On Sunday’s “All Things Considered,” new host Arun Rath interviewed Karim Sadjadour, senior associate in the Middle East program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, about the six-month agreement over Iran’s nuclear program. The Carnegie Endowment is a thoroughly-mainstream, at best moderately-liberal Beltway thinktank, and to judge by a quick review of his recent writings and media comments on Iran, as well as most of his discussion with Rath, that same description seems to fit Sadjadpour.
In the course of the interview, Rath said:
You’ve written very interestingly about one sticking point – is how Iranian leaders feel that they’re defending their country against unfair policies. Could you talk about that?
That question was evidently a reference to “The Neuroscience Guide to Negotiations With Iran,” an article by Sadjadpour and colleague Nicholas D. Wright published last week at The Atlantic’s website. That piece, which I too found very interesting, reviews neuroscientific findings suggesting that humans have a “natural instinct to reject perceived unfairness,” even if they pay a substantial price for doing so. The authors then argue that “this impulse to reject perceived unfairness has seemingly motivated Iran’s nuclear ambitions far more than an actual need for an indigenous nuclear energy program.”
Surprisingly, Sadjadpour didn’t jump at Rath’s invitation to explain this analysis (and to promote his latest publication). Instead, he took off in a very different direction:
You know, I’ve argued before, Arun, that the real source of tension between America and Iran is actually not the nuclear issue. It’s Iran’s policy toward Israel.… I think especially for U.S. members of Congress, it’s very difficult to allow Iran to have advanced nuclear capability while they continue to be so belligerent toward Israel.
And how does the NPR host follow up on this provocative thesis? By quickly changing the subject:
Mm-hmm. President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry both acknowledge that there’s a long road ahead. You … expect there’s going to be a strong desire on both sides to cooperate. And why do you feel that way?
Prompted by Sadjadpour’s note that he’s made the point about Israel before, I checked out some of his previous publications. In a 2008 (updated last year) political profile of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, he wrote:
For many close observers of U.S.–Iranian relations the Islamic Republic’s uncompromising stance on Israel represents the greatest impediment to U.S.–Iranian relations…. At the same time, however, Khamenei has made a concerted effort to put into context the statements of President Ahmadinejad that Israel should be “wiped off the map.” He has stated consistently that Iran’s goal is not the military destruction of the Jewish state or the Jewish people, but the defeat of Zionist ideology and dissolution of Israel through a “popular referendum.”
Unfortunately, Sadjadpour doesn’t appear to have any particular sympathy for this perspective: In a brief op-ed for the New York Times last November, he dismissed the Iranian leadership’s position on Israel and Palestine as part of its “antiquated ideology” and “revolutionary dogma.”
Still, his realism about the source of Washington’s obsessions with Iran is a rare and welcome departure from the mainstream media’s usual treatment of the ginned-up nuclear controversy. NPR newscasters interviewed Sadjadpour five times last year. Now that they know he just might wander off script, I wonder whether they’ll keep bringing him back this year.
LOL
Yep. Not hard to see where NPR is coming from, and it’s NPR’s survival, has nothing to do with best interests of US, world, or even Israel for that matter. Big Zio Dollars; money talks and BS walks. Same as with WH and Congress. Nobody knows this more than big Zio moneybags, e.g., Adelson, Soros etc. Justice Breyer was just on CSPAN talking about its decision to equate money with free speech. Breyer said he personally voted against the decision, but said it’s true there’s no free political speech in America.
He never brought up how we should change the US campaign finance system in this context, and neither did the Q & A from students at prestigious US universities. Nobody with any power in USA seems to want to face the fact money talks and BS walks, i.e., the US has de facto become a real plutocracy. Why should liberals like Breyer care? He’s got a nice, comfy life, his own self-described life as the eternal student doing his homework–but getting paid nicely for it. And so are they all, at best.
Henry, yes, this is like the small (and quickly brushed aside) comments about AIPAC as a motivator for the Democratic-sabotage movement in the Senate. It serves, maybe subliminally almost, to accustom the American audience to think of Israel as the problem, the problem with war-with-Iran and the problem with USA-Iran reduction of tension. It says, Israel wants war and Israel wants tension. And up-to-a-point, Obama says the opposite.
So, to that extent, it (mildly, gently, subliminally) accustoms Americans to think of an us-or-them paradigm, USA or Israel. And what is subliminal today can become more overt later. Especially if MSM folks get used to it and fail to see violently corrective action taken against the perpetrators of this subliminalism.
Karim Sadjadpour is a warmonger and typical cnn-analyst that doesnt know much about middle east at all.
RE: “That question was evidently a reference to ‘The Neuroscience Guide to Negotiations With Iran’, . . . That piece . . . reviews neuroscientific findings suggesting that humans have a ‘natural instinct to reject perceived unfairness’, even if they pay a substantial price for doing so. The authors then argue that ‘this impulse to reject perceived unfairness has seemingly motivated Iran’s nuclear ambitions far more than an actual need for an indigenous nuclear energy program’.” ~ Henry Norr
SEE: “Injustice Collecting”, By Nando Pelusi, Ph.D., psychologytoday.com, published on November 01, 2006
You can’t let go of a grudge, says Nando Pelusi, Ph.D., because there are deep-seated emotional payoffs.
ENTIRE ARTICLE – http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200612/injustice-collecting
Arun, that the real source of tension between America and Iran is actually not the nuclear issue.
So what is the real issue, according to the former President of the Council on Foreign Relations? Holocaust denial.
MG: I had a special run in with then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who spoke at the United Nations General Assembly in Spetember 2006. He agreed to meet with several members of the Council on Foreign Relations. David Rockefeller was there. Peter Peterson was there. Myself. And three or four other senior members of the Council. The topic came up about the Holocaust. He repeated what he had always been saying. He didn’t believe it took place. I challenged him. I happened to be at Dachau. Don’t tell me it didn’t take place. He didn’t challenge me directly. He asked, “How old are you?” As though I was too young to have been there..
JH: The precondition for a final deal is recognizing the Holocaust?
MG: Absolutely
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/security/greenberg-9467
[What did Greenberg witness at the liberation at Dachau ?]
The precise number of Jewish deaths at Dachau is unknown. According to the Nazi camp records, there were a total of 31,951 recorded deaths from all causes at Dachau, which included people of all religions and ethnic groups. Dachau was primarily a camp for political prisoners, common criminals and religious dissidents. The majority of the prisoners who died in the camp were Catholic….d. There were 2,539 Jews at the Dachau main camp when it was liberated.
http://www.scrapbookpages.com/DachauScrapbook/DachauFAQ.html