The Guardian Editors Re-Inject Some Reason On Iran

Yesterday I waxed sceptical about a Guardian report that was long on rhetoric that reinforced the narrative for war with Iran and very short on actual new news. I wondered, as must many others, why the Guardian of all British newspapers would take such a spineless and unenquiring stance.

I wonder no longer. A quick websearch on the two reporters credited with the story reveals much. Ian Cobain is the Guardian's closet neocon - before coming to the paper he worked for the Daily Express, the Daily Mail, the Sunday Telegraph and finally Rupert Murdoch's London Times up until summer last year. Every single one of them is considered a conservative newspaper. Ian Traynor has been with the Guardian for some time and has written eloquently about the way in which the rush to war with Iraq was conducted but seems to have blinkers where Iran is concerned. A quick look at his previous writings will reveal that he is always a harsh critic taking the worst possible view of the obgoing saga of Irans search for nuclear expertise.

Happily, the Guardian seems to have had second thoughts about supporting the rush-to-war narrative so blindly. Today, their leader reports their own story with a more sanguine eye, referring only to an "alleged" Iranian wish for nuclear arms. It has this to say too:

Iraq was a reminder of the imprecision of intelligence and of the wisdom of being sceptical about both spies and politicians. Americans who want regime change in Iran are likely to put the worst possible construction on what is known. So is Israel. But Europeans are deeply concerned too. Iran is entitled under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty to develop nuclear energy. Yet it played cat and mouse with the International Atomic Energy Agency for 18 years, is still evading full disclosure and slicing away, salami-style, at agreements. That was one reason why talks with Britain, France and Germany collapsed last autumn. That is why Moscow is now trying to persuade Tehran to carry out joint uranium enrichment on Russian soil. Given that there are sharp divisions over taking Iran to the UN security council, and no guarantee that sanctions, if agreed, would work, that sort of diplomacy must be pursued.

All of which is rather more reasonable than the sensasionalist tone of yesterday's article. Unfortunatelky, the public will remember the news story, not the editorial caveat. The editors should have done their jobs properly before the original report went to print, not in an op-ed the day after.

And while we are on the subject, let's talk some about that alleged "lack of transparency" on the part of Iran. Dr. Gordon Prather, a nuclear scientist with intimate personal knowledge of bomb-making and a past policy implementing official for national security-related technical matters in the Federal Energy Agency, the Energy Research and Development Administration, the Department of Energy, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of the Army is of the opinion that Iran has been more transparent than it ever needed to be. (He was also pretty scathing about the Russian plan, saying Russia would be an unreliable supplier. Given the recent Russia/Ukraine spat over gas he seems to have been exactly right on that one.)

Moreover, if Iran is being recalcitrant, as the narrative goes, then why is it announcing even the minor steps in research it is taking? Why is it going to the UN to brief officials and diplomats? Why not just keep them secret and hidden away in the alleged miles of Russian-built secret tunnels?

It simply doesn't make sense and the best conclusion is that the narrative is as fictional as the one that was concocted to lead us into war with Iraq.