by William Skink
An Israeli Consul General by the name of Andy David is in Missoula today to propagandize against the Iran deal. He was brought to Montana by the Montana World Affairs Council, an organization that is allegedly dedicated to fostering global understanding and awareness in Montana’s classrooms and communities.
Andy David talked to the Missoulian in a nice long article intended to spread Israeli lies across Montana and directly to the ears of Ryan Zinke. From the link:
“The relationship between the U.S. and Israel is strong and unbreakable, but there is this issue that we disagree on,” he said. “To us, this looks like a gamble, one we’d not like to take, and we don’t think it’s for the American interests to take.”
David said negotiations set out to create a dismantle-for-dismantle agreement. If Iran dismantled its nuclear program, the U.S., United Kingdom, Germany, China, Russia and France would follow by dismantling sanctions that have all but crippled Iran over the past nine years.
While the agreement was well-intended, David said, it missed the mark.
“What we got was a partial dismantling of a nuclear program – very partial – for full dismantling of the sanctions,” David said. “On this particular issue, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the Emirates, we see things the same way. We see Iran with expansionist intentions.”
Where to start.
Israel, an apartheid state that fosters racism and believes in collective punishment, a state that launches wars against its neighbors and harbors extremists who enjoy burning Palestinian babies and stabbing to death teenagers who express solidarity for LGBT rights, has no credibility in its desperate depiction of Iran as expansionist.
The Montana World Affairs Council can’t be serious about fostering global understanding. Instead it’s providing a platform for this Israeli diplomat to go spewing dangerous propaganda. Shame on them.
When it comes to the sectarian divisions in the Middle East, America and Israel are aligned with nations that have contributed directly to jihadists movements, like ISIS and the Al Qaeda branch in Syria known as the al-Nusra Front. Unfortunately Americans don’t have an understanding of that global reality because our media is also full of propaganda.
I hope this sickening media campaign to denigrate Iran and undermine American diplomacy doesn’t persuade Congress to kill this deal. Bashing Iran and the attempt to alleviate the collective punishment of its people through economic sanctions can only be accomplished by a complicit media that ignores the true reality of the region, which is this: America and its allies are the ones perpetuating terrorism across the Middle East, and when the blowback comes we have only ourselves to blame.
JC
Another recent change in strategy — from the 1982 Yinon Plan and 2011 Juppé-Wright plan — may lead to civil war in Turkey.
“However, one fundamental element has profoundly changed the game : Israël and Saudi Arabia, who not so long ago supported the idea of creating a Kurdistan and a Sunnistan in Iraq and Syria, are now opposed to it. Tel-Aviv and Riyadh now understand that these two new states, if they come to be, will not be controlled by them, but by a Turkey which is no longer hiding its imperial ambitions, and will become a de facto regional giant.” http://www.voltairenet.org/article188337.html
I can’t find anywhere in your rant any refutation of the situation that Andy David paints, “What we got was a partial dismantling of a nuclear program – very partial – for full dismantling of the sanctions,” David said. “On this particular issue, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the Emirates, we see things the same way. We see Iran with expansionist intentions.”
Leaving Israel out of it for the moment, if Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Emirates, and Egypt are concerned that the deal only partially, and for only a limited time, binds Iran to dismantle its nuclear weapons program, where are they wrong? Even if they are wrong, for sake of discussion, if they only perceive the threat to be true, doesn’t open the door for further expansion of nuclear weapons across the region when the see, time and time again, how the US abandons its allies?
Craig, note that David said “nuclear program”, and you said “nuclear weapons program”. Iran’s nuclear power program is not it’s “nuclear weapons program” so conflating the two is disingenuous, bombastic and deflects the real issues.
Also, how about the fact that Israel refuses to acknowledge that it has nuclear weapons, and the U.S. doesn’t press the issue? If you want to talk about nuclear proliferation, then lets talk about all of it, including NATO’s proliferation of nuclear weapons into the Baltics and the former Warsaw Pact countries. How about Pakistan and Saudi Arabia?
As to the Iran agreement, I think that while Israel may rattle on about it, as it has forever — they won’t be happy until Iran is totally subjugated again as it was under the Shah. Do you believe in empire or the right of countries to be sovereign?
And lastly, but probably as important as anything, the military-industrial-complex is licking its lips over this agreement — Saudi Arabia just put in its first order for 600 Patriot missiles, costing 5.4 billion, much more to come from the petro dictators. Not to mention that all of the oil that Iran will start dumping on the world market will continue to depress oil prices… and Russian state income, and potentially be a replacement for Russian energy exports to Europe. Fortunately, it also will depress Bakken oil production and development and tar sands expansion in Canada.
Make no mistake, the Iran agreement is done with the widest amount of geopolitical strategy as possible, meant to advance the U.S. hegemony. All of the prattle of the Andy Davids of the world is just background noise.
Again, take Israel out of the discussion for the sake of argument. What about the concerns of the other ME countries with how this agreement enables Iran to threaten them? http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/mideast-allies-buying-iran-deal-sold-obama-administration/
I think that paying attention to anyone (Muasher) that says “This is the most turbulent period the Middle East has gone through in 100 years.” is really stupid. Has he forgotten WWI and the fall of the Ottoman empire? What does he think that set the stage for all the current problems? Sykes-Picot, which was happening 100 years ago, set the stage for all of the sectarian violence, nationalism, and regional wars since then.
Of course, it was western imperialism that wanted to break up the Ottoman into manageable chunks. If we keep looking at the middle east through imperialist rose-colored glasses, we’ll always see what we are told to see by those who stand to profit the most.
To those people who seek to repress Iran, they won’t be happy until the Ottoman Empire is resurrected in form under white anglo-zionist dictatorship.
You continue to avoid my question. Keep repeating Israel, Zionists,,, just doesn’t rise to a quality response. http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/21/us-iran-nuclear-saudi-nuclear-idUSKCN0PV1GC20150721 Wasn’t there anything learned from NK’s peaceful nuclear power program?
Craig, you tell me to take Israel out of it, yet the first thing the article you pointed me to talks about Israel. And when I say “anglo-zionist” I’m not referring to Israel, per se. Take a look at what the Saker has to say about anglo-zionists:
http://thesaker.is/terminology/
So, to take Israel out of the middle east equation is kinda like taking Weimar Germany out of the discussion of WWII. But I understand your desire to do so.
And I don’t know why we must continually conflate Iran with North Korea. The two countries are nothing alike. It also makes me wonder how you could neglect to mention that the U.S. is the only country to use nuclear weapons — killing hundreds of thousands of mostly innocent, including women, children and elderly. Why do you think that North Korea wants “the bomb”? Because the U.S. no longer targets nations with the bomb with direct military action. North Korea saw the horrors we inflicted on Japan. There may be crazy people running North Korea, but I don’t know what is crazier than what Truman did to Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
So let’s take the U.S.’s known use of nuclear weapons out of the equation, and lets not talk about Israel, who has nuclear weapons and has from time to time threatened to annihilate Iran. Lets forget that we overthrew the duly elected government of Iran and appointed our own puppet to run it. Let’s forget Iran-Contra, where we secretly sold weapons to Iran, and used the proceeds to fund the Contras, contravening both international law and U.S. law. Lets forget that we gave weapons and money to Osama bin Laden to further the Afghani resistance fighters in the 70s and 80s.
Where do you draw any moral authority to deny Iran the right to produce nuclear power? The only authority we have is that which we enforce through soft power, hard power, covert power, smart power, or whatever moniker du jour we call our drive to maintain world hegemony. In other words, “do it our way, or your nation as you know it will perish.”
JC, I said take Israel out of the discussion and focus on the concerns of other ME nations that feel threatened by Iran with this treaty. You keep dodging the question. I’ll leave it there.
Craig, I think a good dose of Tom Lehrer from the mid 60s will do you some good:
“Take Israel out of the equation” is a bit like discussing the play on the night Lincoln was killed.
An appropriate follow-on, and perhaps a glimpse of what lies ahead.
“The old world order, to which we became accustomed over the course of the 1990s and the 2000s, its crises and its problems detailed in numerous authoritative publications on both sides of the Atlantic—it is no more. It is not out sick and it is not on vacation. It is deceased. It has passed on, gone to meet its maker, bought the farm, kicked the bucket and joined the choir invisible. It is an ex-world order.”
“Now that all Western values (other than the rights of sexual minorities) have been shown to be cynical exercises in hypocrisy, there is no path back. You see, it is a matter of reputation, and a reputation is something that one can lose exactly once.”
http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/
ok, forget Israel. Saudi Arabia is clearly one of the biggest threats in the region with its bombing campaign in Yemen, it’s weaponized petro-dollar and its funding of jihadist movements.
oh, and if you want to define Iran as an expansionist state, it might be helpful to acknowledge that Bush’s war in Iraq to get Saddam is what unleashed much of the chaos in the region, creating a vacuum of power that any bordering nation would be wise to try and mitigate by filling.
those are just a few points to add to JC’s great commentary.
Israel doesn’t exist.
….And death to America.