User:Fred Rio/sandbox

Recent Coverage of Iran Nuclear Program and related affairs by US media
Recent coverage of Iran by US media has tended to focus on Iran's nuclear energy program. All other subjects like the elections, daily life in Iran, how the US is perceived in the country, how can the US actions can be interpreted in different manners or the reasons for Iran's nuclear energy program tend to be overlooked by outlets like CNN, Time, Associated Press, The New York Times, DailyBeast/Newsweek and Fox News. Some of these networks, newspapers or websites do publish very few stories that add complexity to the current crisis, but they are far between and intercalated by inflammatory and most times unproven reports. The following are examples:

CNN - March 21, 2012 - Wolf Blitzer warns that "Iran's A-Team of terrorists has hundreds, maybe thousands of agents right here in the United States. This hour, the growing threat of an attack by a group considered more sophisticated than Al Qaeda". 

But Blitzer does not explain how Hezbollah, which is the group mentioned, is "more sophisticated than Al Qaeda", since it never did anything near what Al Qaeda did on 9/11. He also does not present any sort of proof to back his claims other than the commentary of former law enforcement officials, none of which talk about hundreds or thousands of terrorists ready to strike the US. Blitzer also does not ask why haven't these operatives, if they have been identified as is claimed in the report, been arrested or deported.

CNN- On February 16th was the chance of CNN anchor Erin Burnett to throw out accusations as facts. She stated flatly that "no one buy's Iran's claim that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes. Today on Capitol Hill, national intelligence director James Clapper drove that message home".

The video of James Clapper speaking on Capitol Hill has nothing even near that claim, he says: "Iran's technical advances, particularly in uranium enrichment, strengthen our assessment that Iran is more than capable of producing enough highly enriched uranium for a weapon, if its political leaders - specially, the Supreme Leader himself, chooses to do so." 

The Daily Beast/Newsweek- Newsweek, although giving more focus to the nuclear energy subject than any other, published one of the few pieces found on US media that asks the fundamental question of "would it be so bad if Iran got nuclear weapons?". It was written by Neil Padukone and published on February 23rd 2012. In it Padukone reminds readers that Iran has never expelled any nuclear inspectors from the country. He says that Iran has been "getting the bomb" for more than 10 years, with not much to show for its efforts and also that almost 70 years after the first nuclear weapon was built and the constant fear of proliferation, less than ten countries have nuclear weapons.

But the same The Daily Beast/Newsweek, on February 17th, has a piece by former CIA officer Bruce Riedel where he writes of the possible links between Iran/Hezbollah and Al Qaeda. He describes many possibilities for cooperation, but he does not talk to the reader about the fact that each of these organizations belongs to a religious current (Iran's shiites and Al Qaeda Sunni's) that considers the other heretics and has been in constant conflict since Islamism appeared.

The Washington Post - the newspapers incurs on some of the same faults encountered in many others, mainly the attribution of important and strategic pieces to anonymous sources, leaving the reader with a difficult choice on what to believe. On an article published on February 29th, for instance, the Post states that the Iranian underground bunkers on the location known as Fordow may not be impregnable to US bombardment, as has previously been stated. But the there not one named source claiming that, and the only ones named are the sources who say speak in theory of such an attack and how it may or may not be successful. And it is an important point, since if the bunkers are really impregnable, then there's not much the US can do militarily outside of an invasion to stop the enrichment of uranium at those facilities.

The New York Times - even when the US and world media have made a mistake, some organizations claim that it is more Iran's fault than their own, such was the case with the New York Times on 18th April 2012, on its "The Lede Blog". The article talked about the fact that many news sources had been recently backtracking on reporting that Iranian President Ahmadinejad had declared that he wished to wipe Israel off the map. Even Israel's Deputy Prime Minister, Dan Meridor, declared to Al-Jazeera english that "Iranian leaders didn't say "we will wipe it out"... but [that] it will not survive".

But the New York Times story stated that "In a reminder that Persian rhetoric is not always easy for english-speakers to understand..." and it went on to declare the same thing as said by Deputy Prime Minister Meridor, but without stating that the NYT was wrong. As for Meridor, at the above interview to Al-Jazeera he states that "we have misquoted Iran".

And just a few days earlier, on April 14th, the NYT had published a story by James Risen titled "Seeking Nuclear Insight in Fog of the Ayatollah's Utterances". The journalist looked at some declarations of Supreme Leader Khamenei in regards to Lybia to conclude that "Ayatollah Khamenei's remarks are sometimes contradictory, and always subject to widely different interpretations". But the declaration Risen quoted on his article was: "This gentleman [Col Qaddafi] wrapped up all his nuclear facilities, packed them on a ship and delivered them to the West and said, "take them". Look where we are, and in what position they are now". Considering that Col Gaddafi was shot and killed a few months before the declaration, there is not anything dubious about it.

To complicate, Risen added, “Some analysts say that Ayatollah Khamenei’s denial of Iranian nuclear ambitions has to be seen as part of a Shiite historical concept called taqiyya, or religious dissembling”. This concept stated that Shiites could lie and declare themselves Sunni during earlier times, when Shiites where a minority and, when found by Sunnis, where usually killed []. It was a strategy of survival. One of the responses to the article, by University of Michigan Shiite history expert Professor Juan Cole, shed some light on the subject:

“[Imam Khomeini in 1979] demanded that taqiyya be abandoned in favor of holy war. So the idea that Supreme Leader Khamenei, the theocratic leader of a Shiite-majority Islamic republic, would give a dishonest fatwa about a key principle in Islamic law is a non-starter”. Also, Risen never elaborates on who are the “some analysts” who hold such an opinion. “It’s just some weird form of Islamophobia”, says Professor Cole about the article’s idea that Shiites are likely liars.