{"id":359635,"date":"2018-05-04T07:06:57","date_gmt":"2018-05-04T06:06:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-latest-act-in-israels-iran-nuclear-disinformation-campaign-consortiumnews\/"},"modified":"2018-05-04T07:06:57","modified_gmt":"2018-05-04T06:06:57","slug":"the-latest-act-in-israels-iran-nuclear-disinformation-campaign-consortiumnews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-latest-act-in-israels-iran-nuclear-disinformation-campaign-consortiumnews\/","title":{"rendered":"The Latest Act in Israel\u2019s Iran Nuclear Disinformation Campaign \u2013 Consortiumnews"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial, sans-serif;\">Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s stage performance about Iran seeking a nuclear weapon not only was based on old material, but evidence shows it was fabricated too, says Gareth Porter in this Consortium News exclusive report.<\/span><span id=\"more-27515\"\/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, sans-serif;\"><b>By Gareth Porter \u00a0<\/b><em>Special to Consortium News<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, sans-serif;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/porter_gareth-600x675.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/lazy-load\/images\/1x1.trans.gif\" data-lazy-src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/porter_gareth-600x675-150x150.jpg\" class=\"alignleft  wp-image-26989\" alt=\"\" width=\"82\" height=\"82\"\/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft  wp-image-26989\" src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/porter_gareth-600x675-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"82\" height=\"82\"\/><\/noscript><\/a>Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s claim in his theatrical <a href=\"https:\/\/www.realclearpolitics.com\/video\/2018\/04\/30\/israeli_pm_netanyahu_reveals_proof_of_secret_iranian_nuclear_program.html\">20-minute presentation<\/a>of an Israeli physical seizure of Iran\u2019s \u201catomic archive\u201d in Tehran would certainly have been the \u201cgreat intelligence achievement\u201d he boasted if it had actually happened. But the claim does not hold up under careful scrutiny, and his assertion that Israel now possesses a vast documentary record of a covert Iranian nuclear weapons program is certainly fraudulent.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, sans-serif;\">Netanyahu\u2019s tale of an Israeli intelligence raid right in Tehran that carted off 55,000 paper files and another 55,000 CDs from a \u201chighly secret location\u201d requires that we accept a proposition that is absurd on its face: that Iranian policymakers decided to store their most sensitive military secrets in a small tin-roofed hut with nothing to protect it from heat (thus almost certainly ensuring loss of data on CDs within a few years) and no sign of any security, based on the satellite image shown in the slide show. (As Steve Simon <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/05\/01\/opinion\/benjamin-netanyahu-nuclear-nothingburger.html\">observed<\/a>in <\/span><\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, sans-serif;\"><i>The New York Times<\/i><\/span><\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, sans-serif;\">the door did not even appear to have a lock on it.) <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, sans-serif;\">The laughable explanation <a href=\"https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/2018\/05\/01\/israeli-spies-stole-half-tonne-secret-nuclear-documents-iran\/\">suggested by Israeli officials<\/a>to <\/span><\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, sans-serif;\"><i>The Daily Telegraph<\/i><\/span><\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, sans-serif;\">\u2013 that the Iranian government was afraid the files might be found by international inspectors if they remained at \u201cmajor bases\u201d \u2014 merely reveals the utter contempt that Netanyahu has for Western governments and news media. Even if Iran were pursuing nuclear weapons secretly, their files on the subject would be kept at the Ministry of Defense, not at military bases. And of course the alleged but wholly implausible move to an implausible new location came just as Netanyahu needed a dramatic new story to galvanize Trump to resist the European allies\u2019 strong insistence on preserving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Act (JCPOA) nuclear deal with Iran.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, sans-serif;\">In fact, there is no massive treasure trove of secret files about an Iran \u201cManhattan&#8230;<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2018\/05\/03\/the-latest-act-in-the-israels-iran-nuclear-disinformation-campaign\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s stage performance about Iran seeking a nuclear weapon not only was based on old material, but evidence shows it was fabricated too, says Gareth Porter in this Consortium News exclusive report. By Gareth Porter \u00a0Special to Consortium News Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s claim in his theatrical 20-minute presentationof an Israeli physical seizure [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2524,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-359635","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359635","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\/2524"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=359635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359635\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}