U.S. mainstream media coverage of Israel’s dangerous assassination of the Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh continues to be garbled and misleading, though there is at least one bright spot. And the assassination caused New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman to end his year-long near silence on the Mideast — with an embarrassment that Times readers promptly eviscerated in the paper’s own comments section.
Much U.S. coverage of the killing is confusing, especially on the cable news networks. But the dominant message seems to be this:
* Iran has continued a secret program to build nuclear weapons, and Mohsen Fakhrizadeh headed it.
* Iran is enriching uranium, and could be as close as a few months away from having enough to make a bomb.
* Israel, probably with U.S. connivance, killed Fakhrizadeh to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear power.
On closer inspection, the sources for this interpretation, even in the New York Times, turn out to be anonymous “American and Israeli intelligence” officials. There are plenty of experts who will counter this version of reality, but the U.S. mainstream can’t seem to find them. Here’s just one example: Juan Cole, the distinguished professor at Michigan, points out that the International Atomic Energy Agency has conducted “extensive and intrusive inspections” inside Iran as part of the Iran nuclear deal, and
has consistently certified that no Iranian nuclear material has ever been diverted (i.e. to possible military uses).
Cole adds:
Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program, and has not had one since about 2003.
The Times did run a more accurate analysis, although it waited until two days, after plenty of other sources, including this site, had already spoken out. David Sanger’s article starts off by asserting that Israel’s assassination
threatens to cripple President-elect Joseph E. Biden Jr.’s effort to revive the Iran nuclear deal before he can even begin his diplomacy with Tehran. And that may well have been a main goal of the operation.
Meanwhile, the valuable Israeli daily Haaretz headlined: “Killing of Iranian scientist is a dangerous provocation.” Let’s wait and see if the New York Times editorial board has anything similarly intelligent to say.
But the Times’s foreign affairs specialist, Thomas Friedman, has chimed in on the assassination of Mohsen Fakrizadeh. This site has reproached Friedman for saying nearly nothing all year in his twice-weekly columns about the rising risk of conflict with Iran. He broke his near silence today, and the result is a pathetic embarrassment, trying to rationalize Israel’s conduct. Friedman says the real context for Israel’s assassination is a “new” Middle East in which Iran is the aggressor. Friedman is like a punch-drunk boxer who should have gotten out of the ring long ago.
And Times readers are seeing through Friedman’s incompetence. All of the most popular Readers’ Comments on his article excoriate him, such as Easy Friend, from New England:
I’m old enough to remember when Tom Friedman led the public case for the invasion of Iraq and, more recently, lauded MBS, pre bone-saw. [MBS: Mohammad bin Salman, the murderous de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia.] I don’t think he’s in any position to explain the Middle East to the president-elect.
Friedman focuses on the successful September 2019 precision-guided missile attack on Saudi Arabia’s big oil installation at Abqaiq, which was claimed by the Houthi government in Yemen but most likely carried out by Iran. He says the attack was “unprovoked,” and he warns that targets inside Israel are now at risk: “Israel’s nuclear plant, airport, ports, power plants, high-tech factories and military bases.”
So the Houthi/Iranian missile attack was “unprovoked?” In fact, Saudi Arabia has been waging a terrible aerial bombardment against Yemen for years, which has killed tens of thousands of Yemenis and triggered a cholera epidemic. Both houses of the U.S. Congress passed legislation designed to reduce U.S. military support for the murderous Saudi onslaught, but Donald Trump vetoed the bill in April 2019. Friedman’s column completely ignores this relevant history.
There’s no doubt that the risk of war in the Mideast is rising. But let’s listen to the editorial writers at Haaretz, who after all, unlike Friedman, do live under the (alleged) risk of those Iranian precision missiles. Haaretz said:
There is a balance of terror between Israel and Iran, an arms race to obtain deterrence without any solution on the horizon. Diplomatic solutions, rather than only military ones, to an escalation must be considered.
Let’s be clear! It’s a simple litmus test and Friedman, the NYT, and US news media in general are failing it.
Had say, Pakistan, or Lebanon, or ANY other Middle Eastern nation set up a roadside bomb and automated machine gun, in a foreign country (say Israel for example) to ambush and kill a government official or scientist of said nation and who posses no immediate terrorist or military threat, they would be calling it was it is… an act of state-sponsored terrorism. Period!
But when Israel does exactly that, with the tacit approval of our own government, it get’s labeled and floated as a “justifiable” targeted assassination by all and sundry. They give this benefit to one nation and one nation alone.
When Israel routinely kills Iranian troops, commanders, and military officials in Syria, they aren’t framed by our media as terrorist attacks or the acts of war that they are, yet this is exactly the accusations leveled at Iran when Iranian backed rebel militias carry out similar attacks in Yemen, or Syria, or Iraq, or Afghanistan.
I’m no fan of Iran and wish for deep change in the nation, but pretending like they are the only bad actors and “terrorist nation” in the region, when the likes of Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt, Turkey, and Israel are carrying out equal if not worse atrocities and war crimes across the Middle East in an attempt to dominate the region is nothing short of outright hypocrisy.
My comment on Friedman’s column in the NYT didn’t get through the system (probably because I called him “pompous”). However, it has been gratifying to see so many other commenters eviscerating him with greater precision than I managed.
It’s also amazingly strange how the MSM has forgotten the great WMD swindle and the needless war that climaxed that. In fact, many of the swindlers have been hired by the MSM, and are now being appointed to the Biden administration. Ace investigative reporter Robert Scheer recently posted on his website a relevant conversation with Afghanistan veteran US Army Major Danny Sjursen, discussing manufactured “truth”, censorship, and war.
“Unmasking Biden’s Imperialist War Cabinet”
https://scheerpost.com/2020/11/27/unmasking-bidens-imperialist-war-cabinet/
This assassination was an assault on Americans, their ability to make policy based on self interest. It will make Americans less willing to abide war on Iran nor fight another Israeli war so it can avoid diplomacy. Black flag operations will get questioned. Iran’s intelligent/civilized response will work to its advantage in the future. My guess is Trump wanted a deal, not endless war. I’d say Israel shot itself in the foot. Iran and America will eventually cooperate. After Palestinians under occupation recognize the reality of one state as have Palestinian citizens.
“If our dreams for Zionism are not to end in the smoke of assassins’ pistols
and our labor for its future to produce only a new set of gangsters worthy
of Nazi Germany, many like myself will have to reconsider the position we
have maintained for so long in the past.”
Winston Churchill, November 1944, from his address to the House of Commons on the murder of Britain’s Resident Minister in the Middle East, Lord Moyne, by two members of the Zionist terrorist organization, Lehi.
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/the-assassins-creed-murder-as-israeli-state-policy/
Even arch-Zionist racist Churchill started having second thoughts when the ugly heart of Zionism was revealed.