Glenn Greenwald: Should any Iraq lessons be applied to Iran?
[Glenn Greenwald, previously a constitutional law and civil rights litigator, is the author of two New York Times Bestselling books.]
Anonymous Obama officials yesterday dictated to Helene Cooper and Mark Mazzetti of The New York Times their version of the dramatic and exciting behind-the-scenes events that led to the administration's announcement this week about Iran's nuclear facility -- a late-night strategy session; secret consultation with allies; high-level diplomatic wrangling; the White House's decision to "outflank the Iranians." Cooper and Mazzetti faithfully wrote down everything they were told and produced this breathless front-page article (though, to their credit, they noted the motive of their anonymous sources: "all of whom want the story known to help support their case against Iran"). Perhaps the most meaningful paragraphs came at the very end:
The Chinese, one administration official said, were more skeptical, and said they wanted to look at the intelligence, and to see what international inspectors said when they investigated.
The lessons of the Iraq war still lingered.
"They don’t want to buy a pig in a poke," the senior administration official said.
That's rational, isn't it? Shouldn't the American media infuse its coverage with some of that same skepticism, along with a similar desire to see actual evidence to support the claims being made? Isn't that exactly the lesson every rational person should have learned from the Iraq War? Identically, don't the two decades worth of false warnings about how Iran would have a nuclear bomb in "a couple of years" if we did not act by themselves warrant a demand for evidence before mindlessly embracing these claims?
Obviously, the Chinese have their own self-interested motives when it comes to Iran. And although the official position of the American intelligence community remains that Iran is not attempting to develop a nuclear bomb, it would hardly be a shock (or even irrational) if they did harbor that ambition. As the long list of nuclear states demonstrate -- which ironically includes all of the ones expressing such anger over Iran -- many governments believe, rationally, that their security will be enhanced if they obtain one. After all, the U.S. has more or less explicitly stated that it wants to prevent other nations from obtaining a nuclear weapon to ensure we can still attack them if we choose. Under those circumstances, it's not hard to believe that countries like Iran want to obtain nuclear weapons. It would be more surprising if they didn't.
Still, the accusations issuing about Iran are unaccompanied by evidence and raise at least as many question as they answer. Yet here we have, yet again, inflammatory (and, in many eyes, war-justifying) accusations made against an American Enemy, and the American establishment media seems capable of nothing other than mindlessly repeating it, asking no real questions, and doing little other than fueling the fire.
By contrast, The Washington Independent's Spencer Ackerman spent all day yesterday diligently and critically grappling with the question of whether Iran even breached any of its obligations under the NPT (he quotes an analyst with the Federation of American Scientists’ Strategic Security Program who points out out that the NPT requires notification to the IAEA no less than 6 months before a facility is operational -- which Iran plainly did -- but also notes there may be non-public Iran/IAEA agreements requiring earlier notification). Either way, everyone agrees that -- despite all the rhetoric about Iran getting caught red-handed -- it was Iran itself which notified the IAEA of this facility; the facility is far from operational; and there's no evidence that it contains or even can produce weapons-grade material. Until there's an IAEA inspection -- which Iran said it would permit -- it's impossible to know the true purpose and capabilities of this facility, which is the cause for the Chinese's skepticism and should cause skepticism among every thinking person, beginning with the American media. Can anyone point to any such skepticism anywhere? Listening to the media coverage, one would think that Iran just got caught sitting on a secret atomic bomb.
The reason such accusations deserve so much scrutiny is obvious: there is a substantial faction in our political culture which craves a military attack on Iran -- the same faction, more or less, that caused us to attack Iraq -- and will seize on anything to justify that...
Read entire article at Salon
Anonymous Obama officials yesterday dictated to Helene Cooper and Mark Mazzetti of The New York Times their version of the dramatic and exciting behind-the-scenes events that led to the administration's announcement this week about Iran's nuclear facility -- a late-night strategy session; secret consultation with allies; high-level diplomatic wrangling; the White House's decision to "outflank the Iranians." Cooper and Mazzetti faithfully wrote down everything they were told and produced this breathless front-page article (though, to their credit, they noted the motive of their anonymous sources: "all of whom want the story known to help support their case against Iran"). Perhaps the most meaningful paragraphs came at the very end:
The Chinese, one administration official said, were more skeptical, and said they wanted to look at the intelligence, and to see what international inspectors said when they investigated.
The lessons of the Iraq war still lingered.
"They don’t want to buy a pig in a poke," the senior administration official said.
That's rational, isn't it? Shouldn't the American media infuse its coverage with some of that same skepticism, along with a similar desire to see actual evidence to support the claims being made? Isn't that exactly the lesson every rational person should have learned from the Iraq War? Identically, don't the two decades worth of false warnings about how Iran would have a nuclear bomb in "a couple of years" if we did not act by themselves warrant a demand for evidence before mindlessly embracing these claims?
Obviously, the Chinese have their own self-interested motives when it comes to Iran. And although the official position of the American intelligence community remains that Iran is not attempting to develop a nuclear bomb, it would hardly be a shock (or even irrational) if they did harbor that ambition. As the long list of nuclear states demonstrate -- which ironically includes all of the ones expressing such anger over Iran -- many governments believe, rationally, that their security will be enhanced if they obtain one. After all, the U.S. has more or less explicitly stated that it wants to prevent other nations from obtaining a nuclear weapon to ensure we can still attack them if we choose. Under those circumstances, it's not hard to believe that countries like Iran want to obtain nuclear weapons. It would be more surprising if they didn't.
Still, the accusations issuing about Iran are unaccompanied by evidence and raise at least as many question as they answer. Yet here we have, yet again, inflammatory (and, in many eyes, war-justifying) accusations made against an American Enemy, and the American establishment media seems capable of nothing other than mindlessly repeating it, asking no real questions, and doing little other than fueling the fire.
By contrast, The Washington Independent's Spencer Ackerman spent all day yesterday diligently and critically grappling with the question of whether Iran even breached any of its obligations under the NPT (he quotes an analyst with the Federation of American Scientists’ Strategic Security Program who points out out that the NPT requires notification to the IAEA no less than 6 months before a facility is operational -- which Iran plainly did -- but also notes there may be non-public Iran/IAEA agreements requiring earlier notification). Either way, everyone agrees that -- despite all the rhetoric about Iran getting caught red-handed -- it was Iran itself which notified the IAEA of this facility; the facility is far from operational; and there's no evidence that it contains or even can produce weapons-grade material. Until there's an IAEA inspection -- which Iran said it would permit -- it's impossible to know the true purpose and capabilities of this facility, which is the cause for the Chinese's skepticism and should cause skepticism among every thinking person, beginning with the American media. Can anyone point to any such skepticism anywhere? Listening to the media coverage, one would think that Iran just got caught sitting on a secret atomic bomb.
The reason such accusations deserve so much scrutiny is obvious: there is a substantial faction in our political culture which craves a military attack on Iran -- the same faction, more or less, that caused us to attack Iraq -- and will seize on anything to justify that...