{"id":92224,"date":"2022-02-14T17:05:43","date_gmt":"2022-02-14T15:05:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=92224"},"modified":"2022-02-06T08:34:56","modified_gmt":"2022-02-06T06:34:56","slug":"14-05-79","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=92224","title":{"rendered":"The Media Continues Its Iran Deal Myth-Making"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>The Media Continues Its Iran Deal Myth-Making<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/h5>\n

Sean Durns<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Deputy Secretary General of the European External Action Service (EEAS) Enrique Mora and Iran\u2019s chief nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani and delegations wait for the start of a meeting of the JCPOA Joint Commission in Vienna, Austria December 17, 2021. EU Delegation in Vienna\/EEAS. Photo: Handout via REUTERS<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe great enemy of the truth,\u201d John F. Kennedy once observed, \u201cis very often not the lie \u2014 deliberate, contrived and dishonest \u2014 but the myth \u2014 persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.\u201d Both myths and lies surround the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the 2015 accord reached between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran over the latter\u2019s nuclear weapons program.<\/span><\/p>\n

And few myths have been as enduring as the myth that Israel\u2019s security establishment supported the so-called Iran nuclear deal.<\/span><\/p>\n

Gilead Ini, a senior research analyst for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA), punctured the falsehood when it was first introduced in 2015. At the time, the pitch to sell the Iran Deal was in full swing.<\/span><\/p>\n

In September of that year, The<\/em> New York Times<\/em> published<\/a> a graphic that highlighted Congressional opposition to the Obama administration-brokered deal.<\/span><\/p>\n

Initially, the graphic included a column headed \u201cJewish?\u201d to highlight whether the Democratic lawmaker casting votes on the JCPOA was Jewish or not. Not content with regurgitating the antisemitic dual loyalty canard, the newspaper falsely asserted that the debate over the deal \u201cdivided Jewish constituents between those who saw the deal as a threat to Israel and those who backed it as a way to avert conflict between Iran and the United States.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

That most Americans, Jewish and otherwise, were skeptical of the deal on its merits was a fact to be ignored or obfuscated. Instead, many JCPOA boosters propagated the line that it was \u201cthis deal or war.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

This lack of nuance was extended in additional media reports<\/a>, which claimed that Israel\u2019s security establishment supported the Iran nuclear deal.<\/span><\/p>\n

In fact, many of the experts cited by press outlets as \u201csupportive\u201d were deeply critical of the JCPOA.<\/span><\/p>\n

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, for example, referred to it as a \u201cbad deal.\u201d Forward <\/em>journalist J.J. Goldberg implied that Amos Yadlin, the former head of Israel\u2019s military intelligence, favored the agreement when, in fact, he was lukewarm at best. As CAMERA noted at the time, Yadlin had called the JCPOA \u201cproblematic,\u201d even adding: \u201cthis is not a good deal \u2026 you also could call it a bad deal.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Indeed, other Israeli security experts who were often cited as supporters, such as Efraim Halevy and Israel Ziv, were less than enthusiastic in their expressions of the deal\u2019s merits. Ziv, while believing that the deal \u201cis not particularly bad,\u201d argued that \u201cthere is no one in Israel who thinks the nuclear agreement is a good agreement.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet, more than half a decade later, the media is continuing to publish reports on both the JCPOA, and Iran\u2019s nuclear program, that are missing essential context.<\/span><\/p>\n

Take, for example, The Washington Post<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

On December 9, 2021, the newspaper published a report<\/a> entitled \u201cIsrael opposed the Iran nuclear deal, but former Israeli officials increasingly say U.S. pullout was a mistake.\u201d The publication of the dispatch coincided with ongoing negotiations in Vienna between the United States and Iran.<\/span><\/p>\n

Israeli officials, Post<\/em> reporter Shira Rubin asserted, have \u201cwarned that economic sanctions on Iran are not deterring it from dangerously advancing its nuclear program.\u201d She adds: \u201cwhile Israel had applauded President Donald Trump\u2019s withdrawal from the accord in 2018,\u201d former Israeli officials have \u201cconcluded that his \u2018maximum pressure\u2019 policy built primarily on sanctions has failed to prevent Iran from increasing the quantity and quality of its enriched uranium.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

To bolster the argument, Rubin quoted Yoel Guzansky, the former head of the Iran desk on Israel\u2019s National Security Council. Guzansky said that \u201cthe nuclear deal was flawed, but at least it put a lid on Iran\u2019s advancement, which we don\u2019t have now.\u201d Another official, Raz Zimmt, said that the pullout \u201cmay actually have accelerated Iranian nuclear progress.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The Post\u2019s<\/em> report claimed that former Israeli officials said that the JCPOA \u201csubjected Iran to restrictions and to international inspections that held in check crucial elements of the nuclear program,\u201d whereas sanctions have achieved far less.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet, there is no real way to measure Iran\u2019s nuclear progress. The JCPOA itself<\/a> did not require Iran to disclose its nuclear history. Additionally, it isn\u2019t accurate to imply that Iran was subjected to a stringent inspection regime under the deal, because the deal\u2019s terms prohibited the inspection of military sites and didn\u2019t allow immediate access. The yardstick, from the very beginning, was broken.<\/span><\/p>\n

Put simply: it is impossible to know the full extent of Iran\u2019s nuclear progress \u2014 a fact that the deal didn\u2019t solve, and arguably made worse. But what is known is that Iran was, in fact, cheating<\/a> and lying about its nuclear program \u2014 a fact that makes the JCPOA\u2019s loose inspection terms even more troubling.<\/span><\/p>\n

An October 2018 report<\/a> by the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington, DC-based think tank, analyzed documentation that Israel had seized from Tehran in a daring intelligence operation. This \u201cnuclear archive\u201d consisted of thousands of documents, later authenticated by the US, which showed that Iran had not only lied about its nuclear program, but was hiding it during negotiations with the United States and others. As CAMERA noted in a November 2018 Daily Caller<\/em> op-ed<\/a>, the revelations from the \u201cnuclear archive\u201d were widely ignored by media outlets.<\/span><\/p>\n

Furthermore, the Post\u2019s<\/em> report also fails to mention a key fact: the JCPOA\u2019s terms included sunset provisions. The deal did not, by its very terms, prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. The agreement\u2019s biggest booster even admitted as much.<\/span><\/p>\n

In an April 7, 2015, interview<\/a> with NPR, then-President Barack Obama acknowledged that in \u201c13,14, 15 years\u201d Iran, thanks to advanced centrifuges, will be able to \u201cenrich uranium fairly rapidly, and at that point, the breakout times would have shrunk to almost zero.\u201d The Post<\/em> also failed to inform readers that the JCPOA did not address the R&D aspects of Iran\u2019s program, and even allowed for the use of advanced centrifuges.<\/span><\/p>\n

Regrettably, more omissions followed.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Post<\/em> noted that Israeli operatives had assassinated Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in November 2020, describing him as \u201cthe country\u2019s top nuclear scientist.\u201d But Fahrizadeh was more than a mere scientist \u2014 he was also a top commander<\/a> in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which has been designated by the US for its role in supporting and training terrorist groups and for targeting Americans.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Post<\/em> also quoted Israeli officials who \u201csaid that Western isolation from Iran also contributed to the weakening of pragmatic Iranian Hassan Rouhani.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Rouhani may have been pragmatic, but he was no moderate. As CAMERA frequently highlighted<\/a>, Rouhani has claimed that United Flight 93, which crashed during the September 11, 2001, Al-Qaeda terrorist attack was \u201cshot down by the United States Air Force.\u201d Rouhani has also supported the use of illegal chemical warfare and, when he was the first secretary of Iran\u2019s National Security Council, supported operations <\/a>to target and murder dissidents living abroad.<\/span><\/p>\n

Iran is the world\u2019s leading state sponsor of terrorism, and has targeted and murdered Americans. The regime calls for the destruction of the world\u2019s sole Jewish state and has devoted considerable resources to attacking Israel. Tehran\u2019s attempts to acquire nuclear weapons warrant both concern and careful press coverage. Yet too often, both have been lacking.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The writer is a Senior Research Analyst for CAMERA<\/strong>, the 65,000-member, Boston-based Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis<\/span> <\/em><\/p>\n

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The Media Continues Its Iran Deal Myth-Making Sean Durns Deputy Secretary General of the European External Action Service (EEAS) Enrique Mora and Iran\u2019s chief nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani and delegations wait for the start of a meeting of the JCPOA Joint Commission in Vienna, Austria December 17, 2021. EU Delegation in Vienna\/EEAS. Photo: Handout […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92224"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=92224"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92424,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92224\/revisions\/92424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=92224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=92224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=92224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}