September, 28 2012, 03:53pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167
Netanyahu "Distracting Attention" with Iran * Does Abbas Really Want Full U.N. Membership?
WASHINGTON
YOUSEF MUNAYYER [email]
Executive director of the Palestine Center, Munayyer said today: "Netanyahu focused on Iran to distract attention from Israel's occupation of Palestine. He put forward, as usual, a Manichean worldview which is not conducive to solving problems. Further, and perhaps most perplexingly, he urged for 'red lines' to be drawn to alter Iran's decision calculus while simultaneously arguing that Iran is irrational and undeterable. He simply cannot have it both ways. This blatant contradiction was an insult to the intelligence of listeners and was amplified by Netanyahu's patronizing classroom antics before an audience of diplomats who will find it increasingly difficult to take him seriously. ...
"Mahmoud Abbas' comments on the Palestinian question reflected the desperation of Palestinians under occupation and the need for international solidarity and intervention on their behalf. While Abbas rightly said Palestinians should not be expected to return to a process that has continuously failed them, there is little indication that the main reasons for their failure, Israeli intransigence and biased U.S. mediation, will change any time soon. He argued that the two-state solution must be urgently saved but there is little urgency displayed on the part of Israel or the United States to save it while many others believe it is well past the point of salvation."
FRANCIS BOYLE [email]
Professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law in Champaign, Boyle served as legal advisor to the Palestine Liberation Organization and Yasser Arafat on the 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence, as well as to the Palestinian delegation to the Middle East peace negotiations from 1991 to 1993, where he drafted the Palestinian counter-offer to the now defunct Oslo Agreement. His books include Palestine, Palestinians and International Law and the recently-released The Palestinian Right of Return under International Law.
He said today: "Palestine effectively has observer state status with the United Nations and basically all the rights of a U.N. member state except the right to vote. Palestine has de facto U.N. membership. The only thing keeping Palestine from de jure U.N. membership is the implicit threat of a veto at the U.N. Security Council by the United States, which would violate a solemn and binding pledge given by the United States not to veto states applying for U.N. membership.
"The votes are there already in the U.N. General Assembly to admit Palestine pursuant to the terms of its Uniting for Peace Resolution. It is the U.N. General Assembly that admits a member state, not the Security Council. Obama's blockage at the Security Council can be circumvented by the General Assembly acting under the Uniting for Peace Resolution to admit Palestine as a U.N. member state. By means of the Uniting for Peace Resolution, President Abbas could have full-fledged state membership for Palestine in the United Nations by the end of next week if that is what he wants to do."
See: "Netanyahu in 1992: Iran close to having nuclear bomb."
A nationwide consortium, the Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA) represents an unprecedented effort to bring other voices to the mass-media table often dominated by a few major think tanks. IPA works to broaden public discourse in mainstream media, while building communication with alternative media outlets and grassroots activists.
LATEST NEWS
Experts Pillory Trump Case for War on Iran: 'Flimsiest Excuse for Initiating a Major Attack' in Decades
"What they posed as the threat they were trying to preempt—an attack by Iran against US forces—is so extremely implausible, it is also laughable," said one analyst.
Mar 01, 2026
Senior Trump administration officials attempted during a briefing with reporters on Saturday to make their case for the joint US-Israeli military assault on Iran that has so far killed hundreds and plunged the Middle East into chaos.
According to experts who listened to the briefing, which was conducted on background, the justification for war was incredibly weak. Daryl Kimball, president of the Arms Control Association, told Laura Rozen of the Diplomatic newsletter that the administration's argument was "the flimsiest excuse for initiating a major attack on another country without congressional authorization, in violation of the UN Charter, in many decades."
During his early Saturday remarks announcing the attacks, President Donald Trump claimed that "imminent threats from the Iranian regime" against "the American people" drove him to act. But Kimball said that administration officials "provided absolutely no evidence" to back that assertion during the briefing.
"What they posed as the threat they were trying to preempt—an attack by Iran against US forces—is so extremely implausible, it is also laughable," said Kimball.
Following the start of Saturday's assault, which Trump explicitly characterized as a war aimed at overthrowing the Iranian government, unnamed administration officials began leaking the claim that Trump feared an Iranian attack on the massive US military buildup in the Middle East, prompting him to greenlight the bombing campaign in coordination with Israel and with a nudge from Saudi Arabia.
Kimball, in a social media post, took members of the US media to task for echoing the administration's narrative. "Reporters need to do more than stenography," he wrote in response to Punchbowl's Jake Sherman.
"The American people were lied to about Iraq. The American people are being lied to again today—and once again, it is ordinary people who will pay the price."
Trump and top administration officials also repeated the longstanding claim from US warhawks that Iran is bent on developing a nuclear weapon, something Iranian leaders have publicly denied—including during recent diplomatic talks. Neither US intelligence assessments nor international nuclear watchdogs have produced evidence indicating that Iran is moving rapidly in the direction of nukes, as claimed by the administration.
Rozen noted that some remarks from administration officials during Saturday's briefing "suggested Trump’s negotiators"—a team that included Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff—"may not have had the expertise or experience to understand the Iranian proposal to curb its nuclear program." Rozen reported that one administration official kept misstating the acronym for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear watchdog.
Trump administration officials, according to Rozen, seemed astonished that Iranian negotiators would not accept the US offer to provide free nuclear fuel "forever" for Iran's peaceful energy development, viewing the rejection as a suspicious indication that Iran was opposed to a diplomatic resolution—even though, according to Oman's foreign minister, Iran had already made concessions that went well beyond the terms of the 2015 nuclear accord that Trump abandoned during his first stint in the White House.
Experts said it should be obvious—particularly given Trump's decision to ditch the previous nuclear accord—why Iran would not trust the US to stick by such a commitment.
The administration's inability to provide a coherent justification for war tracks with the rapidly shifting narrative preceding Saturday's strikes—an indication, according to some observers, that Trump had made the decision to attack Iran even in the face of diplomatic progress and left officials to try to cobble together a rationale after the fact.
In a lengthy social media post, Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth insisted war was necessary because Iran "refused to make a deal" and because the Iranian government "has targeted and killed Americans," hardly the claim of an imminent threat push by the president and other administration officials.
Brian Finucane, a senior adviser to the US Program at the International Crisis Group, noted in response that the Trump administration has "sidelined anyone who could articulate... a coherent argument, partly because expertise is deep state and woke and partly because they just don't care."
The result is another potentially catastrophic war that runs roughshod over US and international law, puts countless civilians at risk, and threatens to spark a region-wide conflict.
"President Trump, along with his right-wing extremist Israeli ally Benjamin Netanyahu, has begun an illegal, premeditated, and unconstitutional war," US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said in a statement on Saturday. "Tragically, Trump is gambling with American lives and treasure to fulfill Netanyahu's decades-long ambition of dragging the United States into armed conflict with Iran."
"The American people were lied to about Vietnam. The American people were lied to about Iraq," Sanders added. "The American people are being lied to again today—and once again, it is ordinary people who will pay the price."
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Democratic Leaders Face Backlash Over 'Cowardly' Responses to Trump War on Iran
"As we plunge headlong into another catastrophic war, Sen. Schumer and Rep. Jeffries’ throat-clearing and process critique only serves Trump and the war machine."
Mar 01, 2026
The top Democrats in the US Congress, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, faced backlash on Saturday over what critics described as tepid, equivocal responses to President Donald Trump's illegal assault on Iran—and for slowwalking efforts to prevent the war before the bombing began.
While both Democratic leaders chided Trump for failing to seek congressional authorization and not adequately briefing lawmakers on the details of Saturday's attacks, neither offered a full-throated condemnation of a military assault that has killed hundreds so far, including dozens of children, and hurled the Middle East into chaos.
Schumer (D-NY)—who infamously worked to defeat the 2015 nuclear deal that Trump later abandoned during his first White House term, setting the stage for the current crisis—said he "implored" US Secretary of State Marco Rubio to "be straight with Congress and the American people about the objectives of these strikes and what comes next."
"Iran must never be allowed to attain a nuclear weapon," he added, "but the American people do not want another endless and costly war in the Middle East when there are so many problems at home."
Jeffries (D-NY), a beneficiary of AIPAC campaign cash, said in his response to the massive US-Israeli assault that "Iran is a bad actor and must be aggressively confronted for its human rights violations, nuclear ambitions, support of terrorism, and the threat it poses to our allies like Israel and Jordan in the region."
"The Trump administration must explain itself to the American people and Congress immediately, provide an ironclad justification for this act of war, clearly define the national security objective, and articulate a plan to avoid another costly, prolonged military quagmire in the Middle East," said Jeffries.
The Democratic leaders' responses bolstered the view that their objections to Trump's attack on Iran are based on procedure, not opposition to war.
This is a disgusting and cowardly statement handwringing about process and the need for a briefing.
No you idiot. This war is a horror and a disaster and must be directly opposed. Any Democrat who can’t say that needs to resign and ESPECIALLY the ones in leadership. https://t.co/CdZoEyNkOy
— Krystal Ball (@krystalball) February 28, 2026
Claire Valdez, a New York state assemblymember who is running for Congress, said that "as we plunge headlong into another catastrophic war, Sen. Schumer and Rep. Jeffries’ throat-clearing and process critique only serves Trump and the war machine."
"Democrats should speak clearly and with one voice: no war," Valdez added.
Schumer and Jeffries both committed to swiftly forcing votes on War Powers resolutions in their respective chambers. But reporting last week by Aída Chávez of Capital & Empire indicated that top Democrats worked behind the scenes to slow momentum behind the resolutions, helping ensure they did not come to a vote before Trump launched the war.
"The preferred outcome of many AIPAC-aligned Senate Democrats, according to a senior foreign policy aide to Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, is that Trump acts unilaterally, weakening Iran while absorbing the domestic backlash ahead of the midterms," Chávez wrote.
Neither Schumer nor Jeffries backed legislation last year aimed at forestalling US military intervention in Iran.
The top Democrats' responses to Saturday's US-Israeli attacks on Iran, which Trump said would continue "uninterrupted" even after the killing of the nation's supreme leader, contrasted sharply with statements of rank-and-file congressional Democrats—and even some members of leadership—who condemned the president for shredding the Constitution and driving the US into another deadly war that the American public opposes.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who has been floated as a possible 2028 challenger to Schumer, said Saturday that "the American people are once again dragged into a war they did not want by a president who does not care about the long-term consequences of his actions."
"This war is unlawful. It is unnecessary. And it will be catastrophic," said Ocasio-Cortez. "This is a deliberate choice of aggression when diplomacy and security were within reach. Stop lying to the American people. Violence begets violence. We learned this lesson in Iraq. We learned this lesson in Afghanistan. And we are about to learn it again in Iran. Bombs have yet to create enduring democracies in the region, and this will be no different."
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), a vice chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, was more blunt.
"Congress must stop the bloodshed by immediately reconvening to exert its war powers and stop this deranged president," she said. "But let’s be clear: Warmongering politicians from both parties support this illegal war, and it will take a mass anti-war movement to stop it."
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Trump Says Bombing of Iran to Continue 'Uninterrupted' After Reported Killing of Supreme Leader
"For Iranians already suffering under repression, sanctions, and economic hardship, this escalation will mean only more pain," said the president of the National Iranian American Council.
Feb 28, 2026
US President Donald Trump and Israeli officials claimed Iran's supreme leader, 86-year-old Ali Khamenei, was killed in an airstrike on Saturday, along with other senior Iranian figures.
The US and Israeli militaries targeted Khamenei and other Iranian leaders with their opening barrage of strikes, part of an operation that was reportedly planned for months—with the launch date decided weeks ago—even as Trump claimed to be open to a diplomatic off-ramp. NPR, citing an anonymous source, reported that an Israeli strike killed Khamenei.
Trump made clear that Khamenei's alleged killing, which the Iranian government has not confirmed, would not stop the deadly military onslaught, which the US president launched in coordination with Israel without authorization from Congress and in clear violation of international law. The US president said explicitly in remarks early Saturday that his goal was to topple the Iranian government—something that analysts stressed is not synonymous with assassinating the supreme leader.
In a Truth Social post, Trump wrote that "heavy and pinpoint bombing... will continue, uninterrupted throughout the week or, as long as necessary to achieve our objective of PEACE THROUGHOUT THE MIDDLE EAST AND, INDEED, THE WORLD!"
Iran has responded to the US and Israeli assault with drone and missile attacks on Israel and American military bases across the Middle East. The US Central Command said in a statement that there have not yet been any reports of American casualties and that "damage to US installations was minimal."
In Iran, more than 200 people have been killed by US-Israeli airstrikes and around 700 others injured, according to the Iranian Red Crescent, a toll that's sure to grow in the coming days as rescue workers search through rubble. More than 80 people—mostly young children—were killed in an Israeli strike on a school in southern Iran.
Jamal Abdi, president of the National Iranian American Council, said in a statement that "for Iranians already suffering under repression, sanctions, and economic hardship, this escalation will mean only more pain."
“Bombing Tehran will not bring security. It will endanger civilians, place US service members at risk, empower the most repressive and violent elements inside Iran, and destabilize the region for years to come," said Abdi. "Congress must act immediately to reassert its constitutional authority and halt further escalation. The pending War Powers resolutions must come to a vote without delay. Lawmakers must make clear that there is no authorization for war with Iran."
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