cont...
On June 24 Tehran mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected president of Iran. The mainstream news media immediately publicized various allegations against him, including the charge that he was deeply involved in the 1979-81 Iran Hostage Crisis. The Washington Times quoted one of the former hostages, Col. Charles Scott (then 73) as stating, "He was one of the top two or three leaders; the new president of Iran is a terrorist." The MEK produced a 1979 photograph of a young man resembling Ahmadinejad with an American hostage at the U.S. embassy, which was quickly published by news agenecies such as AP, Reuters and AFP alongside reporatge on the Iranian election.
Iranian sources identified the youth as one Taghi Mohammadi, while the Los Angeles Times quoted a "U.S. official familiar with the investigation of Ahmadinejad's role" as saying that analyists had found "serious discrepancies" between the person in the photo and images of Ahmadinejad, including differences in facial structure and height. Still, the State Department has made no official statement disputing the claim made by Scott and several other former hostages.
Another piece of likely disinformation was revealed in mid-July when senior (unnamed) U.S. intelligence officials summoned IAEA leaders to the top of a Vienna skyscraper. There they revealed materials supposedly downloaded from a stolen Iranian laptop computer revealing a protracted attempt by the Iranians to design a nuclear warhead. The IAEA was not convinced; "The information did not seem conclusive, the 'smoking gun,'" one person in attendance told Reuters in November. "No one has augmented this data since, and we are in no position to know whether the data indeed came from the Iranians." But the story was prominently covered in the U.S. press.
On August 23, the Subcommittee on Intelligence Policy of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence issued a report describing Iran's nuclear program as a strategic threat to the U.S. In a rare move, the IAEA denounced the report in a letter September 13 to committee chairman Peter Hoekstra (R-Michigan). The report, the IAEA declared, contained "erroneous, misleading, and unsubstantiated information." In particular the IAEA refuted the assertion that Iran was enriching uranium to weapons grade.
In September, following months of pressure from U.S. UN Ambassador Bolton, the IAEA issued a report on Iran, declaring it in "non-compliance" with the Non-Proliferation Treaty. It stated that the "history of concealment of Iran's nuclear activities" and "resulting absence of confidence that Iran's nuclear programme is exclusively for peaceful purposes have given rise to questions that are within the competence of the Security Council." The statement was actually opposed by 13 of the 35 voting countries (including such key international players as Russia, China, Pakistan, Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria, Venezuela and South Africa) but backed by NATO country representatives voting as a bloc. This was used to produce UNSC Resolution 1737, which while affirming the right of Non-Proliferation Treaty signatories "to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination," contradictorily "decides" that "Iran shall without further delay suspend . . . all [uranium] enrichment-related and reprocessing activities." The U.S. intention here was to have the Security Council adopt a resolution condemning Iran's nuclear program and imposing sanctions. This was indeed achieved July 31, 2006.
In October, British ambassador to Iraq William Patey told reporters in London that Iran had been supplying technology used to kill British troops in Basra. There was no real evidence of Iranian government involvement, but the charge that Coalition forces are dying because of "explosively formed perpetrators" (EFP) manufactured in Iran has of course been echoed by Bush administration officials in recent weeks.
On October 26, Ahmadinejad gave a speech in which he quoted Ayatollah Khomenei (who died in 1989) as saying that "the occupation of Jerusalem" will be "erased from the page of time." Ahmadinejad used the quote in a speech noting that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Soviet Union itself, and the regime of Saddam Hussein all ended in time, as he maintained the Israeli occupation of one of Islam's holiest cities would too. The statement has been incessantly misquoted in the U.S. and global press as a statement that Tehran plans to "wipe Israel off the map." One Iranian writer calls it "the rumor of the century." Certainly it's central to the whole disinformation program.
2006
In May 2006, Laura Rozen reported in the Los Angeles Times that the Office of Special Plans had been reincarnated as the "Office of Iranian Affairs" at the Pentagon, once again under Abram Shulsky and now reporting to none other than Elizabeth Cheney, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, and daughter of the Vice President. In the same month Canada's National Post published a story alleging that the Iranian Majlis (Parliament) had passed a law establishing "separate dress codes for religious minorities, Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians, who will have to adopt distinct colour schemes to make them identifiable in public. The new codes would enable Muslims to easily recognize non-Muslims so that they can avoid shaking hands with them by mistake, and thus becoming najis (unclean)." It appeared next to a 1935 photo of a Jewish businessman in Germany with the yellow Star of David badge sewn onto his coat, as required by Nazi law at the time. It was authored by Iranian-American Amir Taheri, chief editor of Iran's daily Kayhan (propaganda arm of the Shah's dictatorship) from 1972-1979, National Review contributor, and well-paid speaker for the warmongering neocon Benador Associates PR firm.
The story was picked up by UPI and reproduced in Rupert Murdoch's New York Post and Jerusalem Post, and elsewhere, and represented as fact by U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack. "Despicable," declared McCormack, adding that Iran was just like "Germany under Hitler." "This is reminiscent of the Holocaust," echoed Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. "Iran is moving closer and closer to the ideology of the Nazis." But the story was exposed as a hoax by the Iranian ambassador to Canada, and the Jewish representative in the Iranian Majlis among others and retracted by the National Post the day following its publication.
(In July, following discussions with the Bush-Cheney administration, Israel once again invaded Lebanon. Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported that "The White House was. . . focused on stripping Hezbollah of its missiles, because, if there was to be a military option against Iran's nuclear facilities, it had to get rid of the weapons that Hezbollah could use in a potential retaliation at Israel." A former intelligence officer told Hersh, "We told Israel, 'Look, if you guys have to go, we're behind you all the way. But we think it should be sooner rather than later-the longer you wait, the less time we have to evaluate and plan for Iran before Bush gets out of office.'" The invasion, followed by withdrawal the next month, did not accomplish this objective but rather strengthened Iran ally Hizbollah politically.)
On August 6, Murdoch's Sunday Times of London reported that Iran had been plotting to obtain large amounts of uranium from the Congo. But Raw Story cited a source close to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) who called the story "highly unlikely" and "not well researched." (The same Raw Story report noted that Abram Shulsky is still briefing Cheney regularly about Iran, suggesting a connection between the Times article and the neocon apparatus in Washington.)
As Israeli advocates of a U.S. attack on Iran became increasingly anxious at the American delay, they ratcheted up the rhetoric, accusing Iran of planning what Hitler failed to accomplish: the annihilation of Jewry. (There are in fact at least 25,000 Iranian Jews, whose roots go back 2500 years, and one Jewish representative in the Majlis.) In December, former Israeli Prime Minister and Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu summoned seventy foreign diplomats in Israel to a meeting to pressure them to join Israel in efforts to stop Iran's nuclear program. According to a report in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, the meeting was "the first event in an international public relations campaign. It will include a proposal to file a complaint in the International Court of Justice against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for war crimes, and his plans to commit genocide will be presented."
"In 1938," Netanyahu averred, "Hitler didn't say he wanted to destroy [the Jews]; Ahmadinejad is saying clearly that this is his intention, and we aren't even shouting. At least call it a crime against humanity. We must make the world see that the issue here is a program for genocide." Outgoing US UN Ambassador John Bolton called on the UN International Court of Criminal Justice to charge Ahmadinejad with "inciting genocide." "It's time to take action," Bolton told a Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations symposium. "We're being given early warning, unambiguously, on what his intentions are." This is of course the most grandiose piece of disinformation inflicted on the public to date, with a shock value topping the "mushroom cloud over New York City" image used to sell the war on Iraq.
On December 6 the Iraq Study Group (Baker-Hamilton Commission) recommended to the president that he initiate a gradual withdrawal from Iraq and consult with Iraq's neighbors including Iran to stabilize the country. Towards the end of the month several Iranians including two invited into the country by Iraqi Vice President Jalal Talabani were detained by U.S. forces, prompting criticism from the Iraqi puppet regime itself. The U.S. accused the detained of complicity in attacks on U.S. or "Coalition" troops. There was at year end a subtle shift of emphasis in the broad propaganda program from Iran's nuclear activities to its involvement in American deaths.
2007
On January 10, in a much awaited response to the Commission recommendations Bush announced that he would instead escalate the war and adopt an even more confrontational posture towards Iran. He declared (without evidence) that the Islamic Republic was "providing material support for attacks on American troops" and allowing "terrorists and insurgents" to use its territory "to move in and out of Iraq." "We will disrupt the attacks on our forces," he vowed. "We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran. . . and we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq."
On January 11, U.S.-led forces entered a building in the Kurdish city of Irbil, which both Iranian and Iraqi officials regard as an Iranian consulate flying the Iranian flag, and apprehended 6 Iranians. "I think it's instructive," declared Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "that in the last couple of weeks two of those raids that we conducted to go after these folks that are providing these kinds of weapons [EFP]---two of those raids had policed up Iranians. So it is clear that the Iranians are complicit in providing weapons."
It's actually not clear at all, and a planned announcement to provide details had to be delayed three weeks as the administration conceded that it faced a credibility problem. "In the old days," said an unnamed administration official, "if the U.S. government had come out and said, 'we've got this, here's our assessment,' reasonable people would have taken it at face value. That's never going to happen again." But in Baghdad on February 12 U.S. officials briefed reporters on the issue of Iranian support for Iraqi insurgents. The journalists, including those from Associated Press, The New York Times, and Reuters all attended having agreed to the condition that none of the three U.S. officials taking part could be named or even closely described. All cameras and recording devices, including cellphones, were banned from the briefing room.
The anonymous officials at this spookiest of press briefings announced that the Islamic Republican Guard Corps-Quds Force, "believed to be" controlled by Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, had been delivering IFP to Iraq since 2004. The Washington Post thus reported: "Iranian security forces, taking orders from the 'highest levels' of the Iranian government, are funneling sophisticated explosives to extremist groups in Iraq, and the weapons have grown increasingly deadly for U.S.-led troops over the past two years, senior defense officials said Sunday in Baghdad. Three defense officials from the U.S.-led Multi-National Force in Baghdad, laid out for reporters what they described as a 'growing body of evidence' that Iran is manufacturing and exporting into Iraq the armor piercing explosives, known as 'explosively formed penetrators,' or EFPs, that have killed more than 170 coalition troops, and wounded more than 620 others, in the past two years." The New York Times headlined the Iranian arms link story two days in a row, while editors noted that the case was weak, and the timing of the announcement suspicious.
The Iraqi (puppet) deputy foreign minister himself questioned the charges. Labeed M. Abbawi told the Washington Post, that the Iraqi government remained in the dark. "It is difficult for us here in the diplomatic circles," he declared, "just to accept whatever the American forces say is evidence. If they have anything really conclusive, then they should come out and say it openly, then we will pick it up from there and use diplomatic channels" to discuss it with Iran. Various Iraqi officials urged the U.S. not to pursue its quarrel with Iran on their turf. Meanwhile Gen. Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he did not know if the Iranian government itself was supplying EFP material to Iraqis. "That [Baghdad report] does not translate that the Iranian Government, for sure, is directly involved in doing this," he stated. "What it does say is that things made in Iran are being used in Iraq to kill coalition soldiers."
But Bush himself in his February 14 news conference told reporters that "we know that" the Quds Force was supplying weapons, and that the Quds Force is part of the Iranian government. "That's a known," he declared. "Whether Ahmadinejad ordered the Quds Force to do this, I don't think we know. But we do know that they're there and I intend to do something about it. And I've asked our commanders to do something about it. And we're going to protect our troops."
Israeli officials (who surely have Washington's ear) continue to insist that there's no time to waste to end the genocidal threat that is Iran. Uri Lubrani, a former Israeli ambassador to the Shah's Iran and now a senior advisor to Defense Minister Amir Peretz, recently told the Jewish Agency's Board of Governors that the US "does not understand the threat and has not done enough," adding that the Americans and Europeans "must be shaken awake." Americans, that is to say, must be made to fear, must be disabused of their commonsense and moral qualms, must be compelled to share the paranoia.
The bland observation of Nazi Hermann Goering, made during the Nuremburg trials, bears frequent repeating. "The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country." All the above forms a case that Iran, a developing country, is attacking the United States of America, the world's sole superpower, and Israel, a country close to many Americans' hearts. All the above makes Iran the aggressor, the U.S. and Israel the victims. No matter that Iran has never in modern times attacked another nation, or that an attack on the U.S. or Israel would result in horrific consequences for the Islamic Republic.
The disinformation campaign eschews logic, gambling that fear alone will produce popular support. It anticipates the eventual discovery of its lies and charades, but calculates that the attainment of its heroic ends will make any embarrassment worth the effort. So what if following the nuking of Iran, after the rubble's cleared, we discover that Iran had no military nuclear program? Maybe there will be no evidence of anything at all left anyway. Maybe that's the radiant beauty of the plan.
Don't expect the neocons urging the Iran attack to apologize after the event, not matter how catastrophic the consequences. Consider Douglas Feith's response to the report by the Pentagon's inspector general that his Office of Special Plans peddled allegations about Iraq "not supported by the available intelligence" in order to get the U.S. into a bloody war.
"All of that was wrong, wasn't it?" Feith was recently asked by Chris Wallace in the most neocon-friendly environment imaginable, Fox News studio.
"No, not at all," Feith responded. "There was substantial intelligence. . . . There was a lot of information out there."
A lot of information indeed. Lots of stuff to believe and fear. That's how it works, again and again, in the history of U.S. imperialism. From the imaginary Spanish sinking of the USS Maine to the Gulf of Tonkin Incident to Saddam Hussein's WMD to Iran's plans for genocide. Disinformation has a long proud history of working well when deployed by amoral, unscrupulous, maybe insane men holding state power. Will it work once more?
Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's merciless chronicle of the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Imperial Crusades.
http://www.counterpunch.org/leupp02172007.html
