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US media and Iran's nuclear
threat
By Kaveh Afrasiabi
TEHRAN - In a sign of both historical
de ja vu and Chomskyian "manufacturing
consensus", the US media is nowadays filled with
news on Iran's nuclear threat, thus preparing the
American public for yet another Middle East
conflict without, however, maintaining a modicum
of balance by reflecting the Iranian point of
view.
This
much is clear in a Fox News special, titled "Iran:
The Nuclear Threat", that aired on Sunday, May 8.
Hosted by Chris Wallace
(with whom this author worked as an Iran expert at
Wallace's previous home, ABC News), this program
lacked the minutest evidence of objectivity,
displaying instead piles of prejudice on top of
prejudice reminding one of the Iraq weapons of
mass destruction threat played up by the
right-wing, sensationalist, network during 2002
and early 2003, duping millions of American
viewers about the authenticity of the Bush
administration's allegations against the regime of
Saddam Hussain.
The Fox program on Iran is
simply the latest example of how the US media has
traded political favoritism to the White House,
and its fierce demonization of Iran, for objective
news. No Iranian official was interviewed for this
program, which covered the Iran-Europe nuclear
talks, only the European officials nowadays
joining Washington's chorus for United Nations
Security Council action against Iran, or with
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon calling an
Iran bomb the biggest "existential threat" to the
Jewish state.
On May
9, former chief United Nations weapons inspector
Hans Blix spoke at the nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review conference
in New York and proposed a Middle East ban on
uranium enrichment, covering both Iran and Israel,
as a compromised solution to the so-called Iran
threat. His comments were completely ignored by
the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street
Journal, and cited only by the LA Times. Clearly,
the more Israel presses on Iran, the more it draws
the international spotlight on itself.
A clue to the biased
nature of the Fox program, it dealt with Iran's
efforts to hide its nuclear activities for several
years, yet without bothering to mention that even
the UN's atomic watchdog, the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), while critical of Iran,
did not find it in material breech of its
obligations to the NPT since Iran had
some 187 days prior to the commencement of those
hidden facilities to declare them to the IAEA.
Also, it should be mentioned that Iran's secrecy
was a logical reaction to Washington's refusal of
Iran's right to nuclear technology and
conscientious attempt to block Iran's access to
this technology contrary to Article IV of the NPT.
Presently, Iran has put on the table in
the Iran-European Union talks a "phased approach"
whereby it could resume low-enriched uranium
production under full international inspection,
thus offering a technical solution to the thorny
issue of "objective guarantees" mentioned in the
Iran-EU agreement signed in Paris last November.
Somehow, the Iranian proposal was leaked
to the press, and ABC News published it on its
website, thus making a mockery of the Europeans'
claim of sincerity and trustworthiness with
respect to their Iranian co-negotiators. In
comparison, Fox News did not even bother with such
nuances and simply went for the recycling of the
Manichean demonization of Iran as a
"terror-sponsoring" state whose possession of
bombs would "threaten millions of people and the
security of the United States", not unlike Vice
President Dick Cheney's pre-Iraq war alarm about
"mushroom clouds" over American cities caused by
Iraq's imminent possession of nuclear weapons.
What was equally absent in the Fox report
mentioned above was the fact that for two years
now Iran has signed the intrusive Additional
Protocol, allowing unfettered inspection of its
nuclear sites to the IAEA, whose chief has
repeatedly gone on record stating that there is no
evidence Iran is developing nuclear weapons. A
centerpiece of Iran's offer to Europe is the
immediate conversion of low-enriched uranium to
fuel rods, verified under IAEA inspections beyond
even what the Additional Protocol calls for, which
would, in turn, address the Western fears about a
re-enrichment aimed at weapons grade (ie, 90% as
opposed to 3.5% to 11% required for peaceful
purposes). Again, neither Fox nor ABC, nor any
other US media outlet, has so far bothered to
delve into the specifics of the Iranian proposal,
preferring to stick with abstract generalities and
cliche accusations instead.
Such an
approach may "sell the news" better and make the
networks appear more "patriotic" in the current
conservative political milieu in the United
States, yet it hardly qualifies for the high
standards of independent media self-priding as the
"fourth branch" in the political system. On the
contrary, as both the examples of Iraq, and
increasingly, Iran demonstrate, the main, and
mainstream, media in the US is better viewed as an
appendage of the executive branch manipulating it,
and its agenda, almost at will.
A
caricature of the American media? Hardly,
especially when considering the fact that in that
same program, when dealing with the issue of
"America's options", there was not even a passing
reference to the importance of IAEA inspections
and the option of monitored, contained Iranian
enrichment, together with Iran's political,
security, and economic integration with the West,
an option echoed by a very limited number of Iran
experts in the US, including a former National
Security aid, Gary Sick.
Unfortunately,
voices of reason such as Sick's are too few and
too often neglected by the media, whose pundits
such as Chris Wallace choose to tread the safe
political waters of toeing the official line
instead of introducing a dent in the
carefully-constructed regime of truth on Iran on
the part of Washington's pro-Israel policy-makers,
who are filling the TV news hours with their
concerted calls for Security Council action
against Iran.
Yet, what this army of
anti-Iran pundits consistently overlook is the
lesson from the Iraq fiasco, that is, the world's
unwillingness to fall in the trap of
disinformation causing war via UN actions serving
as a legitimating precursor to war. After all, the
role of the UN is pacific settlement of disputes,
not as a negative surrogate of closet
unilateralism or, worse, pre-emptive warfare,
right?
Furthermore, another major
shortcoming of the current US media coverage of
Iran's nuclear issue is that such coverage give
little insight on what would happen if the US and
Europe hurl the issue to the UN Security Council.
It is hardly given that in the light of Iran's
cooperation with the IAEA, fulfilling its NPT
obligations, the Security Council would impose
sanctions on Iran and, in case it chooses to do
so, that would mean an oil embargo, causing higher
oil prices hardly affordable by the global
economy; short of oil embargo, a UN sanction would
be practically toothless and a continuation of the
present, decade-long US sanctions, which have
proven a failure in deterring foreign investments
in Iran, as the Iran-China mega deal worth US$100
billion clearly demonstrates. In all likelihood,
China would veto any Security Council sanctions on
Iran as long as no smoking gun on Iran's alleged
weapons program has been found.
The slight
chance of successful UN action against Iran has,
in turn, fueled alternative options by Israel and
the US, chiefly the military option, which is
where the sensationalist US media can be found
working overtime to produce the necessary
requirement of a public blessing for the next
military gambit of the Western superpower, without
presenting the slightest clue that any lesson has
been learnt from the Iraq blunder.
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the
author of After Khomeini: New Directions in
Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and
"Iran's Foreign Policy Since 9/11", Brown's
Journal of World Affairs, co-authored with former
deputy foreign minister Abbas Maleki, No 2, 2003.
He teaches political science at Tehran
University.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times
Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us
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