EMAIL DETAILS

ASIA TIMES


March 2, 2012


[Re Diplomacy to seal Iran's fate," February 29, 2012] What this article does not tell you is that perhaps the most dangerous man with the potential to do the most damage to America's national security interest in the Middle East is coming to Washington. The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to say the words "two-state solution," in regard to the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, has frozen any discussion of that disaster by his hysterical demonization of Iran.

Furthermore, he, by the continuous threats to bomb Iran, could drag the United States into a war that no right-thinking person believes would be in America's national security interest. The prime minister, when he came to office, had a real opportunity to build a legacy as a statesman by concluding that elusive peace with the Palestinians. Instead, he chose to pander to the worst elements of his right-wing coalition and to change the subject by creating Iranophobia.

The question is who benefits? Consider the following facts: 1) Since early 1990s, the Israeli leadership has been predicting that Iran will have a nuclear weapon the next year. That leadership includes some who are in power today. It is time to confront them with their own erroneous predictions.

2) To be talking all the time that Iran is an existential threat is total nonsense. Two former Israeli intelligence chiefs, Meir Dagan and Efraim Halevy, and one current, Tamir Pardo, and a former military chief of staff Dan Holutz, recently said Iran is not. Iran has not attacked another country in several centuries. The
same cannot be said for its neighbors.

3) All credible intelligence agencies, including Israel's, have attested that there is no nuclear weaponization program going on in Iran. In fact, Israel is the only country with nuclear weapons. And there are over 40 nations that possess more enriched uranium than Iran and have mastered the nuclear cycle.

4) The characterization of the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) reports must be put in context. Time and time again, under the strictest on site inspections the "agency (IAEA) continues to verify the non-diversion of declared materials at the nuclear facilities and outside facilities (LOFS)." What more needs to be said? If there is hyperbole and blatant speculative fiction that misinforms rather than informs, it is because, as the Wikileaks cables showed, Yukiya Amano, the chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) "is solidly in the US court on Iran". For example, in the most recent IAEA report, if you are objective and not in someone's pocket, why make such an issue of access to Parchin an Iranian military base? And leave out the fact that in January and November of 2005, as reported by Gareth Porter in Asia Times Online on February 25, that site was inspected and the IAEA reported "no relevant dual use equipment or materials in the location visited." This is a matter that all
relevant facts should be reported and access negotiated not used to cast suspicion. His predecessor, on the other hand, Mohamed ElBaradei, has said on numerous occasions that during his tenure, he never saw any credible evidence that Iran was working on a nuclear weapon.

5) Why the amalgam of nightmarish scenarios, of apocalyptic statements and warmed-over myths? Because some Israeli leaders say it. And that narrative, without question, is propagated by the Israel-can-do-no-wrong crowd in the US Congress, the media and the think tanks. It is well to ask, who then is the real aggressor? There is deep mistrust on all sides and real diplomacy is the only way forward. The Obama
Administration must be commended for holding the door open for negotiations and disregarding the noise coming from the aforementioned and the clowns in the Republican circus. He knows after two wars, the legacy of president George W Bush/vice president Dick Cheney, countless lives, trillion of dollars and counting, the US does not need a third one. For diplomacy to succeed, there must be real constructive engagement and for that to succeed this madness of threats on all sides must stop.


Fariborz S Fatemi
Former Professional Staff Member,
House Foreign Affairs Committee,
Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
United States (Mar 2, '12)