Has your town newspaper drunk 'Iran nuclear threat' Kool-Aid?
After Israel all but admitted the human rights violation of nuclear attack terror against Iran by blasting its nuclear power facilities and the U.S. invading Iran with drones, on Sunday, Washington Post ombudsman Patrick Pexton responded to a web army's complaints over a Post headline treating the unproven allegation that Iran is a nuclear threat as a known fact and he came down firmly on side of complainants, thanks to Just Foreign Policy's Robert Naiman and other human rights defenders. As others have, the International Atomic Energy Agency has stated Iran is no nuclear threat, despite President Obama insinuating otherwise since shortly after his election and the House expected to consider broad, indiscriminate sanctions against Iran as early as Tuesday.
"Has your hometown newspaper drunk the Kool-Aid on claims that 'the debate is over,' and everyone now knows that Iran is pursuing the acquisition of a nuclear weapon?" asks Robert Naiman, Just Foreign Policy's Policy Director.
“Most of what I do is read the newspaper and try to tell people about what I read,” Naiman said.
“I stumbled on the headline, and was astonished, even knowing The Post’s editorial line on Iran. I’m old-fashioned. The editorial page is one thing and the news is the other. The gallery headlines belonged more in the former and not the latter.”
"Help is on the way," he says, referring to The Washington Post's ombudsman Patrick Pexton, responding to complaints over a Post headline treating the unproven allegation as a known fact, comin down firmly on the side of the complainants.
"Moreover, Post editors corrected the offending headline, conceding it had been an error to fail to acknowledge debate," he says in Huffington Post.
Pexton explained that Naimon "spotlighted the headline on the top of Just Foreign Policy’s home page, with this message:
“U.S. media helped railroad the nation into war with Iraq by treating unproven claims about Iraq’s alleged [weapons of mass destruction] program as facts.
"Now we’re seeing the same behavior concerning Iran.”
"In February 2009, he pledged 'to use all elements of American power to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.' By the next year, after a first round of negotiations with Iran had failed and the United Nations and Congress passed tougher sanctions, that pledge had softened. 'The United States,' Obama said in July 2010, is 'determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.'”
"Furthermore, widespread belief that the unproven allegation had been established would facilitate the enactment of other self-destructive policies short of war, because if you can convince people that we are on the cusp of war with Iran, then other self-destructive policies -- like punishing Europe economically for buying oil from Iran, or prohibiting contact between U.S. and Iranian officials -- seem less extreme by comparison."
'We continue to assess [that] Iran is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons in part by developing various nuclear capabilities that better position it to produce such weapons, should it choose to do so.
"We do not know, however, if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons.'"
Just Foreign Policy's Naiman honored Pexton's clarifying the error and furthered on Monday, "What Clapper told the Senate remains the U.S. government assessment today -- an assessment buttressed by CIA drone flights over Iran, which, as the New York Times and the Christian Science Monitor noted last week, have not found evidence of clandestine nuclear facilities."
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has released a report on Iran's nuclear program showing false assertions have been repeated.
Last week, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that the recent International Atomic Energy Agency report that "contained nothing that proved that Iran was developing nuclear weapons" but that war on Iran has been "completely predictable."
"Most analysts familiar with the IAEA report agree that there "is nothing in the report that was not previously known by the governments of the major powers" -- a nuclear Iran is "neither imminent nor inevitable."
"Now that we know that the claim debate was over about whether Iran is trying to acquire a nuclear weapon was false, how about writing to your Representative, and asking him or her to vote against prohibiting U.S. diplomats from talking to Iranian officials -- a prohibition that -- as Ambassador Holbrooke would surely have noted -- could obstruct efforts to end the war in Afghanistan? "
Voters for Peace reported last week that a covert war against Iran has likely begun with drones (Obama's weapon of choice) plus Stuxnet blowing up nuclear facilities and assassinating or kidnapping scientists.
Also last week, Mark Hibbs, nuclear expert at Carnegie Endowment in Germany, reported intensity of the covert war on Iran indicates this is where U.S. and Israel are putting their energy, big business with big profits for war contractors, all despite no evidence that Iran is a nuclear threat and despite increasing rights violations against Americans struggling in a "failing economy" and "war on terror."
Meanwhile, Iranian lawmaker Parviz Sorouri, a member of the parliament's national security and foreign policy committee, said Monday that extracted information from the United States drone it intercepted will be used to file a lawsuit against the U.S. for the "invasion."
Politico reported Monday that Iran's state prosecutor, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejehei said Iran has filed charges against retired U.S. Army Gen. Jack Keane and former CIA agent Reuel Marc Gerecht.
Section 601(c) of HR 1905 - the so-called "Iran Threat Reduction Act" would prohibit meetings between U.S. officials and Iranian officials deemed a "threat." Ask your Representative to oppose Section 601(c) and HR 1905.
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/hr1905
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