Iran Feature: The Olympic Medals for Worst Nuclear Commentary
Wednesday, April 3, 2013 at 10:42
Gold medallist Ray Takeyh, of the Council on Foreign Relations, describes his winning column
Written by Joanna Paraszczuk and Scott Lucas:
It's here! With talks between Iran and world powers set to resume in Kazakhstan on Friday, we have been deafened by a cacophony of furious typing --- the sound of reporters and analysts let loose a tsunami of Scary Headlines, such as Talks Will Not Work, or Iran Has New Evil Centrifuge Cascades In Hidden Underground Plants, and Iran Is Already A Nuclear Power, Anyway.
With so much sloppy reporting to choose from, it is hard to know where to start. So we have narrowed the playing field down to the very best (well, actually, the very worst), presenting the Olympic medals of bad Iran nuclear reporting.
Bronze Medal: Jennifer Rubin, The Washington Post, "Iran Policy Inanity Comes to Light"
Post blogger Rubin is notorious for being unable to handle a fact unless she can distort it to help her trot out at least one of her troika of hobby horses:
1. (The Obama Administration Is Wrong (and Liberals Can't Be Trusted)
2. The Iranians Are On Their Way To A Bomb
The Iraq War Was A Good Thing).
So it is no surprise she mangles a Wall Street Journal article --- fed by US and European officials and analysed by EA on Tuesday --- about Iran's nuclear programme and this week's talks between Tehran and the 5+1 Powers.
Rubin puffs: "The Wall Street Journal reports that Iran has already gamed its program so as to avoid Israel’s 'red line' [of militarised nuclear capability] but for all intents and purposes, [it has] become a nuclear weapons-ready power."
Not exactly.
True, the Journal feeds Rubin's gaping maw with some sloppy reporting, including the regurgitated scare lines:
Iranian nuclear officials have kept the country's stockpile of uranium enriched to 20% purity below 250 kilograms (550 pounds). Iran would need such an amount — if processed further into weapons-grade fuel — to produce one atomic bomb, experts believe.
The Journal fails to establish any intent by Iran to produce that Bomb, and blithely ignores the repeated conclusion of the International Atomic Energy Agency that it has found no evidence of diversion of uranium to a military programme. And while it notes that Iran has converted 40% of the stock of 20% uranium into fuel plates --- which can only be used for civilian purposes in its research reactor --- it sabotages that with an incorrect assertion by a US official that the plates can be converted back.
Still, the Journal's headline is exactly the opposite of what Rubin claims, "Iran Cools Nuclear Work as [Presidential] Vote Looms".
The Journal opens, "Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has decided to keep Iran's nuclear program within limits demanded by Israel for now." And at no point does it show --- as Rubin claims --- that Iran is a "nuclear weapons-ready power".
The blogger continues with further mangling of articles to claim, "Not even the Obama administration believes the negotiations are accomplishing anything," but I lost the will to read long before her conclusion:
"This is frightful incoherence on the part of the administration."
No, Ms. Rubin, this is frightful incoherence on the part of you.
Silver Medal: Lara Jakes, Associated Press, "US Restraint in Syria Could Aid Iran Nuclear Talks"
The national security writer for AP, Lara Jakes, takes silver with a bold and moving performance combining the factually incorrect with the utterly confused.
Even as Jakes sprints out of the starting blocks, we know this is going to be an emotional race -- her headline tells us that she is not at all embarrassed about missing last month's reports of US involvement in a push to airlift arms to Syrian insurgents.
No, President Obama is "reluctan[t] to give military aid to Syrian rebels", she boldly informs us.
Jakes builds her whole report around this (inaccurate) premise that the US is wary of providing military aid to the Syrian insurgency, because this could alienate Tehran and harm diplomatic efforts to curb its nuclear programme.
The reader now has to wade through five long paragraphs before being rewarded with the source of this argument --- the former head of European Union foreign policy, Javier Solana.
What does Solana actually say? More to the point, why did Jakes take Solana's comments as Gospel Truth, framing her story around this instead of opening with a quote and developing the story by putting it into context from other sources and experts?
Jakes' key sentence from Solana is, “The US has not taken a more active role in Syria from the beginning to give them space to negotiate with Tehran."
All well and good for Jakes' presentation, except as Al-Monitor's Barbara Slavin correctly notes, "no other US official has explained Obama policy on Syria quite this way".
Hmm.
Having dug herself into a hole, Jakes does not put down her spade. In true Olympic spirit, she reaches deep to find a burst of energy and keeps right on digging: "Yet Obama has resisted pressures from foreign allies, Congress and his own advisers to arm the rebels or at least supply them with military equipment, or to use targeted airstrikes to destroy some of Assad's warplanes."
To look on the positive side, Jakes gets one fact right: the US has not used targeted airstrikes. Hurrah!
She's wrong about everything else, though.
American officials told the New York Times just two weeks ago that US intelligence officers have assisted Arab states to procure large quantities of weapons --- including from Croatia --- and ship them to vetted insurgent groups.
As experts from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) commented, the airlifts have involved at least 3,500 tons of military equipment.
Jakes stumbles and trips over the finish line with a lengthy quote from Gary Samore, the former White House advisor on non-proliferation: "[The collapse of Assad's regime] is not going to change [Khamenei's] fundamental interest in acquiring a nuclear weapons capability."
Which, although Jakes does not realise it, does nothing to support her headline belief that US policy for non-intervention in Syria has been led by the nose by the Iranian discussions.
Gold Medal: Ray Takeyh, Council on Foreign Relations/Washington Post, "The Best Red Line for a Nuclear Iran"
Takeyh makes his bid for gold by juxtaposing a very important title, "Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations", with a series of silly asssertions about the Iranian drive for a Bomb.
By the second paragraph, he is declaring, "The Islamic Republic’s path to the bomb is contingent on its ability to produce vast quantities of low-enriched uranium while introducing a new generation of high-velocity centrifuges. Both are being produced at an unimpeded pace at the Natanz enrichment plant."
Not quite. Iran's nuclear plants, while causing concern for many in the West, are hardly "unimpeded" --- they are subject to quarterly inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency. And that "new generation of high-velocity centrifuges" --- producing unspecified "vast quantities" of low-enriched uranium --- are not yet operational at the Natanz plant. (Never mind the fact that "low-enriched uranium" has a concentration of less than 20% of the fissile U-235 isotope -- nuclear weapons need over 85% U-235).
Undaunted, Takeyh tries again, declaring: "Should the Natanz plant reach its optimal production capacity, the Islamic Republic would be well on its way to manufacturing a nuclear arsenal."
Undaunted, Takeyh tries again, declaring: "Should the Natanz plant reach its optimal production capacity, the Islamic Republic would be well on its way to manufacturing a nuclear arsenal."
Never mind. It is the IAEA's incompetence that put us in mortal peril, Takyeh explains:
The lax nature of the NPT’s basic inspection regime makes it an unreliable guide to detecting persistent diversion of small quantities of fuel from an industrial-size installation. Meanwhile, Iran’s mastery of advanced centrifuges will give it the ability to build secret installations that can quickly enrich uranium to weapons-grade quality.
So now Takeyh is not satisfied with merely accusing the International Atomic Energy Agency of lying when it reports Iran has not diverted enriched uranium for military use. The IAEA (and Western intelligence agencies) are so inept they cannot even find an entire enrichment facility (maybe Iran could help out by covering it in a pink tarpaulin).
This leads Takeyh to make a novel suggestion:
To entice...concessions from the West, Iranian officials cleverly dangle the possibility of addressing an issue that is not essential to Tehran’s nuclear weapons objectives: the production of uranium enriched to 20 percent.
Eureka! The senior fellow, in a scientific breakthrough, has established that the fundamental step of 20% enrichment --- because you have to somehow get from 5% to more than 90% for a nuclear weapon --- is "not essential".
Which means, I think, that either Takeyh believes the "advanced centrifuges" Iran has "mastered" at Natanz produce 90% enriched uranium in one go (and that the blundering IAEA is unaware of this), or that it is proposing the 5+1 Powers adopt the following negotiating strategy: insist that Iran gives up all nuclear activity, even 5% enrichment, because "any concessions on Iran’s 'right to enrich'...Tehran’s trap of hampering a U.S. or Israeli military option".
Sneaky mullahs --- clearly the sole reason they are pursuing their nuclear program is for a Bomb, not for nuclear energy research or civilian uses like medical isotopes. Somehow, the idea of the Bomb is a magic deterrent that keeps away American and Israeli warplanes.
So the only solution for the West would be to permanently disable Iran's entire nuclear programme. It's unclear how that could stop Iran from building those "secret installations" -- maybe if we take their centrifuges away they'll forget how -- but no doubt Takeyh will explain that in his next op-ed.
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