The White House Erection for Iran

Aijaz Ahmad, Senior News Analyst for the Real News Network, interprets what International Atomic Energy Agency Mr. ElBaradei is now reporting about Iran's nuclear program, a picture far different from the skewed fear-mongering propaganda that the White House and Israel continue to pump out against Iran. The White House right now is trying to bribe and bully the Security Council into implementing yet another round of sanctions against Iran, despite the fact that ElBaradei's latest report is rather favorable to Iran.

It is very clear that the Neocon movement internationally, in the United States, Great Britain, now France as well with Nicolas Sarkozy in power, and of course in Israel, are obsessed with destroying an independent Iran and reinstalling a Western puppet government. That is high on their agenda, so the last thing they are going to listen to is anything positive said about Iran. Instead, Iran is the object of daily demonization, depicted as a cross between the Third Reich and the old Soviet Union, a threat to the entire world, and one whose imaginery nuclear missiles must be defended against by a missile shield that extends to the borders of Russia.

Of course the Russians are not amused, for they look at this planned missile shield as transparent hostility against them as well, so against this growing great power conflict, it is doubtful that Russia or China, both of whom continue to increase their business ties to Iran daily, will go along with any serious new sanctions. They may vote for some listless decree after Washington has made a backroom deal, but it is doubtful that severe sanctions can be implemented, which would be a further step toward war, the ultimate obscenity.

Democracy Now Interview with Gareth Porter on US Navy-Iran Incident

One of the Iranian Patrol Boats in the so-called "provocation" against the US Navy (source)


Here is a poignant interview by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, on audio and in print, of veteran reporter and historian Gareth Porter discussing the US Navy/Iranian Naval incident of Sunday morning, January 6, 2008. It includes the Arnold Schwarzenegger-type deep voice threatening in a rather un-Iranian accent that "You will explode after a few minutes".

Porter points out that the commander of the 5th Fleet, Vice Admiral Kevin Cosgriff has made it clear that his "ships were never in danger, that they never believed they were in danger, and that they were never close to firing on the Iranian boats."

So what we have been witnessing is YELLOW JOURNALISM at its worst by the major media, who blew this event up into a near sea-battle, with the Navy "seconds away" from firing on the Iranians, without doing the simplest fact-checking or corroborating. The media mindlessly began dragging us down the rabbit-hole again into the world of make-believe. This is why our country is in such a wretched state. The truth gets slaughtered daily by the mass media. If things had gone wrong enough over this incident, we could be at war with Iran today, spilling blood and treasure on both sides by the bucketful. Ready to sacrifice another half a trillion dollars and thousands of loved-ones to the dogs of war again?

And the big question is out of all this, whose voice issued the Terminator-type threat that sent the media into a feeding frenzy?

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You can listen to the transcript of the interview by clicking here.


Here is the printed transcript:

January 11, 2008

Gareth Porter: Official Version of U.S.-Iranian Naval Incident Starts to Unravel
The United States has lodged a formal diplomatic protest against Iran for its “provocation” in the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday morning. But new information reveals that the alleged Iranian threat to American naval vessels may have been blown out of proportion. We speak to investigative historian Gareth Porter. [includes rush transcript]

Guest:

Gareth Porter, Investigative historian specializing in U.S. national security policy. He writes regularly on Iran for the Inter Press Service. His latest book is called “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam.”

JUAN GONZALEZ: The United States has lodged a formal diplomatic protest against Iran for its “provocation” in the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday morning. But new information reveals that the alleged Iranian threat to American naval vessels in the Strait might have been blown out of proportion.


On Tuesday, the Pentagon released video of Iranian patrol boats approaching American warships and an audio recording of a direct threat in English. The accented voice says, “I am coming to you,” and then adds, “You will explode after a few minutes.”


IRANIAN VOICE: I am coming to you.


US NAVAL OFFICER: Inbound small craft, you’re approaching a coalition warship operating in international waters. Your identity is not know. Your intentions are unclear. You’re sailing into danger and may be subject to defensive measures. Request you establish communications now or alter your course immediately to remain clear. Request you alter course immediately to remain clear.


IRANIAN VOICE: You will explode after a few minutes.


US NAVAL OFFICER: “You will explode after a few minutes.”



JUAN GONZALEZ: That was an audio recording released by the Pentagon along with the video of the encounter between American warships and Iranian patrol boats in the Strait of Hormuz.


But a Navy spokesperson told ABC News Thursday that the threat might not have come from the Iranian patrol boats, but from the shore or another ship passing by. The spokesperson added, “I guess we’re not saying that it absolutely came from the boats, but we’re not saying it absolutely didn’t.”


Iran has denied all allegations of a confrontation and released its own video of the encounter. This is an excerpt of the Iranian video broadcast on Thursday showing what seems to be a routine exchange between an Iranian Navy patrol boat and the American ship.


IRANIAN NAVAL PATROLMAN: Coalition warship 73, this is Iranian Navy patrol boat. Request side number [inaudible] operating in the area this time. Over.


US NAVAL OFFICER: This is coalition warship 73. I’m operating in international waters.



AMY GOODMAN: Gareth Porter is a historian and national security policy analyst. His latest article for IPS News analyzes how the official US version of the naval incident has begun to unravel. He joins us now from Washington, D.C. Gareth Porter, welcome.


GARETH PORTER: Good morning, Amy.


AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about everything that happened from Sunday, what President Bush said, what the Pentagon was alleging, and now what we understand?


GARETH PORTER: Well, this alleged crisis or confrontation on the high seas is really much less than what met the eyes of the American public as it was reported by news media. And the story really began from leaks from the Pentagon. I mean, there were Pentagon officials apparently calling reporters and telling them that something had happened in the Strait of Hormuz, which represented a threat to American ships and that there was a near battle on the high seas. The way it was described to reporters, it was made to appear to be a major threat to the ships and a major threat of war. And that’s the way it was covered by CNN, by CBS and other networks, as well as by print media.


Then I think the next major thing that happened was a briefing by the commander of the 5th fleet in Bahrain, the Vice Admiral Kevin Cosgriff, which is very interesting. If you look carefully at the transcript, which was not reported accurately by the media, or not reported at all practically, the commander—or rather, Vice Admiral Cosgriff actually makes it clear that the ships were never in danger, that they never believed they were in danger, and that they were never close to firing on the Iranian boats. And this is the heart of what actually happened, which was never reported by the US media.


So I think that the major thing to really keep in mind about this is that it was blown up into a semi-crisis by the Pentagon and that the media followed along very supinely. And I must say this is perhaps the worst—the most egregious case of sensationalist journalism in the service of the interests of the Pentagon, the Bush administration, that I have seen so far.


JUAN GONZALEZ: And, Gareth Porter, there have been some reports about the apparent splicing of audio onto the actual video that appear to be from two different sources. Could you talk about that?


GARETH PORTER: Well, that’s right. I mean, we don’t yet know exactly what the sequence of events was in this incident. We don’t know exactly when the voices that we hear making what appear to be a threat to the American ships, where—when that occurred in the sequence of events in this incident. And it seems very possible that indeed the Pentagon did splice into the recording, the audio recording of the incident, the two bits of messages from a mysterious voice in a way that made it appear to occur in response to the initial communication from the US ship to the Iranian boats. And it seems very possible that, in fact, those voices came at some other point during this twenty-minute incident.


So this is something that really deserves to be scrutinized and, in fact, investigated by Congress, because of the significance, in the larger sense, of a potential major fabrication of evidence in order to make a political point by the Bush administration.


AMY GOODMAN: Gareth Porter, what about the timing of this, on the eve of President Bush’s visit to the Middle East?


GARETH PORTER: Well, of course, there’s no doubt that the motivation for the Pentagon to blow this incident up was precisely the timing of President Bush leaving on a trip to the Middle East, in which one of his major purposes was to try to keep together a coalition of Arab states, which—a very, very loose and shaky coalition to oppose Iran and to support, hopefully, according to the administration’s policy, the US pressure on Iran through diplomatic and financial means, through the Security Council and through its allies in Europe. So this is definitely part of the reason, very clearly, that what was a very minor incident which did not threaten US ships, as far as we can tell from all the evidence so far, was turned into what was presented as a confrontation and a threat of war.


JUAN GONZALEZ: Gareth Porter, I’d like to ask you, I was watching the Republican debate last night on Fox News and was astonished to see one of the moderators spend quite a bit of time on this topic, questioning every one of the candidates as to whether they believe the Navy commander on the scene did the right thing by not blowing the Iranian boats out of the water. Surprisingly, only Ron Paul, the maverick, even questioned some of the facts of the incident as reported. Your response to this suddenly becoming a topic for the presidential debates?


GARETH PORTER: Well, I think it’s astonishing that you have this incident being regarded as a test of whether the United States is being belligerent enough, when the commanders of the ships themselves clearly did not regard this as a threat to the safety of their ships. This is the point, again, that the commander of the 5th fleet made very clearly. He was asked by reporters whether the commanders were close to firing on the Iranian ships, and he said, “No, that was not the case,” that at no point were they about to fire on the ships and that they did not feel threatened by the Iranian boats. Bear in mind, what has not been reported by the media, that these are essentially small speedboats that are at most armed with machine guns, not with any weapons that were capable of harming those ships.


AMY GOODMAN: Gareth Porter, this also comes right at the time that new documents have—newly declassified documents have revealed that the Johnson administration faked the Gulf of Tonkin incident to escalate the war in Vietnam, to provide a pretext for increased bombing and increased troops there.


GARETH PORTER: Well, you know, this is an incident—the Gulf of Tonkin incident and the policy shenanigans surrounding it are something that I wrote about in my book, Perils of Dominance, about the US involvement in the Vietnam conflict. And what actually happened regarding the Gulf of Tonkin was that the ships, because of anxiety on the part of the crew of these ships in the Gulf of Tonkin, they thought they were under fire originally. They sent back messages saying that.


But within a matter of a couple of hours, the commander of the flotilla had decided that they had been mistaken, and he passed that message on to the Pentagon, and the Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara was informed by early afternoon on the same day. And it is my interpretation, based on the evidence, that he failed—he refused to inform President Johnson of that fact, and that’s why Johnson went ahead with a decision to bomb North Vietnam, which had already been made at noontime.


JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to ask you, going back to the incident also, one of the key contradictions now that have surfaced between the initial reports and certainly after the Iranian release of their own video is that initially the public was told that these were Revolutionary Guard boats, and now the Iranian government has said no, that they were actually boats of the Iranian Navy, and they clearly identified themselves as such.


GARETH PORTER: I do not know what the provenance of these Iranian boats was, whether it was IRGC or Iranian Navy. We do have pictures, photographs of the IRGC small speedboats that clearly resemble the boats that are depicted—at least one of them—depicted in the video. But from the evidence that we have right now, it’s really impossible to say what—whether these boats belonged to be on IRGC or not. It is the case, however, that the IRGC does have, apparently, the primary responsibility to patrol in this area of the gulf. I heard yesterday a former commander of the IRGC state very clearly that they do in fact have the primary responsibility to patrol in that area. So it’s certainly the—it’s a possibility, a good possibility, that these were IRGC boats.


AMY GOODMAN: Gareth Porter, I want to thank you for being with us, investigative historian, writes for Inter Press Service. His latest book is called Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam.

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Loose Lips Sink Fascist Ships

From the English Sunday Mail, Sept 30, 2007:

British MPs were shocked when White House foreign policy adviser Debra Cagan told them: "I hate all Iranians." When confirming the comment one of the six MPs said: "She is very forceful and some of my colleagues were intimidated by her muscular style." (For full article, click here)

Red leather coat, Iron Cross-type jewelry, slicked-back hair and aquiline features, White House foreign policy advisor Debra Cagan looks like a cariature of a Gestapo agent from the 1940s, except she should have a black coat on to totally replicate the stereotype. Actually red and black were the Nazi colors. How interesting that she attires herself like this and has asides about hating all Iranians. This just reaffirms what I have been saying for several years, that the forces running our government have pretensions to be the Fourth Reich, and have substituted the hatred of Arabs and Moslems, indeed all the perceived inferior races, Blacks included, for the Nazi hatred of Jews, Gypsies and Slavs. This is the subtext going on beneath much of the official rhetoric.

The War on Terror is, in the psychological depths, a crusade against Islam and anchored in racial hatred of other races centered in the Middle East and Western Asia. You have only to research some of the ditties being sung in US Army and Marine Corps Boot Camps for this to be rammed home to your consciousness. It was a similar situation in Vietnam. Gooks then, Sandniggers now, both wars fueled by race hatred.

Ironically, Iran is Persian and of Aryan stock historically, the same Aryan ancestry that the Nazis idealized into blonde, blue-eyed Nordics.

The Demon Persian of Tehran Does New York

Wow, what an orgy of emotion was unleashed in New York City Monday, most of it rather nasty and negative, when President Ahmadinejad of Iran arrived to begin his Big Apple itnerary, which included a speaking engagement at Columbia University yesterday (where its president rudely attacked his guest for several minutes as an introduction) and a speech at the United Nations today, Tuesday September 25. AIPAC and other pro-Israel organizations brought out their phalanxes of troops and ratcheted up the propaganda machinery to try to will him off the planet, which didn't work, and they probably would have torn him to pieces if there hadn't been lots of cops protecting the motor entourage to boot. For Ahmadinejad is, you see, the Demon Persian of Tehran, this image largely based on the infamous statement attributed to him that Israel should be "wiped off the map".

Unfortunately, it is hopelessly lost on those locked into total hatred of the man that this was never what he said. The original, above diabolical phrase was actually a terrible translation of what he had recited in Farsi (Persian language). He had originally quoted an old Ayatollah Khomeini statement that I am now going to let Arash Norouzi enlighen us about from his article dated January 18, 2007. Here is the original statement and Norouzi's commentary.

"Imam ghoft een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad."

That passage will mean nothing to most people, but one word might ring a bell: rezhim-e. It is the word "Regime", pronounced just like the English word with an extra "eh" sound at the end. Ahmadinejad did not refer to Israel the country or Israel the land mass, but the Israeli regime. This is a vastly significant distinction, as one cannot wipe a regime off the map. Ahmadinejad does not even refer to Israel by name, he instead uses the specific phrase "rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods" (regime occupying Jerusalem).

So this raises the question.. what exactly did he want "wiped from the map"? The answer is: nothing. That's because the word "map" was never used. The Persian word for map, "nagsheh", is not contained anywhere in his original farsi quote, or, for that matter, anywhere in his entire speech. Nor was the western phrase "wipe out" ever said. Yet we are led to believe that Iran's President threatened to "wipe Israel off the map", despite never having uttered the words "map", "wipe out" or even "Israel".


THE PROOF:

The full quote translated directly to English:

"The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time".

Word by word translation:

Imam (Khomeini) ghoft (said) een (this) rezhim-e (regime) ishghalgar-e (occupying) qods (Jerusalem) bayad (must) az safheh-ye ruzgar (from page of time) mahv shavad (vanish from). (Reference: click here)

So, we have been brought to the edge of war with Iran based largely on, as with Iraq, Neocon-hyped bullshit like this. To the global, maniacal Neocon movement, this of course doesn't matter. Any excuse will do to attack Iran. The Cheney faction in the White House and the Israeli Right-wing, which basically controls Israel these days, both simply want a cowed and broken Iran smoldering in ruins, just as Rome continuously had it in for Carthage in ancient times. Rome ultimately destroyed the entire city of Carthage after decades and decades of war and salted all its farming fields so crops would not grow again.

However, it would be naive not to think that Iran is a rival of Israel, but a rival not because it is a pseudo-Nazi enclave of not-so-blond Aryans who fanatically hate Jews (they have their own Jewish population which is not being oppressed), but basically because it supports the cause of Moslem Palestinians trapped in the giant concentration camp called Palestine, as well as being in strong solidarity with the large Shiite Moslem faction in Lebanon, whose spokesgroup is Hezbollah.

Just as most Jews around the world tend to act in solidarity when Israel is attacked, is it surprising that most Moslems tend to act in solidarity when Palestine or Lebanon are attacked? Of course not! The trick then is to stop the polarization between these two largely religiously-defined bodies, to get everyone to learn to live as harmonious neighbors, so that the Middle East is precisely not divided into armed camps. That means dialogue, dialogue, dialogue, trade, trade, trade, exchanges of students, culture, literature, and on and on.

Moreover, it is impossible for one side to vanquish the other militarily and live happily ever after atop a large pile of skulls and bones, because violence just sets mighty new problems in motion. You know, bad Karma, and all that.

Enough said now from my point of view. At this point I want to let you share the perspective of one of the most astute and well-sourced writers on the planet about what just transpired in New York with President Ahmadinejad. I am referring to Pepe Escobar, the ROVING EYE reporter for the widely read Asia Times, who just wrote a new piece entitled:

The Roving Eye:

'Hitler' does New York

By Pepe Escobar

Here are some excerpts from Escobar's article. I am inserting more than I would normally, but this is an exceptional situation, what with war against Iran a few stupid mistakes away. Note that Escobar is pointing out the larger, positive impact the Iranian President is making globally from this trip, no matter how many tomatoes may have hit him here in New York. I quote:

[The new "Hitler", at least for a while, has lodged in a prosaic midtown Manhattan hotel. Contrary to a plethora of demonizing myths, this Persian werewolf did not evade his abode to eat kids for breakfast in Central Park. Instead, he turned on a carefully calibrated public relations charm offensive. Whatever his polemical views, for a now-seasoned head of state like Ahmadinejad to turn astonishing US disinformation on Iran, the Middle East and US foreign policy for his own advantage ended up as a string of slam-dunks.

Articulate, evasive, manipulative, the Iranian president - even lost in translation -was especially skillful in turning US corporate media's hysteria upside down consistently to paint those in the administration of President George W Bush as incorrigible warmongers. Both at the National Press Club, via video-conference, and live at Columbia University, Ahmadinejad even had the luxury of joking about fabled Western "freedom of information" - as so many are still "trying to prevent people from talking".

He scored major points among the target audience that really matters: worldwide Muslim public opinion. Contrasting with a plethora of corrupt Arab leaders, Ahmadinejad has been carefully positioning himself as a Muslim folk hero capable of standing up to Western arrogance and defending the rights of the weak (the Palestinians). The way he deflected US ire on the enemy's own turf will only add to his standing.....

He was also clever in preempting ear-splitting rumors of a next war: "Talk about war is basically a propaganda tool." One of his key points may not have made an impact in the US, but resonated widely around the world, and not only in the Muslim street: "We oppose the way the US government tries to rule the world"; there are "more humane methods of establishing peace". He assured that no Iranian weapons are flowing into Iraq, adding that "regional countries in the Middle East don't need outside interference".

On uranium enrichment, he repeatedly stressed that it is Iran's right, as a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, to conduct a "legal" and "peaceful" nuclear program. "Why should a nation depend on another?" But if the US would engage in peace talks, so would Iran: "International law is equal to everyone." As for the US and France, they "are not the world" - a reference to both the Bush administration's and the French saber-rattling. "France is a very cultured society, it would not support war." Humanitarian imperialist French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner was summarily brushed aside: he needs to attain "higher maturity".

On Israel, Ahmadinejad said, "We do not recognize a regime based on discrimination, occupation and expansionism," and he said that country "last week attacked Syria and last year attacked Lebanon"; pretty much what most of the Middle East agrees with. He may have granted that the Holocaust did take place, but the world needs "more research on it". The Holocaust is not his main point: it always serves as an intro to one of his key themes - why should the Palestinians pay the price for something that happened in Europe? He said he wanted a "clear" answer. No one deigned to provide it.....

US corporate media's treatment of the new "Hitler" seemed to have been scripted by the same ghostwriter lodged in the same (White) House. On 60 Minutes, the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) was firing on all cylinders for a casus belli - from "There's no doubt Iran is providing the IEDs" (improvised explosive devices, in Iraq) to "Why don't you just stop denying that you're building a nuclear bomb?" Ahmadinejad was bemused, to say the least. CNN for its part could not resist proclaiming, "His state even sponsors terrorism ... in some cases even against US troops in Iraq."

Ahmadinejad succinctly unveiled to the Associated Press the reasons for so much warmongering - in a way that even a kid would understand: "I believe that some of the talk in this regard arises first of all from anger. Secondly, it serves the electoral purposes domestically in this country. Third, it serves as a cover for policy failures over Iraq."

An even more appalling measure of Western arrogance - also speaking volumes about "us" when confronted with the incomprehensible "other" - is the diatribe with which the president of Columbia University, Lee Bollinger, chose to "greet" his guest, a head of state. Bollinger, supposedly an academic, spoke about confronting "the mind of evil". His crass behavior got him 15 minutes of fame. Were President Bush to be greeted in the same manner in any university in the developing world - and motives would abound also to qualify him as a "cruel, petty dictator" - the Pentagon would have instantly switched to let's-bomb-them-with-democracy mode.

Ahmadinejad, to his credit, played it cool. Stressing, in a quirky fashion, his "academic" credentials, he unleashed a poetic rant on "science as a divine gift" just to plunge once again into the Palestinian tragedy. He stressed how Iran "is friendly with the Jewish people" - which is a fact (at least 30,000 Jews live undisturbed in Iran). Then back to the key point: Why are the Palestinians paying the price for something they had nothing to do with? Iran has a "humanitarian proposal" to solve the problem - a referendum where Palestinians would choose their own political destiny.

In the absence of informed debate, Ahmadinejad stressed his points the way he wanted to. Iran does not need a nuclear bomb. Iran does not want to manufacture a nuclear bomb. But telling other countries what they can and cannot do is another matter entirely. He is more than aware that the nuclear dossier is "a political issue" - a question of "two or three powers who think they can monopolize science and knowledge". It's up to a sovereign Iran to decide whether it needs nuclear fuel. "Why should we need fuel from you? You don't even give us spare parts for aircraft."

He also stressed that Iran is a victim of terrorism - a reference to the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, a micro-terrorist group by any other name, formerly protected by Saddam, now supported by the Bush administration; but he was also referring to destabilizing black ops by US special forces in the strategically crucial provinces of Khuzestan and Balochistan.

Ahmadinejad was not questioned in detail on internal repression, intimidation of independent journalists, what his Interior Ministry is up to, from a crackdown on women not wearing the veil properly to more sinister, unsubstantiated "collaboration with America" charges. When executions were mentioned, he quipped, "Don't you have capital punishment in the US?" - and defended them on the ground that these were drug smugglers.

Nobody questioned him on his disastrous economic policies, on the competence of his ministers, on an embryonic pact between Iran and Saudi Arabia to prevent another war in the Middle East, on the upcoming, pivotal summit of the Caspian littoral states in Tehran where Ahmadinejad, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Vladimir Putin will discuss what happens next - from technical aspects of Iran's nuclear program to Bush's warmongering impetus. Anyway, Ahmadinejad made it clear: Iran is "ready to negotiate with all countries". The same could not be said about the Bush White House........]

To read Escobar's entire article, please click here.