My friend JK writes:
Have you seen today's Washington Post story about the purported "huge embassy" Iran is building in Nicaragua? The only
problem: there is no monster Iranian embassy in Managua.
But that
didn't stop Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from making an
embarrassing statement in May: "The Iranians are building a huge
embassy in Managua," she said. "And you can only imagine what that's
for." One would like to think our Secretary of State has solid, vetted
intelligence before making such a statement…. Apparently not.
So
who is spreading such stories and has Hillary's ear? Well, there's the
hawkish right, but they're not briefing Hillary. This includes dudes
like the reliably wrong Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise
Institute, who's declared "Iran's embassy in Managua is now the largest
diplomatic mission in the city." But even if Rubin and people at the
Center for Security Policy aren't Hillary's advisors, they can help the
story percolate in D.C.
Perhaps more relevant is the bi-partisan
Israel Project, (named here, and last week's providers of the "ethnic cleansing" rationale for maintaining Israelis settlements in the West Bank) who organized a conference call with reporters in which
Rep. Connie Mack (R-FL) said that "the growing influence of Iran in the
Western Hemisphere reminds me of the relationship between Russia and
Cuba when we dealt with the Cuban missile crisis."
Second,
the people at State who traffic in clash with Iran (and other Muslim
countries) are trusted by Clinton. I always have hope that she can
think independently… but I think ultimately she likes loyalists, and
in Democratic, pro-Israel hawks she's hired at State, she has toadies.
The
Post's reporters tiptoe around the neo-con issue of who's spreading
this false information, designed to stoke clash. They simply won't
state the Israel connection. But, at least they give facts from which
others can draw conclusions. Hillary's conclusions???
(Two points:
note the echo of zany cold war hysterics over Nicaragua from the 1980s,
when President Reagan said Nicaragua's just a 48-hour drive from
Brownsville, Texas. Now it's the Iranian evil empire. And who does have a bona fide "huge embassy" in Managua? The U.S.
Not to mention the huge embassy we've built next door to Iran, in
Baghdad. But how dare Iran be concerned about such things.)
