After the fiasco of the "Syrian Gay blogger",  I guess some people aren't done trying to push propaganda about Syria.

Turns out that the claims (mostly by Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya) about Iranian revolutionary guards being captured by the "rebels" in Syria is a load of bullshit. In summary:

1- The pictures shown match the Iranian engineers abducted over a month ago in Syria rather than "revolutionar guards."

2- Reason to forcing and make them to change clothes and wear black clothes is to make them appear more like Hezbollah members or IRGC members.

3- A rifle is placed in between them to make them look like fighters; why they should be seating next to a rifle when confessing on their aged crimes.

4- The claims about a "lack of visas" and secretly entering Syria is funny, considering that Iran and Syria removed visas requirements for travel over a year go.

5- A funny part was showing the abductees passports, why should members of Hezbollah and IRGC if on a secret mission in Syria or anywhere else should or would carry passport and indemnification of any kind with them. Specially deploying forces that apparently can’t even speak the local language and need translators.

6- Is the claim that since their passports was signed by an police officer then they are members of military. All Iranian passports are signed and stamped by chief of policy or his deputy.

MJ Rosenberg says what I've been saying all along:

Bottom line: The purpose of these articles [about an imminent Israeli attack on Iran] is not to predict an Israeli attack but to force the United States government into piling on sanction after sanction (with war always an option) rather than pursue a diplomatic solution to the crisis.

It makes no sense. And yet, due to the pressure of the pro-war lobby, it is diplomacy that is barely on the table, while war, always the direst option, is front and center.

Yup. And their goal?

Sanctions up to a point. War, if deemed necessary, farther down the road. And ideally a war fought by the United States and not Israel, to preserve not Israel's security but its regional hegemony.

If the American people allow that to happen, we are truly out of our minds.

So I guess we'll see. But the Leveretts don't sound too optimistic about the chances that Obama can break the AIPAC death grip on US foriegn policy:

The case for serious U.S. diplomacy with Iran could not be clearer.  But seriousness, in this context, will require very significant changes in U.S. policy and Washington’s overarching attitude about the Islamic Republic.  We hope that we are wrong, but we do not think it likely that the Obama Administration will be up for this, especially not at the President continues his re-election bid. 

Turns out that Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino boss and funder of extreme rightwing lunacy as well as a supporter of war on Iran and backer of US presidential candidate Gingrich, is under investigation for associating with the Chinese mob in his casino deals over in Macau. I wonder if this will have any effect on his funding and promoting war on Iran and Israeli expansionism...not that the New York Times would mention any of that.

Boy history has a way of repeating itself.

This is the text of EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton's letter to Iran, inviting Iran to talks with the EU. Note that while it demands that Iran impose no "preconditions" on the talks, it hides its own demands and preconditions in diplomatic language:

In order to start such a process, our initial objective is to engage in a confidence building exercise aimed at facilitating a constructive dialogue on the basis of reciprocity and a step-by-step approach. In this regard, we remain committed to the practical and specific suggestions which we have put forward in the past…involving full implementation by Iran of UNSC and IAEA Board of Governor’s resolutions

Frankly, his letter amounts to a national insult.

And that's why I agree with B at MoonofAlabama that the talks are actually intended to fail. The goal of setting such preconditions is to blame the failure of the talks on Iran's "intransigence".

Bill Keller has an article in the NY Times entitled "How about not bombing Iran" in which he makes some suggestions for a way out of the current US-Iran nuclear impasse.

While insisting on portraying Iran as having engaged in bad faith negotiations, he recommends that the US stop insisting on "zero enrichment" in Iran.

He mentions that Iran has offered to cease 20% enrichment,

The State Department was dismissive – and again, it’s hard to fault them for taking what the Iranians say as bluff and diversion – but given the added menace of 20 percent enrichment, the White House ought to be looking for a way to test that offer.

What Keller doesn't ask is why the State Department was dismissive, nor does he ask why the US continues to insist on zero enrichment -- because this was hardly the first time that Iran made a significant compromise offers that were ignored or even deliberately torpedoed.

Keller then makes a list of ways out -- which consist of Iran making compromises -- not realizing that practically everything he's listed was offered by Iran already.

Keller and other analysts don't want to come to grips with the fact that this standoff is not really about nuclear weapons, and so no solution can be found in any compromises over the nuclear issue. The nuclear standoff with Iran has always been about justifying regime change in Iran. The last thing the US wants is to let the nuclear issue be resolved peacefully, thus depriving it of the excuse for regime change policies.

I've been sort of quite busy lately so any update to this blog will have to be quick and dirty, but there's so much to cover and I'm not sure where to start. I'm hoping more of my regular visitors and commentators will use the open comments on this blog to add their own updates on what's going on in US-Iran relations

Of course, we have to start with the recent assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist -- 32-year old Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, who was in fact merely a procurement officer at Natanz, which happens to be a completely civilian uranium enrichment facility that is under constant IAEA monitoring. This forms a pattern: everytime the P5+1 are about to enter negotiations, a nuclear scientist is murdered. I suppose the message is that whoever is responsible will not tolerate a negotiated settlement to the nuclear standoff, but in effect they're shooting themselves in the foot. The openly-expressed glee by Santorum and the Israelis only serve to exacerbate the sense of revulsion even in the West at such tactics and portray Iran as the victim, nevermind to mention the nationalistic outrage by the people in Iran who naturally view such actions as a sign of vindictiveness and desire to keep Iran subservient. No wonder a thousand Iranian college students have reportedly switched their major to nuclear science.

Second, I recommend reading B's post over at Moon of Alabama, where he points out that the current P5+1 negotiations with Iran have already been killed by US preconditions -- in this case that Iran simply hand over its enriched uranium for nothing -- which is quite normal and usual since the last thing the US wants is for the negotiations to actually succeed and thus deprive the US of the "nuclear weapons threat" justification for its regime-change policies.

Third, Mark Perry has a sensational piece accusing Israel of arming of the Baluchi Jundallah terrorist group in Eastern Iran. According to Perry, Israeli Mossad agents posed as American spies to recruit members of the terrorist organization Jundallah, and have consistently ignored US objections at portraying themselves as CIA officers. Of course there's speculation that Perry is actually trying to disassociate the real US policies by blaming them on Israel. Frankly, I don't care. Makes very little difference whether the Israelis are doing this with the open  connivance of the US, or merely the silent toleration of the US, because in the end the result is the same.

Then we have a series of "experts" writing a variety of articles in which they seek to justify a war on Iran.  Kroenig wrote in Foreign Policy that  bombing Iran's nuclear facilities would be the "least bad option." Fly and Schmidt further suggest that not only should the US bomb Iran's nuclear facilities, but should engage in a prolonged battle to totally topple the regime -- a policy they refer to as "Go Big then Go Home."

There are enough analysts who have pointed out that this sort of argument sounds a lot like the bullshit that the NeoCons promoted to justify the invasion of Iraq -- including the claims that the people of Iran would would direct their resentments towards the regime rather than the US, and would welcome such an attack (remember, the Iraqis were going to toss flowers at invading US troops.) How exactly is the US realistically going to "go home" after launching a war on Iran, considering that it has just now managed to extricate itself from the mess it created in smaller, weaker Iraq almost a decade after the initial invasion, is left to the imagination. 

Also, I suppose it is a sign of the times and NeoCon thinking no one bothers to ask themselves how things have gotten so bad that launching a war is considered to be a preferable course of affairs, but in any case all three writers' arguments rely on framing the issue as a false choice: either Iran should be bombed, or Iran will acquire the bomb. I've written about this false choice before, since it is a common "talking point" by the NeoCons as it conveniently ignores a whole range of intermediate options between the two extremes, and is thus intended to ultimately corner the US into bombing Iran.  The idea of engagement -- a real engagement, not the pretense we've witnessed thus far -- is naturally left out. As I've written before, as far as the NeoCons are concerned, their real ambition it to prevent a US-Iran engagement and topple the regime, not just to end any supposed "nuclear weapons threat" from Iran.

I also recommend reading Gareth Porter's explanation on why Hillary Clinton's claim that the Fordow nuclear enrichment facility in Iran was supposedly a "secret" is false -- and also Eric Brill's debunking of torture-supporting John Yoo's justification of an attack on Iran -- and Pepe Escobar's rather funny article on how the myth of an "isolated" of Iran.

Perhaps its the amatuer psychologist in me, but the following statement by Patrick Clawson of the pro-Israeli WINEP think tank quite telling:

"It's a lot better to have a fight" that Iran provokes, Clawson replied, before adding: "Better to enter World War II after Pearl Harbor, and World War I after the sinking of the Lusitania."

This was his reponse to a question about why the sanctions on Iran's nuclear program has not thus far succeeded. He's not even making an attempt to hide the fact that they're using the nuclear issue as a pretext to launch a war.They're just hoping for a way to blame it on Iran.

I like this Maloney quote:

Washington's "embrace of open-ended pressure means" the United States has effectively backed itself into a dead-end "policy of regime change," Maloney continued.

So you beat your head against a wall for a while, until one day you wake up and the world now agrees with you.

Today on Juan Cole's site, I read this, and my heart jumped:

The sanctions regime on Iran is not even primarily about the civilian nuclear enrichment program (to which Iran has a right under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty), but about causing the regime to collapse.

Oh my god - it took years but finally people are starting to get it.

I've been saying for a very long time now, the US sanctions on Iran are not really about nuclear weapons.  The "Iranian nuclear weapons threat" thing is just a pretext - like "WMDs in Iraq". The actual policy is about causing regime change in Iran, not just ending any "nulcear weapons threat" -- and so, logically, no amount of Iranian compromise offers on the nuclear issue will ever suffice. The US does not want the nuclear issue resolved, not without removing the regime as well. This explains why, for years, multiple Iranian compromise offers that would have addressed any REAL concerns about weapons proliferation, were simply ignored or actively undermined by the US.

So please folks, the next time the articles casually claim that the sanctions are attributable to the nuclear program, lets not let that slip into our consciousness through repetition. No, lets assert back, that the sanctions are intended to cause regime change.

Sweet! The Washington Post let the cat out of the bag when it reported that the goal of the US sanctions on Iran is regime change and not preventing nuclear weapons proliferation, and Panetta stated that Iran isn't actually trying to make nukes. Of course, someone then decided to press the Washington Post to issue a "correction" denying that the goal of the policy is regime change, and Panetta's people were quick to try to restate what he had stated... All, of course, quite familiar scenes to anyone who had been following the Iran-US relations close enough had already "discovered" the fact that the conflict was never really about nuclear weapons at all.

This, and the news that both the New York Times and the Washington Post were sufficiently inundated by reader pressure that they decided to "correct" their prior headlines which had falsely claimed that the IAEA had concluded that Iran was making nukes... and today was a good day. It shows that people are starting to pay attention to the small details that make a big difference.

I was going to start out writing about Olli H.'s (sorry I can't look up the spelling right now) interview in the Guardian, where he suggests a possible compromise of the US-Iran nuclear standoff. He recommends:

Here's a thought: The P5+1 could provide modern, safe and secure nuclear technology, fuel for the TRR and in the longer term, a more efficient research reactor. Iran could in turn relinquish its stock of enriched uranium.

Here's a thought, Olli: Iran already tried this. It was ignored like all of the rest of Iran's compromise offers. And here's another thought: why do you assume that the answer to what is essentially a political dispute can be found in a nuclear compromise? That's not where the answer lies, because that's not where the problem is - the problem between the US and Iran is first and foremost political. The nuclear issue is just a pretext, a cover for a political dispute.

And by know it should be obviously clear to anyone who has followed the history, that the goal of the political process now in force, is justifying imposing regime change in Iran even if by war. Nuclear weapons are just a pretext, the US has no intention of allowing this pretext to be taken away from it, and the last thing the US wants is to resolve the nuclear dispute with the regime there still in power.

Anyway, but then I read this article which features a few quotes from Trita Parsi (whose new book I have sadly thus far failed to acquire but definitely will do so soon) in which he asks a rather interesting question:

The United States wants Iran to stop enrichment to 20 percent, to turn over its stockpile of low enriched uranium, and to halt plans to make Fordo operational. "But what can they and the Europeans" offer in return? asked Parsi...

I had never thought of that question, really. What can they offer in return? I had never asked the question. OK, having established that the US is deliberately on a collision course with Iran of its own making, or more specifically, the makings of the lobbyists for Israel, what other option could the US pursue?

Naturally, until now I would have tossed out the list things that the Iranians would potentially want in return. They would want the sanctions lifted, trade normalized, an end to the ideas of fomenting a "Color Revolution" in Iran, etc. This would have seemed a self-evident list, requiring no more thought than needed to rattle it off. But then Trita's question made me wonder: what can the US offer, realistically speaking.

Here's what I'm wondering:

Is the US in a position to be able to actually offer anything to Iran which could make it worthwhile for Iran to abandon all or at least a significant chunk of its nuclear program?

And, if no - is the US on a path to confrontation with Iran because isn't capable of pursuing a different policy primarily and simply due to domestic constraints?

And it occurred to me that in reality no one in the US can offer anything that Iran would logically and presumably ask for. For example, on the question of removal of sanctions: Can Obama actually remove the sanctions? He has the legal authority to rescind some Executive Orders, of course, but that is only a small part of the web of sanctions imposed around Iran. He would have to go up against the US Congress, which as that Tom Friedman character recently said, is "bought and paid for" by Israel. So how would these sanctions be removed, exactly? How could the State Department actually get Adelson to stop funding think tanks that hire PhDs as advocates acting under a guise of scholarly objectivity to promote the idea that giving up on sanctions amounts to Chamberlain bowing to Hitler? How could Obama get editors to stop or start using keywords and phrases over and over again in their publications, "Nuclear Weapons Program", "Terrorism", etc.? How could he do any of this, even if he didn't have to worry about getting re-elected, because after all he can't do anything unless he's re-elected.

So the truth of the matter is that we are going to be in this "holding pattern" for a while until something changes that allows a change in US domestic political considerations with respect to Mideast policy. And that, first and foremost, means a resolution to not only the Israeli-Palestinian situation, and the role of Israel in shaping US foreign policy. In short, no time soon. Resolving the Iran-US issue - and I mean really resolving it - is going to require some fundamental, ground-shaking change: Something that fundamentally realigns the world's and domestic power structures. And until that happens we're going to continue seeing what happens when two countries butt heads for another decade, each time getting perilously closer to outright hostilities.

So, am I right? Assuming that Washington wants to resolve things with Iran peacefully and is willing to make the necessary compromises to do so, IS anyone in Washington really in a position to deliver on such promises and to implement such policies in the face of domestic opposition, where being 'weak on Iran' is blood in the water for the opposing campaign? To sell any sort of real change in Iran policy to the public, or at least those who pay for his election campaigning, the President would have to be willing to consume a great deal of political capital. Can he get the necessary laws passed, and other laws rescinding? How many votes in Congress would that require? How much fighting will be required for each vote? Its just not possible. No politician in the US can do this. Even assuming he could win some of the fights, it would consume far more resources than any politician can be willing to dedicate to a single cause.

Sorry, I don't see this happening. And, unlike others, I don't think that mass domestic public opinion can act as a counter-balance to the Israeli pressure for confrontation. Yes, Ron Paul's statements about the role of the US military in the Mideast may have had a popular response, but that's a vague, out of focus, visceral, feel-good response from public opinion that can be easily manipulated. It is not the sort of sentiment that gets translated into power and which can actually shape policy. Ron Paul, in short, is going to go away as simply a grumpy old man.

So, the US is simply not in a position to deliver on any potential offers to Iran that would be worth it for Iran to give in to US demands. And so the holding pattern continues, threats and noise but no overt conflict, though it appears to be more and more inevitable as the holding pattern degrades and falls apart.

In response to a worrying trend in U.S. politics Lobe Log is launching “Iran Hawk Watch”. Each Friday we will post on militaristic commentary about Iran from a variety of sources including news articles, think tanks and pundits.

I recommend reading Paul Pillar's posts at the National Interest, especially this one:

Some in this country—including some who have been most responsible for stoking the atmosphere just described—probably do not want sanctions to work. They instead see them as a necessary preliminary to the war that they really want.

Yes. Precisely.

The more I read and blog about US and international affairs, the more it seems like I'm chronicling someone's descent into madness.

So guess what the US military calls civilian casualties that result from their attacks? "Collateral Damages" was the old term.

Give up?

Answer: "Bugsplat"

"The Pentagon has a word for that, too," he went on. "They call it 'bugsplat.' In the opening days of the invasion of Iraq, they ran computer programs, and they called the program the Bugsplat program, estimating how many civilians they would kill with a given bombing raid. On the opening day, the printouts presented to General Tommy Franks indicated that 22 of the projected bombing attacks on Iraq would produce what they defined as heavy bugsplat — that is, more than 30 civilian deaths per raid. Franks said, 'Go ahead. We're doing all 22.'"

Note that this was the same Gen. Tommy Franks who declared that "we don't do bodycounts". 'Course not. You do bugsplats instead.

Guess those civilians killed by US drone attacks are just bugs too.

WTF happened to America, man?

The year ended with Leon Panetta sabre rattling at Iran, though his aides quitely corrected the media reports which claimed that Panetta had said Iran was just months away from making nukes.

The US Senate also passed the Kirk-Menendez bill that would require the US to impose (secondary) sanctions on Iran's central bank. Note that the resolution passed unanimously - something that usually never happens in the Senate, not even when it comes to bills proposing totally benign and non-controversial things such as naming US Post Office stations. AIPAC of course celebrated the Senate's approval of the bill - probably because they had in fact drafted it in the first place. And Senator Kirk has been one of the largest recipients of AIPAC campaign donations. As Tom Friedman, a pro-Israel activist himself, pointed out, the US Congress has been essentially "bought and paid for" by pro-Israeli lobbyists.

And so by now it is clearer than ever that the US has never actually tried to engage Iran, has always sought ways to promote and justify a war, and the US system as a whole is simply functionally not able to stop the rush towards a conflict anymore.

This is around the same time that the Republican presidential debates are going on, displaying the most vulgar, ignorant jingoism seen on TV in a while - including statements by practically every candidate (except Ron Paul) trying to outdo each other in the sabre rattling at Iran. The irony here is that the proponents of attacking Iran are civilians whilst the opponents to a military attack on Iran are mostly from the US military and the experienced diplomats like Luers, Pickering and Walsh - but of course, no one listened to them 4 years ago either. And so MJ Rosenberg, himself a former AIPAC employee, predicts that the same crowd that gave us the Iraq invasion will continue to press for a military attack on Iran in the next year.

And today, Iran reported that it had manufactured its first nuclear fuel rod to power the medical reactor which is used to treat Iran's 800,000 cancer patients. The pundits are trying to downplay this, claiming that Iran could be 'exaggerating' but the reactor under question is under IAEA safeguards and so the matter will be clarified in the next IAEA report - the point here is that not so long ago the same pundits were declaring that since Iran could not possibly manufacture nuclear fuel rods, then its 20% enrichment must be for making nukes (nevermind that making nukes is much harder than making fuel rods.)

The next parliamentary elections in Iran are going to be next propaganda operation. Naturally the anti-Iran elements in the US will declare the elections to be fraudulent and tainted etc., regardless, because to say otherwise risks recognizing the legitimacy of the regime there. And if some elements in Iran decide to boycott the elections for their own reasons, they'll just be playing into this spin.

All in all, it doesn't appear that there's a prospect of any sort of breakthrough in US-Iran relations in 2012. The US policy making process, aside it being an election year which brings the nuts out of the woodwork, is fundamentally compromised by AIPAC lobbyists, the US president is too weak to stand up to them even if he wanted to, and so Israel continues to call the shots.

Meanwhile of course Israel itself is gradually turning into a failed state with a rising religious fascism and rife with growing internal dissent, and so the need for creating uniting foreign enemies is all the more pressing there. After all, it was Herzl who defined the nation of Israel as a group of people united by a common enemy, and both Iran and the Palestinians (who are now embracing HAMAS as well as garnering greater recognition as a country by the international community) serve that function quite well, so there won't be any particular rush to resolve those conflicts either.

And also watch for the growing Islamophobia in the West being fed by both ultra-right wing nationalists and pro-Israel activists, combined with the passage of new laws in the US that greatly expand the power of the government to violate what used to be considered sacrosanct constitutional rights such as a trial by jury. Fear, after all, is a great way to control people, and control is deemed to be necessary as the country faces increasing resentment at the massive and growing economic disparity that plagues the US. Once this resentment leads to action, it will be conveniently characterized as 'economic terrorism' thus turning dissent into crime.

UPDATE: Read the corrections noted in the comment below

I recommend reading this devastating interview with Shirin Shafaei which originally appeared in Iranicum and was translated by Iran Review - especially for the large collection of links.

To use a court case analogy, this is what has happened: Iran has been accused of having an intention to develop nuclear weapons (guilty until proven innocent), the Agency (prosecutor and the jury) cannot guarantee that Iran does not have a military nuclear agenda (double negative case), the enemy of Iran, Israel, itself very much guilty of having actually committed the same crime (nuclear weaponisation) provides the jury with the so-called evidence. Important documents and information were withheld from the jury (former IAEA head, ElBaradei) and the defendant (Iran). Meanwhile the new head of the jury (current IAEA head, Amano) is himself under the influence of another arch enemy of Iran and best friends of Israel, namely the US. The US is itself guilty of not only having the largest number of nuclear arsenal in the world throughout the history, but also guilty of being the only country which has actually used nuclear bombs against civilian population, not once but twice. When the jury-prosecutor receives these readymade allegations and fabricated evidence supporting those allegations, it sends Iran’s nuclear file to the Supreme Court which is the Security Council here. There again you find the US sitting comfortably along with its European allies and opportunist powers to decide if Iran should be punished for a crime it has not committed. It won’t be hard to guess what such a verdict would be, without even having seen or verified the evidence.

Provocative title, eh? I am reproducing below a snippet of a conversation I had recently with a friend who is a PhD candidate, about his proposed thesis on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fictional, fraudulent book published in Tsarist Russia which purports to expose a Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world.

Me: What happened when you proposed that as a thesis topic?

Friend: It was rejected, pretty fast. They warned me that publishing such a thesis would kill my academic career before it started; that I would never find someone to act as my thesis advisor; that the department would not accept it. In fact I was told - in so many words - that only Jews can write about the Protocols.

Me: Is it because they thought you would claim the Protocols were true?

Friend: Yeah, in part. There's still so much effort to "prove" that it fabricated and fictional--as if that's still an open question--but my point was that even as a work of fiction, it deserves some attention beyond simply proving it to be fabricated and false. Of course it is fictional, but so what? Orwell's 1984 was also fiction, and no one argues whether it is "true" or not - yet we still study it and analyze it and write about it as a piece of literature and political metaphor.

Me: So what were you going to write about the Protocols?

Friend: I was going to analyze it not as a historical document or a piece of journalism, but as metaphorical writing, just as 1984 is a political metaphor. But that wasn't allowed.

Me: Why?

Friend: Well, I think part of it is sensitivity to charges of promoting anti-semitism, because it is in fact an anti-semitic tract, even if you treat the work purely as a fabrication and fiction. But just because it is fiction doesn't mean it can't also be treated as a piece of literature. There is an undercurrent of Jewish exceptionalism and a sense of Jewish superiority in some corners - this isn't new and occasionally you hear about it in the news when some Rabbi issues some weird ruling for example. That sort of thing is true in Judaism as well as Islam and Christianity; this belief that your religion is not only destined to take over the world but also entitled to do so because it is superior. And recognition of the fact that such thought exists in Judaism makes a lot of people uncomfortable - so much so that even purely academic studies of the subject are entirely taboo, particularly by non-Jews.

Me: What interested you in this topic?

Friend: Well, ironically, initially I wanted to write about the prevalence and basis of Islamophobia in Western societies - something that has already attracted a lot of academic attention and controversy. But in studying the issue, I was struck by the similarity between today's expressions of Islamophobia, and the classic expressions of European anti-Semitism. If you substitute the word "Jew" for "Muslim" in classic anti-semitic literature, in most cases you'll end up with the exact same thing we hear today about Muslims: those swarthy, dirty, deceitful people are multiplying, lust for our blood, are intent on taking over the world, are secretly conspiring to subjugate the enlightened West to their backward religion, etc. These are classic expressions of anti-semitism, which are now applied to Islam. And ironically, some supporters of Israel have promoted this - this is why the pro-Israel Right has started to make common cause with the anti-Semitic Right in Europe like the BNP and EDL, and CUFI in the US, against the "Muslim threat."

Me: And pointing this out makes you anti-Semitic?

Friend: Yes, supposedly. The irony is that on one had the idea of Jewish Superiority is pretty well documented - we know the concept exists and is much debated. For example the idea that Jews are intellectually superior or Jewish Exceptionalism in intellectual arenas - which can just as easily be viewed as the Jewish "sneakiness" that anti-semites promote. There is a rich and long debate about Jewish Exceptionalism in the Jewish community. But it is a debate that is restricted to Jews. Non-Jews are not supposed to enter into it. If they do, people get uncomfortable and charges of anti-Semitism go flying.

Me: Do you think this issue has particular relevance nowdays?

Friend: Yes absolutely. I think much of the Right's world view, particularly the NeoCon and Pro-Israel Right, is informed by the sense of Jewish exceptionalism. I don't think there is a big debate about that, actually. Jeffrey Goldberg wrote about it. Philip Weiss writes about it. But they're both Jewish so they can do so.

I have to agree with this view btw - I think that Iran's real threat to Israel's "existence" is not in that Iran might decided to literally destroy Israel with a nuclear weapon, but as a threat to Israel's political and psychological identity, something Haggai Ram wrote about, and which Netanyahu even implicitly acknowledged when he said that a nuclear Iran would cause Jews to emigrate out of Israel, or when Danielle Pletka conceeds that the real "threat" posed by nuclear Iran would be if it becomes an accepted regional competitor

Dennis Ross has published quite a disingenuous op-ed in the Wall Street Journal which portrays the typical NeoCon talking points about Iran: portraying Iran as a threat, deliberately confusing a civilian nuclear program with a nuclear weapons program by referring to a nuclear weapons "capability", calling for the continuation of "pressure" , evading the real fact that the nuclear issue is simply a pretext for regime change, and portraying the issue as a false choice between sanctioning Iran versus bombing Iran which deliberately ignores a third option of actualy engaging Iran.

The disingenuousness of Ross comes through clearly in his concluding paragraph, where he asserts:

With the Iranian regime reeling, an increase in pressure can once again put Iran's leaders in a position where they seek a way out. That way out must not leave the Iranians with the capability to produce nuclear weapons at a time of their choosing. They can have civil nuclear power. They cannot have the means to translate that into nuclear weapons.

In fact, having a nuclear weapons "capability" is inherent in having a civilian nuclear program. As the IAEA has noted, more than 40 countries already have the "capability" to make nukes.

And according to Greenpeace

The first point to note is that military and civil nuclear activities share, for the atomic bomb and the atomic trigger of the thermonuclear warhead, the same nuclear processes and materials...The second point is that the processes of manufacture, procuring, refining and enriching these materials are exactly the same for both military and civil needs...The third point is that as civil applications of nuclear power advance there is a wider crossover into the domain which has been until recent years almost exclusive to the military.

There is no way, in short, for Iran to have a nuclear program that does not also make it theoretically "capable" of making nukes. And yet despite this, Iran has already offered to not only ratify the Additional Protocol (which allows more intrusive inspections) but to also place additional restrictions on its nuclear program WELL BEYOND its legal obligations - even including opening the program to joint US operation - in order to address the even hypothetical concerns about weapons proliferation - only to have the offers totally ignored by the US.

So, Ross' argument that Iran should "not be allowed" (I guess Iran's NPT rights don't count!) to have a nuclear "capability" is in fact a bullshit justification for the continuation of the same policies that have thus far accomplished nothing more than to create the groundwork for a justification for war. 

Nor should this come as a surprise because justifying a war has been Dennis Ross' agenda all along. As the Leveretts pointed out:

Dennis Ross had told us, before entering the Obama Administration, that he did not believe a U.S. strategy of “engagement with pressure” toward Iran would actually work to stimulate productive diplomacy, but would be necessary to lay the ground work for further sanctions and, eventually, military strikes against the Islamic Republic.

The Obama administration has never seriously sought to engage the Iranians, and has deliberately dragged out the nuclear dispute with Iran because it serves merely as a convenient pretext for war and regime change. It is about time to challenge the false media narrative accusing Iran of being "intransigent", and justifying the sanctions as a response to Iran's nuclear program. This is propaganda, which is intended to ultimately justify a war on Iran.

There's a false narrative on Iran promoted by the media, which claims that the US sanctions on Iran have something to do with the nuclear program, and that the US has attempted to resolve the nuclear standoff through "diplomatic" means. That's simply not true and never was, as many Iran observers have noted. 

For example, BusinessWeek today proclaims in a headline that "U.S. Joins EU Push to Embargo Iran Oil Over Nuclear Effort".

Really? The embargo is "over nuclear effort", is it? If that's the case then why has the US consistently ignored many, many Iranian nulcear compromise offers - even ones endorsed by American and international experts? Why not similar sanctions on other countries that are developing similar nuclear technology, and have a record of lying to the IAEA to cover-up weapons-related work?

See, the US policy with respect to Iran has nothing to do with nuclear weapons. It is about regime change. Nuclear weapons are just a pretext, just as WMDs in Iraq were a pretext for war. And the experts are starting to say so too, although for some this realization comes despite themselves, and belatedly.

Example of a late convert: Mark Hibbs at Arms Control Wonk, who in response to comments written on his posting on that site entitled "Who wants diplomacy on Iran", eventually sees the light:

When I re-read my blog post, it occured to me that “regime change” is the elephant in the room in this entire discussion. It would appear that the US administration has shifted its view on Iran to the point where it is not willing to really negotiate an outcome with this Iranian regime on terms that would permit Iran to keep its nuclear assets.

Yes, an elephant in the room that I've been yelling and pointing at for years now. Sheesh! Che Ajab! (trans: about time!)

Gary Sick concluded thus after reviewing the Wikileaks cables on the Obama administration's supposed outreach to Iran which was supposedly rejected by Iran:

The only conclusion I can draw from this is that Obama was never sincere about his engagement strategy. It has yet to be tried.

Dr Sick later wrote me an email about this:

I particularly appreciate that someone is reading my year-old posts. I do believe you could have dated my reluctant awakening quite a bit earlier if you had wished. I think I pointed out in some detail what Dennis Ross's position was and what that meant to the Obama administration. And of course I never doubted that the Bush admin -- at least until the very end -- had absolutely no interest in real negotiations with Iran. And I was very critical of the Clinton admin for failing to act on Iran's offers. And I have said consistently, for as long as I have been writing on the subject, that our policy has been more interested in sanctions than in progress.

And if you're curious what was "Dennis Ross's position", the Leveretts pointed that out:

Dennis Ross had told us, before entering the Obama Administration, that he did not believe a U.S. strategy of “engagement with pressure” toward Iran would actually work to stimulate productive diplomacy, but would be necessary to lay the ground work for further sanctions and, eventually, military strikes against the Islamic Republic.

Of course, Ross later denied this.

Reza Marashi, a former State Department official, wrote about this too:

 It should now be clear that U.S. policy has never been a true engagement policy. By definition, engagement entails a long-term approach that abandons "sticks" and reassures both sides that their respective fears are unfounded. We realized early on that the administration was unlikely to adopt this approach...

Former IAEA Director Elbaradei - who was labelled a "despicable person" and an "Iranian agent" by the Israelis - also pointed out that Iran was ready to make significant compromise offers that were ignored, leading to his conclusion:

I have seen the Iranians ready to accept putting a cap on their enrichment [program] in terms of tens of centrifuges, and then in terms of hundreds of centrifuges. But nobody even tried to engage them on these offers.

And,

They weren’t interested in a compromise with the government in Tehran, but regime change – by any means necessary.

Paul Pillar, writing in the National Interest in an entry entitled "The Road Not Taken Toward Iran", noted that there are many possible compromise options that could be explored to meet the minimum requirements of both sides regarding the nuclear dispute between Iran and the US, which have never been explored despite all the talk about willingness by the US to resolve the issue peacefully:

The only way in which this approach would not make sense is if talk about peacefully resolving the impasse over the Iranian nuclear issue is preparation for later making a case for launching a war against Iran. Unfortunately, some in the United States (and in Israel) who comment a lot on this matter seem to be doing exactly that. And when those people come to say that war is necessary because peaceful means have been tried and failed, that statement—if the unexplored road stays unexplored—will be false.

And later, in another entry entitled "Sanctions that are designed to fail", Pillar critiqued the NeoCon propaganda line on Iran sanctions:

Their task for now is to prepare the propagandistic groundwork for a big push for a war after, they hope, a different president enters office in 2013. Repeating the canard that diplomatic alternatives have been exhausted is part of that preparation. Another part is making the case the sanctions are not sufficient—supplementing the case as necessary with proposals for sanctions that would have no chance for working even if they were adopted. And each phase of the preparation, based on the unproven assumption that the advent of an Iranian nuclear weapon would be a terrible development, further fosters the impression that—as will be argued vociferously when the time for a big push for war comes—such a development really would indeed be terrible and must be prevented at all costs, even if “all costs” means a disastrous war.

Six former European ambassadors also wrote about how the maximalist demands by the US on Iran have simply led to the continued standoff, despite the fact that Iran's nuclear program is not in breach of international law:

We often hear that Iran's refusal to negotiate seriously left our countries no other choice but to drag it in 2006 to the security council. Here too, things are not quite that clear. In 2005 Iran was ready to discuss an upper limit for the number of its centrifuges and to maintain its rate of enrichment far below the high levels necessary for weapons. Tehran also expressed its readiness to allow intrusive inspections, even in non-declared sites. But at that time Europe and the US wanted to compel Iran to ditch its enrichment programme entirely.

Iranians assume that this is still the European and US goal, and that for this reason the security council insists on suspension of all Iranian enrichment activities. But the goal of "zero centrifuges operating in Iran, permanently or temporarily" is unrealistic, and has contributed greatly to the present standoff.

I could go on and on, pointing out how the standard media narrative - that the US policy with respect to Iran actually has some relationship to the nuclear issue - is known to be quite false.

And what has this policy resulted in? Well, the Iranians have already reached the conclusion that the NeoCons controlling US policy are disingenuously using the nuclear issue as a pretext, and so they have further concluded - quite logically - that they should give up trying to compromise and negotiate with the US on the nuclear issue, as Farideh Farhi notes.

They even suspended enrichment entirely for 3 years and agreed to sign the Additional Protocol (which allows stricter, more intensive IAEA inspections) - though US allies have refused to do so - and yet their compromise offers were met with only greater hostility and raised demands.

In 2006, Simon Tisdall quoted anonymous Iranian officials and diplomats as saying:

“The U.S. is using the nuclear issue as a pretext for regime change,” a senior Iranian official said this week. “The issue is a diversion. The U.S. wants to weaken Iran. Even if the nuclear issue was solved, they would want another thing and another thing.” And, “The Americans are trying to create an environment so the U.S. can hit Iran,” one diplomat said.

Both Rafsanjani, the backer of the so-called "Green Movement," and Iran's Supreme Leader Khamenei have also concluded that the nuclear issue is ultimately a pretext for war.

And yet the media in the US insists on promoting the myth that the sanctions on Iran have something to do with Iran's nuclear issue, that Iran has been the "intransigent" party in the dispute which has refused to negotiate over the issue. These are are convenient lies, which are intended to portray the "fault" for the current standoff as laying with Iran, when in reality the US is responsible for the continued standoff.

The bottom line is that the current dispute between Iran and the US has nothing to do with any "nuclear threat" posed by Iran. That's just a pretext for regime change, through war if necessary. The US has no intention of allowing a peaceful resolution to this dispute while leaving the Iranian regime in power. And sanctions are merely intended to serve as stepping-stones towards a war, which at each step simply paints the US into a tighter corner in dealing with Iran.

Philip Weiss:

It's a new world! I get to say bought and paid for by the Israel lobby every other minute now without being accused of being a conspiracist because Tom Friedman said so in the New York Times! Well, here's another bought-and-paid-for group. United Against Nuclear Iran, started by Dennis Ross, the Israel lobbyist who then went into the Obama administration at a high level.

Yes but considering the amount of US aid that goes to Israel, actually it was bought by US money.

Had a fun time watching CNN. Some idiot from the "Chertoff Group" - maybe this guy? - was just on CNN acting all smarmy and petulant, and he basically expressed doubt about the Christian Science Monitor story on how Iran brought down the drone by alluding to the damage to the undercarriage of the drone -- I guess the moron had not bothered to actually read the CSM article which clearly explains why the carriage was damaged: because there was a slight difference between the altitude of where it was landing versus where it thought it was landing:

The Iranian engineer explains why: "If you look at the location where we made it land and the bird's home base, they both have [almost] the same altitude," says the Iranian engineer. "There was a problem [of a few meters] with the exact altitude so the bird's underbelly was damaged in landing; that's why it was covered in the broadcast footage."

And of course the dingbat CNN interviewer didn't bother pressing the issue in the interview. Instead she went on to another angle, about how this drone really isn't the top of the line etc.

They just can't come to terms with the reality!