John Sloboda On The Narrative For War With Iran

OK, last post, I promise, on the Guardian's allowing their conservative senior reporter to bring the newspaper along on the narrative that leads to war with Iran. John Sloboda, co-founder of the Iraq Body Count website and executive director of the Oxford Research Group (the folks who compiled the first real count of 25,000 Iraqi civilan dead) also thought it was just plain dumb of the Guardian. He wrote them a letter:

Your front-page coverage of Iran's alleged nuclear activities (Report, January 4) suggests that you have not learned the important lessons from Iraq. After recent intelligence failures over WMD, editors should be doubly wary of "leaked intelligence", its timing and the motives of those who provided the information.

Your coverage of a secret services report about Iran's nuclear ambitions contains little new. It is mainly rehashed information available from public sources. It is well known that the Iranians are trying to develop long-range missiles that are potentially capable of carrying nuclear warheads. What the article fails to point out is that they are a long way from achieving this. Dual-use companies are also nothing new. If there was one useful purpose the article could have served, it would have been to name the companies listed in the report

There are many reasons to be concerned about Iran's nuclear programme, but the UK and EU must also be held to account for the failure of their diplomatic efforts to curb Iran's nuclear development. Your publication of this material helps those who seek to demonise Iran, makes peaceful resolution of the dispute even more difficult, and means that proper scrutiny of the failure of EU and US policy has once again been avoided.

Prof John Sloboda
Oxford Research Group

Yup, what he said. I said it too but Prof. Sloboda said it better. I'm pleased to find myself in such august company.