{"id":109889,"date":"2014-03-21T14:51:27","date_gmt":"2014-03-21T14:51:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=109889"},"modified":"2014-03-21T14:51:27","modified_gmt":"2014-03-21T14:51:27","slug":"manufactured-crisis-untold-story-iran-nuclear-scare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/latest-news\/manufactured-crisis-untold-story-iran-nuclear-scare\/","title":{"rendered":"Manufactured Crisis. The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dr. Ludwig Watzal\u00a0<\/strong>
\nRINF Alternative News<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Since the early 1990s, Israel, U.S. officials and their submissive European allies, supported by their uncritical and subservient media, have been peddling allegations, fabrications, accusations and lies that the government of Iran was pursuing a secret, military adjunct to its regularly inspected civilian nuclear program. The main thrust of Porter\u2019s book is to demonstrate that this crisis was \u00e2\u20ac\u017emanufactured\u201c and the accusations were bogus, i. e. Iran never had a military nuclear program. For over 20 years Israeli politicians have been claiming that Iran\u2019s nuclear device was just around the corner.<\/em><\/p>\n

Despite the political hullabaloo and Netanyahu\u2019s call for military actions against Iran\u2019s nuclear installations. \u00e2\u20ac\u017eNetanyahu never intended to use military force against Iran, and the Obama administration was well aware of that but was hoping to exploit the threat to gain diplomatic leverage on Iran\u201c, writes Porter.<\/p>\n

President Obama, under severe pressure from Israel, its Zionist lobby AIPAC (American Israeli Public Affairs Committee) together with the large majority of Congress, has been leading a worldwide effort to impose crippling sanctions on Iran to force it to give up its alleged nuclear-weapons program.\u00a0Up until now, there exists no evidence that Iran carried out a military nuclear program. Beyond that,\u00a0Gareth Porter,\u00a0a historian and investigative journalist specializing in US foreign and military policy, demonstrates that the so-called stolen documents, which apparently \u00e2\u20ac\u017eproved\u201c Iran\u2019s covert nuclear program, were \u00e2\u20ac\u017efraudulent\u201c. These \u00e2\u20ac\u017emysterious documents\u201c were allegedly smuggled out of Iran on a laptop. The author unravels the contradictions between the material in the documents and well-established facts. Did the U.S rely for its \u00e2\u20ac\u017eevidence\u201c on Israeli intelligence services?<\/p>\n

Porter\u00a0shows how Israel, the George W. Bush and later the Obama administration, successfully portrayed the various actions taken by Western nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as responses to a long history of Iranian covert militarization of its nuclear program. Iran started its nuclear program under Reza Shah Pahlavi.\u00a0\u00a0At that time, the U.S. and Israel were allied with the Persian dictator and didn\u2019t mind a nuclear Iran. After the overthrow of the Shah regime in 1979, however, the United States intervened aggressively, as early as 1983, to prevent Iran from pursuing its legitimate right to peaceful nuclear power. It was these aggressive efforts by the U.S. , that forced Iran to resort to black market transactions in order to acquire the technology needed for its\u00a0civilian\u00a0nuclear program, writes Porter.<\/p>\n

So far, the U.S. and Israel have done all they can to sabotage the Iranian nuclear program by, inter alia, sending hit men to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists and infect the computers of the nuclear installations with malware. According to the online newspaper \u00e2\u20ac\u017eThe Times of Israel\u201c from March 19, 2014,\u00a0\u00a0the Israeli Chief of Staff Benny Gantz revealed in a speech delivered before a class of students that \u00e2\u20ac\u017eIsrael had already conducted dozens of covert operations in foreign and enemy countries\u201c, and that \u00e2\u20ac\u017eOur Air Force is wherever we wanted it to be.\u201c\u00a0\u00a0He added confidently that Iran is not beyond the IDF\u2019s reach. According to Porter, there exists a tendency and a power structure inside the Beltway that keeps readiness and permanent preparedness for war despite the Vietnam disaster. Does such a mentality also exist within the Israeli security establishment?<\/p>\n

In his introduction the author\u00a0submits that \u00e2\u20ac\u017eU.S.-Israeli strategy was aimed at using the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to build a case that Iran\u2019s nuclear program had been merely a cover for a nuclear weapons program. That case would serve as the basis for United Nations Security Council actions that would punish Iran, or even for unilateral US military action against Iran. As a result the IAEA, which had previously been a relatively nonpolitical actor performing technical analysis of nuclear programs, was transformed over the 2003\u20148 period into an adjunct of the anti-Iran strategy.\u201c<\/p>\n

Porter describes three stages that form the basis for the progress and the escalation of the crisis. Yet, he does not view each step by the U.S. and Israel as part of a master plan. On the contrary, he argues that each stage of the strategy developed in response to political developments and problems, which emerged from further coercing Iran on the nuclear issue.\u00a0The\u00a0first stage<\/em>\u00a0was triggered by the Iranian terrorist group Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), which revealed at a August 2002 press conference Iran\u2019s Natanz enrichment facility. MEK was removed a few months ago from the U.S. \u00e2\u20ac\u017eterror list\u201c. In 2008, the second stage was triggered when the U.S. obtained from an unknown party stolen documents about a secret nuclear program. At the end of 2011, the\u00a0third stage<\/em>\u00a0started by imposing new and more severe sanctions, targeting Iran\u2019s oil export and banking sectors.\u00a0\u00a0This new round of sanctions was triggered by an IAEA report based on Israeli sources.<\/p>\n

In chapter three, the author discusses Iran\u2019s leadership attitude towards nuclear and chemical weapons. When Iraq, with massive support by the U.S., its Western cronies but also the Soviet Union, attacked Iran and used chemical weapons obtained from the U.S.,\u00a0Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a\u00a0fatwa<\/em>\u00a0(religious Islamic ruling), forgoing the use of chemical weapons against Iraqis.\u00a0\u00a0The West dismissed his ruling as\u00a0a deception and a lie. With the same arrogance another\u00a0fatwa<\/em>\u00a0by Khomeini\u2019s successor Ayatollah AliKhamenei\u00a0on the prohibition of nuclear weapons was disregarded. Western media promoted this racist attitude uncritically around the globe.<\/p>\n

In the early 1990s, the U.S. portrayed Iran\u2019s civilian nuclear program as a cover for its alleged ambitions to acquire nuclear weapons. In chapter four, the author shows that this accusation was intended to manufacture a new scapegoat to replace the communist scapegoat imploded at the end of 1991. The supposed threat of nuclear proliferation from Iran was a useful theory for the Pentagon and the CIA. Under the Clinton presidency Israel was brought into the picture. The other half of the story is told in chapter five. Due to the demonization of Iran, successive Israeli governments from Yitzhak Rabin to Benjamin Netanyahu attempted to achieve political and strategic aims that had nothing to do with Iran. Israel had also to pay a political price for its aggressive posture. Reciprocally, Iran regarded Israel as a military threat, writes Porter.<\/p>\n

In 2003, then Iranian president Mohammed Khatami offered negotiations with the U.S. the George W. Bush administration rejected it off-hand because Iran was a \u00e2\u20ac\u017erogue state\u201c and to ranked top on the so-called \u00e2\u20ac\u017eaxis of evil\u201c. WikiLeaks published cables demonstrating how closely the IAEA cooperated with the U.S. government. Under the leadership of Yukiya Amano, the reputation of the IAEA went down the drain.<\/p>\n

Until the end of President\u00a0Mahmoud Ahmadinejad\u2019s term in office, the Obama administration together with Israel\u2019s Benyamin Netanyahu tried to bully Iran into submission. With the election of the new President Hassan Rohani the demonization of the Iranian leadership did not work anymore. With the start of the negotiations, Israel and the Congress called for even more sanctions. In his State of the Union Address, President Obama rejected such sanctions, saying that negotiations are in the national interest of the U.S. Officially, AIPAC and its servants on Capitol Hill pursued their endeavor in more discreetly.\u00a0\u00a0As an outside observer, it is mind-boggling to observe how U.S. representatives on the Hill work against their own government and the interest of their country.<\/s><\/p>\n

Manufactured Crisis<\/em>\u00a0presents the first alternative narrative to the Iranian nuclear issue. The author shows what disastrous impact the U.S.-Israeli alliance has on the Middle Eastern region. This fateful partnership is rooted in America\u2019s domestic politics. The Gordian knot must be untied for the benefit of the American people. At the end of the book, one gets the impression that the \u00e2\u20ac\u017eIranian problem\u201c is a U.S. one, or to put it differently, the U.S. problem is the alliance with Israel and the American political class inside the Beltway.<\/p>\n

Gareth Porter\u2019s well researched book presents readers with a clear view, so that they can see through the web of lies, deceptions and false accusations, to discover the real enemies of peace.\u00a0\u00a0A timely book more than worth reading.<\/p>\n

Gareth Porter Manufactured Crisis. The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare,<\/strong>Just World Books,\u00a0Charlottesville, VA\u00a02014, 4xx pp., $ 28. (ISBN: 978-1-935982-33-3.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dr. Ludwig Watzal<\/strong>\u00a0works as a journalist and editor in Bonn, Germany. He runs the bilingual blog Between the Lines\u00a0http:\/\/between-the-lines-ludwig-watzal.blogspot.de\/<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr. Ludwig Watzal\u00a0 RINF Alternative News Since the early 1990s, Israel, U.S. officials and their submissive European allies, supported by their uncritical and subservient media, have been peddling allegations, fabrications, accusations and lies that the government of Iran was pursuing a secret, military adjunct to its regularly inspected civilian nuclear program. The main thrust of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":74671,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-109889","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109889\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}