the if you go back in time a few days (to a cached page), you can see the title they originally used: “Glencore traded with Iranian supplier to nuclear weapons’s programme”.

Cached page, as it originally appeared

At some point after the story was published on April 21 the word “weapons” was deleted from title.

Whilst we’ll likely never know for sure what prompted the Guardian “correction” to the evidently counter-revolutionary suggestion that Iran is working on a nuclear weapons program, the paper’s history in denying the obvious about the regime’s nuclear ambitions provides some context.

For instance, there was Seumas Milne’s attempt, in a 2011 Comment is Free post, to obfuscate on the issue, which included an urgent plea for readers to prevent a “covert US-Israeli campaign against Tehran” from exploding into a global war. He further argued that ”a US-Israeli stealth war against Iran” would be “shocking” as “the case against Iran is so spectacularly flimsy.” He concluded thusly:

“There is in fact no reliable evidence that Iran is engaged in a nuclear weapons programme…. the evidence suggests Iran suspended any weapons programme in 2003 and has not reactivated it.”

In fact nothing could be further than the truth. A Nov. 2011 IAEA Report included the following conclusions:

Iran has been conducting research and experiments geared to developing a nuclear weapons capability

Iran had carried out tests relevant to the development of a nuclear device.

Iran has carried out a structured program to develop an explosive nuclear device

Even a Guardian story (which included a pdf of the full IAEA report) characterized the IAEA findings as establishing that that “Iran appears to be on a structured path to building a nuclear weapon.” Further, as recently as early April 2013, IAEA head Yukiya Amano said in an interview that his agency “has information indicating that Iran was engaged in activities relevant to the development of nuclear explosive devices in the past and now.”

But the award for great achievements in ideologically driven propaganda goes to their former veteran journalist Brian Whitaker, who actually served as the Guardian’s Middle East editor for seven years. In a ‘CiF’ piece in Nov. 2011 titled “Why do the US media believe the worse about Iran?”, Whitaker not only ignored IAEA reports but suggested that the clandestine Iranian program may not even be a military program at all, but merely a ‘peaceful civilian project’ to manufacture nanodiamonds.

Nanodiamonds – a substance used in polishing compositions, coatings, lubricants and polymers.

Though the question of whether or not the Islamist regime in Iran will be able to successfully carry out their mission to develop nuclear weapons depends on the resolve of Western political and opinion leaders to stand up to the threat, the Mullahs in Tehran can always count on the Guardian Left to run interference on their clear aspirations to regional hegemony.

The moral ‘trooferism’ of Richard Falk and the Guardian’s Seumas Milne (cifwatch.com)

Nov 10 2012

Guardian’s Julian Borger warns of “minority elements” provoking US-Iran war

Julian Borger, the diplomatic editor of the Guardian, published a story on Nov. 9 titled “Iran’s strike on US drone demonstrates the fragility of uneasy peace“.

Borger’s piece provided analysis on an incident earlier in the week in which two Iranian jet fighters fired at a US Predator drone which was carrying out a classified surveillance mission 16 miles off the Iranian shore.

While other analysts echoed Borger’s broader theme that the episode highlighted the risks that encounters between American and Iranian forces could quickly escalate into a military confrontation, you get a glimpse into Borger’s unique angle by reading the strap line:

Western officials warn that minority elements on both sides have vested interest in triggering ‘spoiler’ incident that leads to war

So, who are the “minority elements” hoping for an incident which triggers a war?

Borger writes the following:

“Western officials are concerned that minority elements on both sides of the confrontation in the region have a vested interest in triggering such a clash. Some Israeli leaders would like to see Washington drawn in so that superior US forces could strike a crippling blow to Iranian nuclear facilities, while a “war party” in Tehran sees a conflict as a means of rallying support for the regime and cracking down yet further on dissent, officials say.” [emphasis added]

While we’ll never know which Western officials he’s referring to, perhaps he’d like to ask them how Israel could have anything to do with decisions by the United States military to deploy surveillance drones over the Persian Gulf, or anywhere else in the world.

Even if you accept the premise that Israel has a “vested interest” in a US war with Iran, Borger’s suggestion relating to this latest incident seems to rest on nothing more than the classic non-sequitur: Who benefits?

America’s political leaders and US security agencies are the only parties dictating US security policy, so if there are “elements” hoping to provoke a confrontation with the regime in Tehran Mr. Borger may wish to look to Washington, D.C., and not Jerusalem, for answers.

Guardian’s Julian Borger avoids reporting on most of Ahmadinejad’s UN speech (cifwatch.com)
Guardian’s Julian Borger responds to CiF Watch, acknowledges error about genocide convention (cifwatch.com)
Fact-checking Julian Borger on Ahmadinejad’s incitement to genocide (cifwatch.com)
The Guardian: out-farcing FARS (cifwatch.com)
In every generation: Guardian advances historically familiar refrain that Israel is ‘beating war drums’ (cifwatch.com)

Dec 10 2011

Guardian and rest of British media get it wrong about Iranian threat.

This is cross posted by Tom Wilson, and originally published at The Jerusalem Post.

When Iranians stormed the British embassy in Tehran, it was reported that they had burned the British flag, yet the truth is that they actually burned the Israeli and American flags along with the British one. This should have told observers something.

It should have alerted them to the ideology at work there, an ideology that singles out Western democracies less for what they do and more because of what they are and what they represent in the world. And, just as the British media has so often gotten it wrong on Israel’s attempts to defend its civilians, so too this error of judgment seems to extend to Britain’s own international efforts.

Seeing members of a mob brandishing a portrait of England’s Queen Elizabeth II as they stormed her embassy in Tehran, with the Iranian police initially appearing pretty impassive, you would have thought it would be clear to the British media which side they ought to be on. After all, with the Iranian parliament having voted to downgrade diplomatic relations to the sound of some of its members chanting “death to Britain,” many suspected that the ‘student’ riot was anything but spontaneous and, indeed, far from independent of the Iranian authorities’ influence.

Yet for some, this was not an occasion to rally to Britain’s defense, but rather to chastise its government for its policy on Iran and its nuclear program. A flurry of opinion pieces appeared, mostly in the liberal press, arguing that Britain had brought this on itself through its harsh dealings with Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s regime. This reaction, however, only reveals the extent to which some commentators in the West refuse to recognize that people in other cultures also have agency in their actions, that they are not simply reactive to our alleged geopolitical mismanagements.

In one opinion piece for The Guardian, former British Minister of State Mark Malloch-Brown argued that Britain had acted as a “ringleader of efforts to squeeze Iran” and, as such, has made itself an American proxy in the eyes of the Iranians, a cardinal sin in the view of Britain’s liberal circles.

The Independent’s Middle East editor Robert Fisk went further still, arguing the case that the recent sanctions are just a small part of a long history of reasons “that makes Iranians hate the UK.” Fisk has dismissed former Bristh prime minister Tony Blair and British governments for “raving” about “the necessity of standing up to Iranian aggression” and what he calls “the supposedly terrorist nature of the Iranian government”. These commentators seem to possess short memories, choosing to ignore the Iranian kidnapping of three British naval personnel in 2007.

Perhaps none of this should surprise us since the IAEA report was published last month, which provided the clearest evidence yet that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons, sections of the British media rushed to Iran’s defense, either calling into doubt Iran’s activities or warning that all intervention, military or otherwise, would be futile and damaging.

Predictably these writers tended to chastise Israel and the US for allegedly risking an escalation in the situation and a leading article by The Independent went so far as to allege that “America’s Jewish voters” were driving US policy on Iran. More startling still was British journalist Simon Jenkins’ Guardian piece in which he coldly stated that “No one seriously supposes that Iran, under whatever ruler, would seek to wipe out Israel – and anyway that is Israel’s business”.

All of this appears to indicate a stark failing in moral judgment on the part of sections of Britain’s media. The automatic assumption seems to be one of an irredeemable West committing unceasing aggression against the ever innocent developing world. Ultimately, it has been the very same people who fail to recognize the values that the Jewish State stands for who have similarly proved unable to maintain any kind of moral clarity when it comes representing the dealings of liberal and democratic Britain with the belligerent and terror sponsoring Islamic republic.

The writer is a researcher and analyst at the Institute for Middle Eastern Democracy where he heads the Centre Transatlantic Affairs project. Tom currently lives in London where he is completing a Doctorate at UCL.

Dec 1 2010

The Guardian’s Cartoon Analysis

This animated short is a stunningly effective reply to the Guardian’s Algonquin Round Table of anti-Israel Middle East “experts” recently put together to analyze the U.S. Embassy Cables in the context of Middle East policy – most of whom demonstrate contempt for Israel while minimizing the threat from Tehran. The collection of wise-men included Juan Cole, whose sage analysis included his apparently serious contention that, “There is no evidence that the Iranians have a nuclear weapons program…”. When I read the passage by Cole, the look on my face was not unlike that of the character in the video (wearing blue) in the last scene. You’ll see what I mean.

H/T Barry Rubin and Mere Rhetoric