Seymour Hersh - Iran and the IAEA -- A Trove of New Fake Evidence

The New Yorker, November 19, 2011

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2011/11/iran-and-the-iaea.html#ixzz1e87pdqyN

The first question in last Saturday night’s Republican debate on foreign policy dealt with Iran, and a newly published report by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The report, which raised renewed concern about the “possible existence of undeclared nuclear facilities and material in Iran,” struck a darker tone than previous assessments. But it was carefully hedged. On the debate platform, however, any ambiguity was lost.  One of the moderators said that the I.A.E.A. report had provided “additional credible evidence that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon” and asked what various candidates, upon winning the Presidency, would do to stop Iran. Herman Cain said he would assist those who are trying to overthrow the government. Newt Gingrich said he would coördinate with the Israeli government and maximize covert operations to block the Iranian weapons program. Mitt Romney called the state of Iran’s nuclear program Obama’s “greatest failing, from a foreign-policy standpoint” and added, “Look, one thing you can know … and that is if we reëlect Barack Obama Iran will have a nuclear weapon.” The Iranian bomb was a sure thing Saturday night. I’ve been reporting on Iran and the bomb for The New Yorker for the past decade, with a focus on the repeatedly inability of the best and the brightest of the Joint Special Operations Command to find definitive evidence of a nuclear-weapons production program in Iran. The goal of the high-risk American covert operations was to find something physical—a “smoking calutron,” as a knowledgeable official once told me—to show the world that Iran was working on warheads at an undisclosed site, to make the evidence public, and then to attack and destroy the site.

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Neve Gordon - Is Israel Preparing an Assault Against Iran?

Published on Friday, November 18, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/18-0

The IAEA report on Iran's alleged nuclear program was surrounded by a media frenzy in Israel supporting an attack.

by Neve Gordon

Skimming the newspapers as I rushed to get my children ready for school, I suddenly understood that Israel might actually be preparing for a military attack against Iran. "[United States Secretary of Defense Leon] Panetta Demanded Commitment to Coordinate Action in Iran" read one headline, and "A Bomb at Arm's Length" read another.

Feeding this hype were a series of military events that had been planned months in advance yet mysteriously coincided with the publication of the International Atomic Energy Agency report on Iran's efforts to produce a nuclear bomb. For four days straight all of the major television channels repeatedly showed images of Israel preparing for war.

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Robert Koehler - Bomb Iran? Sanity in Exile

Published on Thursday, November 17, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/17

by Robert C. Koehler

Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran . . .

Or as Mitt Romney put it, playing the irresponsible-lunatic game convincingly enough to become the leading Republican presidential candidate: “If we re-elect Barack Obama, Iran will have a nuclear weapon.”

The consensus congeals: Our next war must be with Iran. A report issued by the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency, which the New York Times called “chillingly comprehensive” (though this is debatable), stoked this long-simmering agenda. It charges that Iran has conducted secret experiments on nuclear triggers and created computer models of nuclear explosions, among other things, which proves that the nation, despite its leaders’ protestations to the contrary, is pursuing . . . oh God, oh God . . . a nuclear weapons program.

War hysteria springs eternal. It certainly makes great fodder for a presidential campaign, as virtually all the GOP commander-in-chief wannabes are playing tough as nails on the issue, yanking the debate screamingly to the right. This is the way the game works. The Obama administration thus has to defend itself for eschewing, so far, a military response to the threat and pursuing only economic sanctions.

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Robert Parry - Big Media's Double Standards on Iran

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Big-Media-s-Double-Standar-by-Robert-Parry-111115-949.html

November 15, 2011 By Robert Parry The mainstream U.S. press corps is again pounding the propaganda war drums, this time over dubious accusations of Iran's secret work on a nuclear bomb. It is a pattern of bias that is the U.S. media's worst -- and most dangerous -- ethical violation. Arguably, the most serious ethical crisis in U.S. journalism is the deep-seated bias about the Middle East that is displayed by major American news outlets, particularly the Washington Post and the New York Times. When it comes to reporting on "designated enemies" in the Muslim world, the Post and the Times routinely jettison all sense of objectivity even when the stakes are as serious as war and peace, life and death. Propaganda wins out over balanced journalism. We have seen this pattern with Iraq and its non-existent stockpiles of WMD; with the rush to judgment about Syria's supposed guilt in the killing of Lebanese leader Rafik Hariri; with the false certainty about Libya's role in the Lockerbie bombing; and many other examples of what everyone just "knows to be true" but often turns out isn't. [For more on these cases, click here.]

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Eric Margolis - Iran's Nukes: Old Lies in New Bottles

Published on Saturday, November 12, 2011 by Eric Margolis

http://www.ericmargolis.com/political_commentaries/old-lies-in-new-bottles.aspx

by Eric Margolis

NEW YORK – The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) long awaited, much ballyhooed report on Iran’s nuclear activities has been thunderously greeted here as conclusive evidence that Iran is working on nuclear weapons.

Both Tehran and a 2007 US combined intelligence assessment deny such claims.

There’s little new in this report, and a lot of déjà vu. We read the old story floating around since 2002 about a mysterious laptop stolen from Iran and passed to US intelligence. It allegedly contains scientific material about explosive compression methods to trigger a nuclear explosion, and designs to shrink nuclear warheads to fit in missile nosecones.

The UN and western powers say this stolen computer’s contents conclusively proves Iran has violated the UN’s non-proliferation treaty, to which Tehran is a signatory. Israel and its American partisans are raising a hue and cry about an impending nuclear attack on the Jewish state by Iran’s “crazy” leaders. Republicans are baying for war against Iran.

The US and UN also claim a Russian scientist who supposedly worked on Iranian nuclear weapons explosive technology defected and revealed all to western intelligence.

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Wayne Madsen - War Clouds Form over Iran

By Wayne Madsen

Global Research, November 10, 2011

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27584 

Israel’s all-powerful lobby in Washington, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), an organization composed of Israeli collaborators, infiltrators, and outright traitors to the United States, is steamrolling through the House of Representatives H.R. 1905, which would prohibit the President of the United States, the Secretary of State, members of the U.S. Foreign Service, or any special envoy from engaging in any sort of diplomatic contact, official or unofficial, with any member or agent of the government of Iran. Only when the President informs the requisite committees may he proceed with engaging on diplomatic contact with Iran. Israel has de facto control over the foreign affairs committees of Congress, so any White House notification of the need to contact Iranian officials would be instantly transmitted to Binyamin Netanyahu’s office in Jerusalem and Israel would then circumvent any U.S.-Iranian contact. AIPAC, with its resolution, is further making the United States a vassal of the Jewish state.

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Gwynne Dyer - Iran -- Here We Go Again?

Published on Thursday, November 10, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/10-0

by Gwynne Dyer

“We will not build two (nuclear) bombs in the face of (America’s) 20,000,” said Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in response to an International Atomic Energy Agency report this week that accuses Iran of doing just that. He called Yukiya Amano, the head of the IAEA, a US puppet, saying: “This person does not publish a report about America and its allies' nuclear arsenals.”

Well, that’s true, actually. Amano will never publish a report about America’s nuclear weapons (only 5,133 of them now, actually). He hasn’t said anything about Israel’s, Britain’s and France’s weapons of mass destruction either. And his report is largely based on information fed to him by Western intelligence agencies.

But apart from that, Amano is as impartial and free from US influence as you would expect a career Japanese diplomat to be. Only cynical people will see any resemblance to Colin Powell’s performance at the United Nations in 2003, when the US defense secretary held up a test tube and assured us all that Iraq really was working on germ warfare.

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Gareth Porter - Dissecting the Iran ‘Terror Plot’

By Gareth Porter

Global Research, November 7, 2011

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27525

As Israel again ratchets up its threats to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities, anti-Iran propaganda, which could rally the American people behind another Middle East war, becomes critical. At this key moment, Gareth Porter takes a deeper look at an alleged Iranian assassination plot.

At a press conference on Oct. 11, the Obama administration unveiled a spectacular charge against the government of Iran: The Qods Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had plotted to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Adel al-Jubeir, right in Washington, DC, in a place where large numbers of innocent bystanders could have been killed.

High-level officials of the Qods Force were said to be involved, the only question being how far up in the Iranian government the complicity went.

The U.S. tale of the Iranian plot was greeted with unusual skepticism on the part of Iran specialists and independent policy analysts, and even elements of the mainstream media. The critics observed that the alleged assassination scheme was not in Iran’s interest, and that it bore scant resemblance to past operations attributed to the foreign special operations branch of Iranian intelligence.

The Qods Force, it was widely believed, would not send a person like Iranian-American used-car dealer Manssor Arbabsiar, known to friends in Corpus Christi, Texas, as forgetful and disorganized, to hire the hit squad for such a sensitive covert action.

But administration officials claimed they had hard evidence to back up the charge. They cited a 21-page deposition by a supervising FBI agent in the “amended criminal complaint” filed against Arbabsiar and an accomplice who remains at large, Gholam Shakuri. [1]

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John Glaser - Leaked Statements on IAEA Claim Iran Has Covert Nuclear Weapons Program

By John Glaser

Global Research, November 6, 2011

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27502

Statements leaked anonymously ahead of next week’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report on Iran’s nuclear program warn that the study will reveal evidence that Iran has been working secretly to develop a nuclear weapons capability.

According to Western diplomats who refused to reveal their identity, the evidence will include satellite images of what of is supposedly a large steel container used for high-explosives tests related to nuclear arms as well as intelligence that Iran made computer models of a nuclear warhead.

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Progressive Radio Network Host Glen Ford from Black Agenda Radio, Mondays @ 4pm(EDT") - What a Whopper! U.S. Throws All the Demons in the Mix for the Mother Of All Anti-Iran Psy-Ops

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

To foment hysteria against Iran, “the administration is cooking up an almost comically infernal witches brew just in time for Halloween.” So fantastic is the American story of an Iranian assassination scheme, one is tempted to laugh – except that the farce shows how eager the Obama administration is to create war scenarios out of thin air. It is a psychological operation of the absurd, one that only “the typical American” will believe.

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

“The whole thing smells more like the FBI’s schemes to frame Black men in Miami and Newburgh, New York, for terroristic attacks that never did, or could, happen.”

Who said Barack Obama would bring sobriety and dignity to U.S. foreign policy? The president’s men, and Top Woman Hillary Clinton, have thrown every stereotypical demon of middle American nightmares into the psychological operations gumbo, to create a war hysteria against Iran. No reflexive terror button is left unpushed, no racial hysteria unexploited. Bubble, bubble, boil and trouble, the administration is cooking up an almost comically infernal witches brew just in time for Halloween.

What a confabulation! There’s the Mexican drug cartel hit men, the specter of a bomb exploding in a crowded, upscale Washington eatery, plus attacks on Israelis and, of course, in the background, the elite Quds unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. And if you believe the government story - well, that proves you are the typical America, and any idiot can keep you in a state of endless war.

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