Opinion

Who cares what Jeffrey Goldberg and Netanyahu don’t like about the Iran deal?

Today on NPR’s Morning Edition, the host interviewed Jeffrey Goldberg for four minutes about his reservations about the Iran deal. Goldberg worried that Iran would be able, notwithstanding constraints on its nuclear program, to develop the capacity to make a bomb when those constraints are lifted years from now. Obama need to show “what can he do in the next three months to make sure that Iran does not emerge ten or 15 years from now with a really advanced program.”

What can he do? host Steve Inskeep asked. Goldberg:

One thing he could do is negotiate the final agreement so that Iran is limited in what it can do in research and development.

Why is Goldberg granted such expertise? This is the journalist who 13 years ago conveyed wrong information about Saddam Hussein’s supposed chemical weapons that became a pretext for the disastrous Iraq war. Five years ago Goldberg said that the Israelis were preparing to bomb Iran in the next year– wrong again. And in the 80s Goldberg emigrated to Israel and even served in their army because he thought the U.S. was too dangerous a place for Jews. Wrong again.

Meantime, The New York Times publishes this polite editorial today, “Israel’s Unworkable Demands on Iran,” deprecating Benjamin Netanyahu’s advice against the Iran deal. While the editorial is critical of Netanyahu for “acting as if he alone can dictate the terms of an agreement that took 18 months and involved not just Iran and the United States but Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China,” it grants him some of that very power by going on for ten paragraphs and taking the Israeli objections very seriously, often treating them with kid gloves:

As outlined on Monday by Yuval Steinitz, Israel’s minister of intelligence and strategic affairs, the Israelis are now insisting that Iran end all research and development on advanced centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium; reduce the number of operating centrifuges at its Natanz plant beyond what was agreed to in the framework; and close its underground enrichment facility at Fordo. Also, Israel has demanded that Iran allow inspections “anywhere, anytime” by international monitors, ship its stockpile of enriched uranium out of the country and disclose past nuclear-related activities that might involve military uses.

Nowhere does the editorial question Netanyahu’s judgment: his use of the Iran issue to distract attention from the criminal occupation, his massacre in Gaza last summer, his crazy conflation of Iran and ISIS as Islamists seeking world “domination.” You’d think this is a sober leader. Even John Kerry has slammed Netanyahu for being wrong about the Iraq war, just like Jeffrey Goldberg. And Dianne Feinstein has told Netanyahu to “contain himself,” and bug out of our deliberations.

Both pieces are symptoms of the same problem. Israel and its friends have too prominent a place in our political discourse.

 

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Why is Goldberg granted such expertise?. Goldberg didn’t even mention Israel having nuclear weapons.

Ironic that Britain, France, and Germany are negotiating with an NPT-member state. France and UK proliferated the nuclear weapon to Israel (by f*cking around with it). And today, Germany donates Dolphin-class submarines to Israel, with which it can spread nuclear arms from Gibraltar to Goa and beyond.

Prof Cole has a simple, but good take on this: why is Netanyahu granted hours of talk show on this topic, to which he is tangential, and not involved. Any decent journalism or news outlet would interview the other parties to the agreement – Britain, France etc but also, crucially, the iranians, to hear their side of the story and what they expect. That is journalism 101. Instead the leader of a small country, not involved in the agreement, is granted hours to spin and distort the agreement, whilst viewers are not informed about opinions and facts regarding a historic breakthrough. It is worse than pathetic – it is a dereliction of any pretence to journalism, and a craven kowtowing to an isolated, impotent loudmouth who has nothing to offer except ill-informed ranting, threats and delusions. What a pitiful, and dangerously inept, media. Why does it take a blog to raise questions and attempt to answer them, while well-funded journalists repeat verbatim wild, unfounded accusations?

DiFi has shown a lot more leadership ability than Schumer. Why is he the Senatorial heir apparent?

I don’t care what either of them say or think, but too many still do. They’ve both been wrong so many times that I’ve lost count.

So has Cheney been wrong on everything. He came out of mothballs again (and slithered from under his rock) to seize his moment in the Republican limelight to slam the (American) President for daring to choose peace, prosperity and rapprochement over MIC, misery, and death.

I want to know who thinks they are worse off today than they were during the G.W. Bushco years!

Anyway, Peter Beinart has a good piece up today. I would venture to say his best in a long time. His assessment of Mr. Obama is quite good. He also does a fair job with Netanyahu. His evolution continues. ;)

“Obama and Netanyahu see Iran differently because they see their own countries differently

Their conflict isn’t about centrifuges or enriched uranium: It’s about a different view of the world.

…..Underpinning Obama’s willingness to compromise lay his ability to see the world through Iranian eyes.

This ability to empathize with those who have grievances against your country is alien to Benjamin Netanyahu…….”

http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.650961

At first I thought someone must be spraying air-freshener on all these Zionists so their stink wouldn’t preclude them from talking to NPR, NYT, etc. But air-freshener would not be enough. Some diabolical perfume has been sprayed on them. The Zionists and neocons are actively courted, and the wrongnesses of the past are forgotten and forgiven the neocons and Zionists.

But of course, in the USA, the whole system reeks so much of the awful stink of money (in large bundles) that the comparatively mild odor of the Zionists and neocons goes unnoticed.

And those in the media who make a business of cozying up to the courtiers of power have lost their sense of smell anyhow.