While it could be tempting to wade into the whole Dr. Ford vs. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh circus, it is not worth it. Giving time to the biggest show that our government has produced this year only encourages them. Now I know what all my taxes are for. Entertainment:
There is no doubt that the Military Industrial Complex / Deep State are using this distraction to their own advantage somewhere on this globe, maybe even in Iran itself!
This post, however, is about the last accusations that Israel’s Netanyahu has made about the same old song sung for years about Iran’s secret nuclear weapons program. For well over three decades, Israel / US’ CIA / Mossad (yes, a lot of overlap there) has used this mantra as a way to threaten the sheep with lies so they would be more than happy to use military means towards “safety”:
The lies started shortly after Iran left the US Empire’s orbit in 1979 as shown by this quote in an article written five years ago:
The suggestion that Iran would soon be in possession of, or be in a position to quickly manufacture, nuclear weapons has been in constant circulation for nearly three decades. In 1984, Iran was reportedly moving “very quickly” towards a nuclear weapon and could have one as early as 1986. By the early 1990’s, the CIA predicted Iran was “making progress on a nuclear arms program and could develop a nuclear weapon by 2000,” later changing their estimate to 2003.
Israeli estimates have always been of an especially hysterical quality. In March 1992, The Jerusalem Report, noting that “Israel keeps a wary watch on Teheran’s march to the Bomb,” predicted that, “[b]y the year 2000, Iran will almost certainly have the Bomb.”
This lie has enabled sympathy on the part of many Christians in the US as well as the US government to directly support Israel economically and militarily over the years on an increasing basis and polarizing the world in the post Cold War 1.0 era.
For today’s post, I will just focus on the latest lie OR set of lies where real research sifts truth from. The Moon of Alabama article quoted below not only shows errors in Israel’s claim, but also errors in Iran’s counter-claim. So we have lies, half-truths and truth to sort through, hang on, this will require some critical thinking.
To kick of this adventure, here is what Israel’s leader said at the United Nations this last week:
Netanyahoo said:
“In May we exposed the site of Iran’s secret atomic archive. It’s right here in the Shuabad Distrcit of Tehran. Today I’m revealing the site of a second facility: Iran’s secret atomic warehouse. It’s right here, in the Turkuzahbad Distrcit of Tehran. Just three miles away. Let me show you exactly what the secret atomic warehouse looks like. Here it is. You see, like the atomic archive it’s another innocent-looking compound. Now for those of you at home using Google Earth, this no longer secret atomic warehouse. You have the coordinates, you can try to get there. And for those of you who try to get there: It’s 100 meters from the rug-cleaning operation By the way, i hear they do a fantastic job of cleaning rugs there. But by now they may be radioactive rags. This is the second secret site. Now countries with satellite capabilities may notice some increased activity on the alley in the days and weeks ahead.”
Netanyahoo added the obviously false claim that Iran removed radioactive material from the warehouse and spread it over Tehran.”
So how does Israel’s staunchest ally respond? Well, to it’s credit, it corrects some claims:
But just like back in May, when Netanyahoo presented old material that was long known to the IAEA and relevant governments, no one came out in support of his exaggerated claims. Yes, the ‘atomic warehouse’ in Tehran exists. But it is neither secret, nor does it hold anything radioactive or of current relevance:
“A US intelligence official has said that the speech delivered by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday at the UN General Assembly about the existence of a second secret atomic facility in Iran was “somewhat misleading.”
…
According to the US intelligence official, knowledge of the facility is nothing new to the Americans.
“First, we have known about this facility for some time, and it’s full of file cabinets and paper, not aluminum tubes for centrifuges, and second, so far as anyone knows, there is nothing in it that would allow Iran to break out of the JCPOA any faster than it otherwise could,” the official said.Another US military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States is aware of the facility Netanyahu announced and described it as a “warehouse” used to store “records and archives” from Iran’s nuclear program.
I am told that the IAEA also knows of the archive and its harmless content.
If you are Iran, how do you respond? Well, in this case, Iran’s press responded rather poorly as Moon of Alabama demonstrates below in reference to this Twitter post:
The first picture in Meysam Yaghoubi’s tweet is indeed the gate to the compound Netanyahoo showed. The other pictures though, which show a carpet cleaning facility, were taken inside a compound on the other side of the street of the archive compound. They were not taken inside the compound that Netanyahoo pointed out. This can be easily discerned by comparing the second picture in the tweet above with a satellite view of the place…The notable gate structure of the archive compound visible at the upper left is not the gate of the compound where the picture was taken, but on the other side of the road.
When you are wading in a sea of lies, you have to be able to pick up on nuances. The Dilbert Test can sometimes help:
Guilty people almost always question the source of the information first.
Innocent people start with a clear denial, or sometimes confusion as to why the question is being asked.
Some guilty people will give you a straight denial if they know the question is coming and they prepared for it.
With state agencies, there is certainly a period of time one has to respond. One can reply in haste and come off as being in error or falling into a well laid trap OR one can use the opportunity to their advantage and again show which state is the “bigger person”.
I have seen Russia take a tactic that places itself above the US’s level of dishonesty by clearly stating the part of a US statement that is true as true but then countering with parts of the statement that are misleading. Such is the way in this world when so many half-truths and statements taken out of historical context are involved.
The tougher part, when considering the typical US citizen is, since they have almost zero historical context, how do you keep their attention long enough to paint the truth as it is? Basically, you cannot. Governments love an ignorant society, they can get away with murder!
However, many people abroad tend to think more critically, and measure what the state puppets across the globe say against their own instinct and research. With that in mind, Moon of Alabama concludes with a challenge:
This ISNA piece and the attached pictures unintentionally confirm exactly what Netanyahoo said about the location of the archive building: “It’s 100 meters from the rug-cleaning operation.”
Iran’s foreign ministry is also somewhat hapless when it describes Netanyahoo’s speech as “false, meaningless and unnecessary”. Why can’t Tehran simply say: “Decades old administrative records of our legitimate nuclear energy program are archived in a warehouse that is well known to all relevant entities. There is nothing secret nor nefarious about it.”
Hapless attempts to debunk Netanyahoo even where he is right will be used by his propagandists to claim that “Iran lies”. Tehran, and its news agencies, must up their game.
I do hope that people in Iran can access Moon of Alabama and challenge their journalists and state writers to “up their game”!
-SF1