Middle East/Iran Inside Line: Israel says "IAEA Has Another Classified Report"

Receive our latest updates by email or RSS SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FEED
Buy Us A Cup of Coffee? Help Enduring America Expand Its Coverage and Analysis

Israel: Somewhere A Report Proves Our Case. Really: Not satisfied with the latest report of the International Atomic Energy Agency on Iran's nuclear programme, Israeli officials have insisted that the IAEA is sitting on another classified report on Iran’s nuclear programme and called on the Agency to release it.

Italy Jumps Into Israel-Sweden Dispute: Haaretz reports that Italy's foreign minister, Franco Frattini, told the newspaper that he and Swedish counterpart Carl Bildt would work to pass a resolution strongly condemning anti-Semitism and taking action against any manifestation of it throughout the European Union at the EU foreign ministers' meeting next week.

As for the claim in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet that Israeli soldiers had harvested the organs of dead Palestinians, Frattini said it was within the definitiation of“anti-Semitism": “There are limits to freedom of the press that stem from respect for the truth and the duty of every journalist to prove his claims....[These are] terrible conclusions, lying and hurtful, and they have the power to assist all those who seek to incite against Jews or who oppose the existence of the State of Israel.”

On the issue of Sweden's position after the Aftonbladet claim, Frattini said, “The Council of Ministers meeting is the correct forum for Sweden to prove, with concrete steps, its determined stance against anti-Semitism." While the Swedish side is keeping its silence, Yigal Palmor of the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office said, “Every initiative against anti-Semitism is welcome… But if the declaration is general and does not specifically relate to the article in Aftonbladet, it will not resolve anything.…All we asked of Sweden and the Swedes is that they reject and decry the content of the report. And our position has not changed."

The Middle East/Iran Inside Line: Hezbollah In, Lieberman Out, France-Germany Making a Difference?

Iran’s Nuclear Programme: Talks, Threats, and Propaganda
Israel-Palestine: After Mitchell Meeting, Netanyahu Presses His Advantage

Receive our latest updates by email or RSS SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FEED
Buy Us A Cup of Coffee? Help Enduring America Expand Its Coverage and Analysis

Lebanon: Hezbollah in Government: Prime Minister-designate Sa'ad Hariri declared on Wednesday: "The national unity government will include the [ruling] March 14 alliance, and I also want to assure the Israeli enemy that Hezbollah will be in this government whether it likes it or not because Lebanon's interests require all parties be involved in this cabinet."

France and Germany Speak Out on Middle East, Iran: On Wednesday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then reiterated Germany’s call for two-state solution: "We shouldn't let the window of opportunity pass… The time is absolutely right. Let us do everything to use it."

Meanwhile, spokesmen for the Germany Government emphasised, "The German government advocates that no further settlements in the occupied territories be built. The federal government has emphasized repeatedly this position, and it has not changed." The spokesmem refused to give details on discussions over Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier held in Gaza, "strongly appealed to his kidnappers to release him as fast as possible [as] his martyrdom has already lasted too long".

French President Nicholas Sarkozy, also on the scene, endorsed the German call for a halt to Israeli settlement expansion. He then switched to Iran, publicly warned that France would support further sanctions on Tehran if it did not stop uranium enrichment: "These are the same leaders, in Iran, who tell us that the nuclear program is peaceful and that the elections were honest. Frankly, who believes them?"

Sarkozy is due to meet with the leader of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, in Paris next week.

Israel: Foreign Minister in Trouble?: Haaretz’s Aluf Benn has pointed out the “damage” Foreign Ministry Avigdor Lieberman is causing to Israel's reputation and called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to replace him with a “real statesman”.

Benn argues that Lieberman’s has not furthered his country’s national interests in diplomatic exchanges with other countries and has, indeed, alienated them thanks to his “aggressive” statements. Lieberman has put his Prime Minister in a “foolish” position and endangering the peace process by calling it a “dangerous folly”.

Iran's Nuclear Programme: Talks, Threats, and Propaganda

The Latest from Iran (27 August): Catching Breath

Receive our latest updates by email or RSS SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FEED
Buy Us A Cup of Coffee? Help Enduring America Expand Its Coverage and Analysis

On the diplomatic calendar for Iran's nuclear programme, the date of 14 September has a big red circle around it. That's the day when 150 nations convene in the general convention of the International Atomic Energy Authority.

And that's why we are in the midst of manoeuvres and propaganda that put even the US-Iran contest of the Bush years to shame.

Two weeks ago, Iran proposed that the 14 September conference ban attacks on any nation's nuclear facilities. This was followed on 18 August by a declaration by Iran's envoy to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, "Talks without preconditions is Iran's main stance in negotiations on the nuclear issue."

However, Tehran backed away from Soltanieh's statement and "Western and Israeli officials" struck back a day later: “The International Atomic Energy Agency under Director General Mohamed ElBaradei was refraining from publishing evidence obtained by its inspectors over the past few months that indicate Iran was pursuing information about weaponization efforts and a military nuclear program.”

What has followed has been a battle of spin, not between Iran and the US/Israel but amongst "Western officials". Those trying to keep talks with Iran on the rails let it be known that Iran had not expanded the number of centrifuges enriching uranium at its Natanz nuclear site since the end of May. Those opposed to engagement countered with the "news" that Iranian leaders had received and rejected in May a proposal calling for a halt to Iran's nuclear enrichment program in exchange for no new United Nations sanctions.

Beyond the propaganda, what is next? Tehran says it is ready for nuclear talks without preconditions but is decided not to stop its uranium enrichment facilities. Despite the Obama talk of engagement, others in Washington and European capitals are threatening to expand sanctions if Tehran does not shelve nuclear enrichment by the end of September. Israel continues its lobbying, moving between hints of military action and support for the toughest possible economic restrictions. Russia and China, sceptical of and often opposed to such sanctions, remain silent.

For now, just keep retracing that circle around 14 September.

UPDATED Israel's War of Words: The Times of London, Iran's Bombs, and Hezbollah

Receive our latest updates by email or RSS SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FEED
Buy Us A Cup of Coffee? Help Enduring America Expand Its Coverage and Analysis

Co-written with Ali Yenidunya:

UPDATE 13 August, 0630 GMT: A good psychological warfare campaign can't go silent for long. Reuters reported on Wednesday: "Under a photograph of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sitting the previous day in the cockpit of an F-15I long-range fighter-bomber, mass-selling [Israeli newspaper] Ma'ariv quoted the official as saying Israel could carry out such a strike without U.S. approval but time was running out for it to be effective. The official said, ""The military option is real and at the disposal of Israel's leaders, but time is working against them."

You have to hand it to The Times of London: when it comes to propaganda, their reporters never run the risk of subtlety.

On 3 August, an article signed by no less than three intrepid reporters, including the Defence Correspondent, proclaimed, "Iran has perfected the technology to create and detonate a nuclear warhead and is merely awaiting the word from its Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to produce its first bomb." A research programme to create weaponised uranium had been completed in the summer of 2003, and Iranian scientists "could feasibly make a bomb within a year of an order" from Khamenei.

Two days later, Foreign Editor Richard Beeston, one of the three authors of the Bomb Is Imminent piece, found another angle in a pair of articles, one co-written with Nicholas Blanford, "Tehran is investing...in its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah", which had "amassed tens of thousands of rockets and missiles capable of bombarding half [of Israel]".

The threat of an Iranian nuclear attack, coupled with its sponsorship of a regional war on Tel Aviv? Where could Beeston and his companions have discovered these master plans? According to one of the articles, "Western intelligence sources".

Which is absolutely right, if by "Western" you mean "Israeli".

We have written for months about how The Times is a leading channel for stories put out by Israel's military and intelligence services. This time, however, the paper went a step further. Rather than taking the information fed to the normal outlet, Tel Aviv correspondent Uzi Mahnaimi, it sent Beeston to Israel where he was given the material for the articles by Israeli officials. As Amos Harel subsequently reported in Ha'aretz, "At a Knesset [Israeli Parliament] Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee briefing on Tuesday [5 August], the head of the Military Intelligence Research Brigade, Brig. Gen. Yossi Baidatz, used almost identical terms to those of The Times" on the state of Iran's nuclear programme.

For the Hezbollah report, the Israeli military escorted Beeston to the Lebanese border where he met Brigadier-General Alon Friedman, the deputy head of the Israeli Northern Command, who laid out the line that the situation could “explode at any minute”. This followed an earlier Times claim of "surveillance footage" (source not identified) which "showed Hezbollah fighters trying to salvage rockets and munitions" from an ammunition bunker which exploded.

OK, it's far from rare for a newspaper to turn briefings by officials into an "exclusive" investigative report. It's not unusual to imply multiple sources to cover up the campaign of a single Government. What is distinctive about the reports in The Times is that Beeston and his colleagues cannot be bothered to cite information and analysis that cuts the other way. It is far from a deep secret that the December 2007 National Intelligence Estimate of US services had concluded that Iran had ended its nuclear arms research programme in 2003. In the same week of The Times' report, the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research issued an assessment that Iran could not produce a nuclear bomb even if it wanted to do it right now:

While Iran has made significant progress in uranium enrichment technology, the State Department’s intelligence bureau (INR) continues to assess it is unlikely that Iran will have the technical capability to produce HEU [highly enriched uranium] before 2013.

Now perhaps the Israelis have some specific piece of intelligence that refutes the American assessment. Possibly there is some document somewhere that establishes that Iran is commanding a Hezbollah political and military forces with "40,000" rockets. Rest assured, however, that these articles are not based on such tangible evidence. They are press releases masquerading as investigative journalism.

To paraphrase one of the best guides to propaganda, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, "This is Israel and Iran, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."