November, 16 2011, 10:56am EDT
Iran, Nukes and the Failure of Skepticism
Iraq all over again?
WASHINGTON
Much of the corporate media coverage of a new UN report on Iran strongly asserts that Iran is close to building nuclear weapons. But the International Atomic Energy Agency report does not actually arrive at that conclusion, and many critics contend that the speculations that are in the report are misguided.
A USA Today piece (11/9/11) was headlined "UN Agency Issues Red Alert Over Iran's Secret Nuke Program"--with the "red alert" hype coming from a source in the piece, Rep. Ed Royce (R.-Calif.). On CBS Evening News, Scott Pelley reported (11/7/11), "The U.N.'s nuclear agency is expected to report later this week that Iran is on the threshold of being able to build a nuclear bomb."
On ABC World News, anchor Diane Sawyer announced (11/8/11):
And now, a long-dreaded headline about Iran and nuclear weapons. After a decade of debating whether Iran would build one, a UN report says tonight they will, and it has begun.
ABC correspondent Jim Sciutto added that the IAEA found Iran has "been carrying out activities whose sole purpose can only be the development of a nuclear weapon." Sawyer closed the segment by pleading, "Anything else out there to prevent this, to stop it? Is it too late?" She added: "So much for Ahmadinejad claiming it was only nuclear power plants, always nuclear power plants."
On NBC's Today show (11/9/11), viewers were told that the "UN reported for the first time Tuesday that Iran is conducting secret tests with the sole purpose of building nuclear weapons."
"A dreaded headline on Iran," declared ABC This Week host Christiane Amanpour (11/13/11). "UN weapons inspectors reveal new evidence the country is working on a nuclear weapons device. Can the United States do anything to stop it now?"
An Associated Press piece (11/9/11) referred matter-of-factly to Iran being "on the brink of developing a nuclear warhead," and a Washington Post piece (11/14/11) about a Republican presidential debate mentioned ways to "deal with Iran's apparent nuclear weapons program." A USA Today story (11/14/11) referred to a "United Nations report confirming Iran's nuclear ambitions" and "the strongest finding yet that Iran is going ahead with a bombmaking program." In Time magazine, Joe Klein (11/21/11) wrote, "Even the UN's extremely cautious International Atomic Energy Agency now believes Iran is working on a nuclear weapon."
This rhetoric wildly overstates the actual findings of the IAEA report.
The first part of the agency's November 8 report declares--once again--that Iran is not transferring uranium for use in a military project.
The more explosive allegations that media are focusing on are contained in an annex that attempts to lay out evidence that has been circulating for years. The IAEA report stresses concern over allegations over past activities; very little of the report is dedicated to research that could be describing as ongoing. Indeed, the media is focusing primarily on the IAEA's speculation about what might be ongoing research that could be related to a military program.
But how definitive are the IAEA's findings? As columnist and University of Southern California chemical engineering professor Muhammad Sahimi wrote (Tehran Bureau, 11/9/11):
The most important part of the report deals with alleged work on high conventional explosives, not for conventional weapons, but supposedly for use in triggering a nuclear device. The report discusses in detail fast-functioning detonators, known as "exploding bridgewire detonators" (EBWs), which are needed in nuclear weapons. By the IAEA's own admission, Iran informed the agency in 2008 that it had developed EBWs for use in conventional and civilian applications.
Sahimi points out that the IAEA report admits that "there exist non-nuclear applications, albeit few, for detonators like EBWs." The IAEA report also focuses on design and computer modeling research that it suggests Iran may have pursued. The insinuation is that this research has nuclear dimensions, but there is no solid evidence that this is the case. As Sahimi wrote, some of the apparently worrisome computer modeling
could very well relate to Iran's conventional-warhead missile program that it has never hidden, but has in fact boasted about. Even the IAEA acknowledges such a possibility. The agency itself does not even allege that the enumerated activities are related to a nuclear warhead, but that "they are highly relevant."
Some media coverage suggested the strongest evidence came in the form of a Soviet scientist who allegedly helped Iran with crucial detonator research. The Washington Post (11/7/11) reported that the IAEA was focused on "a former Soviet weapons scientist who allegedly tutored Iranians over several years on building high-precision detonators of the kind used to trigger a nuclear chain reaction."
What the Post did not report was that the scientist in question, Vyacheslav Danilenko, is a well-known researcher in the field of nanodiamonds--the creation of synthetic diamonds that can be used for a variety of industrial pursuits, including oil drilling, an activity that produces the majority of Iran's exports. Inter Press Service reporter Gareth Porter (11/9/11) detailed Danilenko's decades of research in this field, which requires the large-scale detonation chambers that news reports suggest are possibly part of Iran's alleged nuclear weapons research program.
An early critique of the Post story was posted at the Moon of Alabama blog (11/7/11), which noted that Danilenko's nanodiamond research was indeed mentioned in the IAEA report--but missing from the Post's story. The reporter who wrote the Post piece, Joby Warrick, followed up on November 14 with an article focused Danilenko's research--including the background missing from the first piece. Warrick wrote:
Evidence is often ambiguous, as the same technology can sometimes have peaceful as well as military applications. In the case of Danilenko, the scientist's synthetic-diamonds business provided a plausible explanation for his extensive contacts with senior Iranian scientists over half a decade.
This time around, the Post included Danilenko denying that he had anything to do with a nuclear weapons program. But the paper seemed mostly unconvinced--calling his work, for example, "his diamond-making scheme."
As in the run-up to the Iraq War, it was certainly possible to report skeptically on the Iran intelligence. The Christian Science Monitor's Scott Peterson wrote an excellent report (11/9/11) that began:
The latest United Nations report on Iran's nuclear program may not be the "game changer" it was billed to be, as some nuclear experts raise doubts about the quality of evidence--and point to lack of proof of current nuclear weapons work.
The article quotes former IAEA inspector Robert Kelley, who is dismissive of the agency's analysis. And an NPR Morning Edition segment (11/9/11) began by noting that the agency's new report "was much anticipated, because advanced reporting suggested the IAEA had concluded definitively that Iran is engaged in a full-scale nuclear weapons program. Turns out the report does not say that."
Anyone wondering about the lessons learned from Iraq could find two newspaper editorials, both published November 10, instructive. The New York Times, under the headline "The Truth About Iran," called the IAEA report "chillingly comprehensive" and cheered the agency for standing firm: "The agency did not back down, and neither should anyone else." The Washington Post editorial began:
The International Atomic Energy Agency has now spelled out in detail what governments around the world have known for a long time: Iran's nuclear program has an explicit military dimension.
The paper declared that the IAEA report "ought to end serious debate about whether Tehran's program is for peaceful purposes."
The idea that a journalistic outlet would declare this debate over is profoundly troubling--and suggests that in the corporate media, few lessons have been learned from the Iraq debacle.
FAIR, the national media watch group, has been offering well-documented criticism of media bias and censorship since 1986. We work to invigorate the First Amendment by advocating for greater diversity in the press and by scrutinizing media practices that marginalize public interest, minority and dissenting viewpoints.
LATEST NEWS
'Yes, You Are,' Tlaib Tells Lawmaker Who Said Republicans Aren't 'Little Bitches' Doing Trump's Bidding
"This budget betrayal is the largest cut to Medicaid and food assistance in history to give billionaires a tax break," said the Michigan Democrat.
Jul 02, 2025
Progressive Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib on Wednesday clapped back at one of her Republican colleagues who suggested that the GOP effort to pass the so-called Big Beautiful Bill this week isn't in response to a directive from U.S. President Donald Trump, who has set a July 4 deadline.
“The president of the United States didn't give us an assignment. We're not a bunch of little bitches around here, OK? I'm a member of Congress. I represent almost 800,000 Wisconsinites," Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) told journalists near the back entrance to the House of Representatives chamber, according toPunchbowl News' Kenzie Nguyen.
Responding to Van Orden's claims on the social media platform X, Tlaib (D-Mich.) simply said, "Yes, he did, and yes, you are."
The Michigan Democrat also released a video explaining to constituents why she is voting "hell no" on the package, which would cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and strip an estimated 17 million Americans of their health insurance over the next decade while giving trillions of dollars in tax breaks to the ultrarich and corporations.
Tlaib wasn't the only House Democrat to notice the Republican's remarks. A fellow Wisconsinite, Congressman Mark Pocan, asked his followers on X, "Do you think Derrick Van Orden is right... that Congress is not a bunch of 'little bitches'?"
According toPolitico's Samuel Benson and Mike DeBonis, Van Orden's comment came in the context of confirming he would vote for the budget reconciliation package, despite some critiques. The congressman reportedly said: "So this bill will pass. Am I happy about everything? No, but there's a difference between compromise and capitulation. We're not capitulating. We're compromising."
His remarks to reporters, and the backlash, came as the House considered a version of the megabill passed by the Senate on Tuesday, with help from Vice President JD Vance. GOP leaders in the lower chamber are struggling to get it past a procedural hurdle due to opposition from Republican fiscal hawks—plus all Democrats, who oppose steep cuts to the social safety net.
To protest the Republican effort to send the bill to Trump's desk by Independence Day, House Democrats on Wednesday formed a procedural conga line offering an amendment that would block cuts to Medicaid and SNAP.
Multiple Democrats also took to the House floor to rail against the package, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who declared that "this bill is a deal with the devil. It explodes our national debt, it militarizes our entire economy, and it strips away healthcare and basic dignity of the American people. For what? To give Elon Musk a tax break and billionaires the greedy taking of our nation. We cannot stand for it, and we will not support it."
"You should be ashamed," Ocasio-Cortez told the chamber's Republicans.
As Common Dreamsreported earlier Wednesday, progressives outside of Congress are also working to block the bill. Advocacy organizations, including Indivisible, are urging Americans to call and email House Republicans and pressure them to oppose the package. The phone number for the House switchboard is 202-224-3121.
Keep ReadingShow Less
All Likud Ministers Urge Netanyahu to Annex Entire West Bank This Month
The 15 ministers said that Israel's "strategic partnership, backing, and support of the U.S. and President Donald Trump" make this a "propitious time" to formally steal most of Palestine.
Jul 02, 2025
All 15 Israeli government members representing Likud on Wednesday urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who leads the right-wing party—to annex the entire West Bank of Palestine before the end of the Knesset's summer session on July 27, citing support from U.S. President Donald Trump.
The ministers, along with Likud Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana, sent a letter to Netanyahu asserting that "this is the time to approve in government a decision to apply sovereignty" over Judea and Samaria, the biblical name for the West Bank, which includes East Jerusalem.
"Following the state of Israel's historic achievements in the face of Iran's Axis of Evil and its sympathizers, the task must be completed and the existential threat from within must be eliminated, to prevent another massacre in the heart of the country," the letter argues, referring to the recent 12-day war between Israel and Iran, in which the United States intervened by bombing Iranian nuclear sites.
"The strategic partnership, backing, and support of the U.S. and President Donald Trump have made it a propitious time to move forward with it now, and ensure Israel's security for generations," the ministers said. "The October 7 massacre proved that the doctrine of settlement blocs and the establishment of a Palestinian state in the remaining territory is an existential danger to Israel. It's time for sovereignty."
Asked during a Wednesday press briefing for reaction on the ministers' call to annex the West Bank, U.S. State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce replied, "I think that is specifically something that the White House would be able to answer for you, but I also know that our position regarding Israel... is that we stand with Israel and its decisions and how it views its own internal security."
Netanyahu is set to travel to Washington, D.C. next week to meet with Trump, despite an International Criminal Court warrant for the Israeli leader's arrest for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza including murder and forced starvation.
I asked State Dept spox Bruce about Israeli minister’s call to annex the occupied West Bank — she referred me to the WH, saying the US "stand with Israel and its decisions.”
I followed up asking if the two-state solution remains US policy, she said Trump is “realistic… Gaza is… pic.twitter.com/GdtN0tTDdy
— Rabia İclal Turan (@iclalturan) July 2, 2025
Palestinians and their defenders warned during the 2024 U.S. presidential election cycle that a victoriousTrump might lift the few guardrails the Biden administration had placed on Israel and unleash Netanyahu to seize all of Palestine. The goal of Israel's far right is expansion of Israeli territory to include what proponents call "Greater Israel," which is based on biblical boundaries that stretched from Africa to Turkey to Mesopotamia.
Netanyahu has repeatedly displayed maps showing the Middle East without Palestine, all of whose territory is shown as part of Israel. However, annexation had previously been most closely associated with far-right figures outside Likud like Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich of the Religious Zionist Party and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir of Jewish Power.
Following Trump's reelection last November, Smotrich said that "the year 2025 will be, with God's help, the year of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria."
"The only way to remove the threat of a Palestinian state from the agenda is to apply Israeli sovereignty over the settlements in Judea and Samaria," he continued. "I have no doubt that President Trump, who showed courage and determination in his decisions during his first term, will support the state of Israel in this move."
Smotrich praised Wednesday's letter, declaring he'll be ready to impose Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank as soon as Netanyahu "gives the order," according toThe Times of Israel.
Israeli Justice Minister Yariv Levin, one of the Likud members who signed the letter, said Wednesday: "I think that this period, beyond the current issues, is a time of historic opportunity that we must not miss. The time for sovereignty has come, the time to apply sovereignty. My position on this matter is firm, it is clear."
Israel occupied the West Bank, along with the Gaza Strip, Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, and the Golan Heights in Syria during the Six-Day War in 1967. Israel eventually withdrew from the Sinai but unilaterally annexed East Jerusalem in 1980 while keeping control of the rest of the West Bank and Golan Heights. Although Israel dismantled settlements and withdrew troops from Gaza in 2005, it is still considered an occupier under international law and its conduct during the current invasion, bombardment, and siege of the coastal enclave is the subject of an International Court of Justice (ICJ) genocide case.
Since 1967, Israel has steadily seized more and more Palestinian land in the West Bank while building and expanding Jewish-only settlements there. Settlement population has increased exponentially from around 1,500 colonists in 1970 to roughly 140,000 at the time of the Oslo Accords in 1993—under which Israel agreed to halt new settlement activity—to around 770,000 today. Settlers often attack Palestinians and their property, including in deadly pogroms, in order to terrorize them into leaving so their land can be stolen. In recent weeks, Israeli settlers have attacked Israel Defense Forces soldiers they view as standing in their way and Palestinians alike in the West Bank.
From 1978 until new guidelines were announced by then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during the first Trump administration, the U.S. State Department also considered Israel's settlements to be "inconsistent with international law."
In July 2024, the ICJ found Israel's occupation of Palestine to be an illegal form of apartheid that must be ended as soon as possible. The tribunal also said that Israeli settler colonization of the West Bank amounts to annexation, also a crime under international law. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states that an "occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies."
As the world's attention is focused on Gaza, Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed upward of 950 Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since October 2023, including at least 200 children, while wounding thousands more, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'We Will Organize Those People,' Anti-Poverty Crusader William Barber Says of Millions Set to Lose Medicaid
"They will not kill us and our communities without a fight."
Jul 02, 2025
Armed with 51 caskets and a new federal analysis, faith leaders and people who would be directly impacted by U.S. President Donald Trump's so-called Big Beautiful Bill got arrested protesting in Washington, D.C. this week and pledged to organize the millions of Americans set to lose their health insurance under the package.
Citing Capitol Police, The Hill reported Monday that "a total of 38 protestors were arrested, including 24 detained at the intersection of First and East Capitol streets northeast and another 14 arrested in the Capitol Rotunda. Those taken into custody were charged with crowding, obstructing, and incommoding."
The "Moral Monday" action was organized because of the "dangerous and deadly cuts" in the budget reconciliation package, which U.S. Senate Republicans—with help from Vice President JD Vance—sent to the House of Representatives Tuesday and which the lower chamber took up for consideration Wednesday.
According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the megabill would result in an estimated 17 million Americans becoming uninsured over the next decade: 11.8 million due to the Medicaid cuts, 4.2 million people due to expiring Affordable Care Act tax credits, and another 1 million due to other policies.
"This is policy violence. This is policy murder," Bishop William Barber said at Monday's action, which began outside the U.S. Supreme Court followed by a march to the Capitol. "That's why we brought these caskets today—because in the first year of this bill, as it is, the estimates are that 51,000 people will die."
"If you know that, and still pass it, that's not a mistake," added Barber, noting that Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.)—one of three Republican senators who ultimately opposed the bill—had said before the vote that his party was making a mistake on healthcare.
Moral Mondays originated in Tillis' state a dozen years ago, to protest North Carolina Republicans' state-level policymaking, led by Barber, who is not only a bishop but also president of the organization Repairers of the Breach and co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival.
This past Monday, Barber vowed that if federal lawmakers kick millions of Americans off their healthcare with this megabill, "we will organize those people," according to Sarah Anderson of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS).
In partnership with IPS and the Economic Policy Institute, Repairers of the Breach on Monday published The High Moral Stakes of Budget Reconciliation fact sheet, which examines the version of the budget bill previously passed by the House. The document highlights cuts to health coverage, funding for rural hospitals, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
The fact sheet also points out that while slashing programs for the poor, the bill would give tax breaks to wealthy individuals and corporations, plus billions of dollars to the Pentagon and Trump's mass deportation effort.
"Instead of inflicting policy violence on the most vulnerable, Congress should harness America's abundant wealth to create a moral economy that works for all of us," the publication asserts. "By fairly taxing the wealthy and big corporations, reducing our bloated military budget, and demilitarizing immigration policy, we could free up more than enough public funds to ensure we can all survive and thrive."
"As our country approaches its 250th anniversary," it concludes, "we have no excuse for not investing our national resources in ways that reflect our Constitutional values: to establish justice, domestic tranquility, real security, and the general welfare for all."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular