Just Foreign Policy News
December 9, 2010
*Action: Attend a "South of the Border" Screening Party
In major US media, evidence of US involvement in coups in Latin America doesn’t exist.
But Oliver Stone’s documentary "South of the Border" documents U.S. involvement in the 2002 coup in Venezuela. On December 10 – Human Rights Day – attend a house party to watch "South of the Border," and tune in to a live webcast with Just Foreign Policy President Mark Weisbrot, who co-wrote the script. Check to see if there’s a house party near you:
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/southofobama/search
Haiti Election Fiasco: Chickens Come Home to Roost
The Administration ignored calls from Congress to push for reform of Haiti’s election commission. Now we see the consequence: an election result that even the US Embassy doubted.
http://www.truth-out.org/haiti-election-fiasco-chickens-come-home-roost65805
Guardian: Wikileaks under attack: timeline
The Guardian tallies attacks on Wikileaks from governments and corporations.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/07/wikileaks-under-attack-definitive-timeline
CounterSpin: WikiLeaks and the Coup in Honduras
One story hasn’t received enough media attention: how the U.S. embassy really saw the 2009 coup in Honduras. How did this cable conflict with official U.S. pronouncements and corporate media spin? Counterspin talks to Just Foreign Policy.
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=4208
*Action: Courage to Resist: Support Bradley Manning
Army intelligence analyst Manning faces decades in prison, and is being held in solitary confinement, without even visits from family, for allegedly leaking US government documents. Courage to Resist is circulating a statement of support for Bradley Manning.
http://standwithbrad.org/
Editor’s Note
A reader of the JFP news objected that the characterization of a leaked cable from the US embassy in Bolivia contained in a piece by Benjamin Dangl in the JFP News on Monday was unfair. Reviewing the cable, I don’t think the reader’s criticism of Dangl’s piece was correct; I think Dangl’s characterization of the cable was essentially fair. However, in comparing Dangl’s piece to the cable, I found that the link to the cable in Dangl’s piece was broken, presumably because of the attacks on Wikileaks. Thus, to enable readers to make the same comparison, I post a working link to the cable here, along with the Dangl piece.
The cable:
http://213.251.145.96/cable/2009/01/09LAPAZ96.html
Dangl’s piece:
http://towardfreedom.com/americas/2201-the-embassy-has-no-clothes-wikileaks-cable-clarifies-washingtons-stance-toward-bolivia
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Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) Haiti’s electoral council said it would re-count the vote in the country’s disputed election in view of election monitors, AP reports. The decision follows rioting sparked by the announcement that government-backed candidate Jude Celestin and former first lady Mirlande Manigat were poised to enter a January runoff, while entertainer Michel "Sweet Micky" Martelly had apparently been narrowly eliminated. The U.S. Embassy has said the preliminary results appeared to conflict with reports from observers who monitored the count. AP notes that supporters of ousted President Aristide turned on President Preval when he failed to bring Aristide back from South African exile or improve the economy.
2) For many Europeans Washington’s fierce reaction to the flood of secret diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks displays imperial arrogance and hypocrisy, the New York Times reports. US officials and politicians have been widely condemned in the European news media for calling the leaks everything from "terrorism" (Rep. Peter King,) to "an attack against the international community" (Secretary Clinton.) Seumas Milne of The Guardian said the US reaction was "tipping over towards derangement." The Guardian’s John Naughton called it a "delicious irony" that "it is now the so-called liberal democracies that are clamoring to shut WikiLeaks down." Russian Prime Minister Putin accused the US of hypocrisy in preaching democracy to Russia: "So, you know, as we say in the village, some people’s cows can moo, but yours should keep quiet."
3) WikiLeaks is stronger than ever, at least as measured by its ability to publish online, the Washington Post reports. Experts say the very design of the Web makes it difficult for WikiLeaks’ opponents to shut it down for more than a few hours. Government-inspired efforts to financially isolate WikiLeaks have prompted cries of censorship and government interference, the Post notes. "I can use my credit card to send money to the Ku Klux Klan, to antiabortion fanatics, or to anti-homosexual bigots, but I can’t use it to send money to WikiLeaks," said Jeff Jarvis, director of the interactive journalism program at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. "The New York Times published the same documents. Should we tell Visa and MasterCard to stop payments to the Times?"
4) Israeli leaders have insisted the Wikileaks cables prove Sunni Arab leaders are far more preoccupied with the threat posed by Iran than with a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, write Eli Clifton and Jim Lobe for Inter Press Service. But a closer look at the cables shows a far more consistent message to Washington from its Arab allies: curbing Iran and resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are inextricably linked and that the most effective way of achieving the former is make tangible progress on the latter.
5) Scientists reported Thursday the strongest evidence yet that a cholera outbreak that has killed more than 2,000 people in Haiti can be traced to South Asia, AP reports. The analysis fits with, but does not prove, the controversial idea that the disease came from U.N. troops dispatched from that region, AP says. On Tuesday, AP obtained a copy of an undisclosed report by French epidemiologist Renaud Piarroux that said "no other hypothesis could be found," than that U.N. soldiers from Nepal brought the disease to Haiti and transmitted it because of sanitation problems at their base, to explain how a strain never before seen in Haiti erupted in a village far from the coast and the earthquake zone, in an area directly abutting the peacekeepers’ base. The new study says it’s important to try to keep Haiti’s cholera from spreading elsewhere, providing further rationale for a large cholera vaccine campaign in Haiti.
Iran
6) We learned from the WikiLeaks cables that State Department officials have serious questions about the accuracy – and sincerity – of Israeli predictions about when Iran will obtain a nuclear weapon, writes Justin Elliott in Salon. According to various Israeli government predictions over the years, Iran was going to have a bomb by the mid-90s – or 1998, 1999, 2000, 2004, 2005, and finally 2010. More recent Israeli predictions have put that date at 2011 or 2014.
7) Arabian peninsula states have adopted a conciliatory tone on Iran after U.S. diplomatic cables appeared to show enthusiasm in some corners (and at certain points) for a military attack on its nuclear program, the Los Angeles Times reports. The Gulf Cooperation Council wrapped up a summit in Abu Dhabi gently calling on Iran to cooperate with the international community over its nuclear program in order to end sanctions. The closing statement also reiterated Arab support for Iran’s right to a peaceful nuclear program.
Afghanistan
8) Secretary of Defense Gates received a sobering update on security in eastern Afghanistan, the Los Angeles Times reports. Lt. Col. J.B. Vowell, commander of the U.S. Army’s 2nd Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment, attributed the increase in violence in Kunar province in part to the presence of additional U.S. troops, which he said allowed the Taliban to recruit fighters in a place known for its hostility to outsiders.
Israel/Palestine
9) Analysts said the Obama administration’s decision to stop seeking a new Israeli settlement freeze has diminished prospects of achieving a peace accord within a year and eroded U.S. credibility in the region, the Washington Post reports. Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said the U.S. decision would have "grave consequences in the region." "If you cannot have [Netanyahu]stop settlements for a few months, what do you expect get out of him on Jerusalem or the 1967 borders," Erekat said.
10) Israel said it would allow increased exports from Gaza, the New York Times reports. Exports have been almost completely banned since June 2007. Israel recently approved the export of strawberries and flowers from Gaza to Europe. Now it says it will begin to allow exports of more agricultural produce, including citrus fruits, furniture, textiles and some other goods, both abroad and to the West Bank. Gisha, an Israeli advocacy group that promotes freedom of movement for Palestinians, questioned why Gaza’s merchants would still be barred from marketing their goods to Israeli merchants, as they did before 2007.
Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) Haiti to recount ballots in disputed election
Jonathan M. Katz, Associated Press, Thursday, December 9, 2010
http://www.ajc.com/news/nation-world/haiti-to-recount-ballots-770984.html
Port-au-Prince, Haiti – Haiti’s electoral council will re-count the vote in the country’s disputed election in view of election monitors and potentially the three leading candidates themselves, the council president said Thursday.
The decision follows rioting sparked by the announcement that government-backed candidate Jude Celestin and former first lady Mirlande Manigat were poised to enter a January runoff, while entertainer Michel "Sweet Micky" Martelly had apparently been narrowly eliminated.
Council president Gaillot Dorsainvil read a statement on Haitian radio saying that tally sheets would be re-counted with international observers and electoral officials. "Given the evident dissatisfaction of many voters, protests and violence that followed the publication of preliminary results," the Provisional Electoral Council has decided to start a re-count immediately, he said.
Dorsainvil said it would be overseen by a commission including the electoral council, domestic and foreign observers and the three main candidates if they wish.
[…] Nearly all 19 candidates, all of whom received votes on the Nov. 28 ballot, have said fraud tainted the results. A coalition of at least 10 candidates reiterated their call Thursday for the vote to be thrown out.
The U.S. Embassy has also said the preliminary results appeared to conflict with reports from observers who monitored the count.
Martelly’s supporters again paralyzed streets in the capital on Thursday, piling earthquake rubble into barricades and squaring off with police and U.N. peacekeepers. On Wednesday, the candidate told his supporters to continue demonstrating, and a campaign manager said he would legally challenge the announced results.
A light rain that fell through the night dampened protests. But new fires were lit and barricades still blocked intersections throughout the capital.
[…] Preval urged candidates to call off the protests on Wednesday. He acknowledged there had been fraud in the election, but said it was typical of elections around the world.
His own election was also decided through riots in 2006.
Backed by supporters of ex-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who had been ousted two years before, Preval was swept into office when widespread rioting forced the cancellation of a second-round vote through a compromise that gave him more than 50 percent of the vote.
Those supporters turned on him when he failed to bring Aristide, his former mentor, back from South African exile or improve the economy. Riots fueled by high food prices forced out his prime minister in 2008. His popularity bottomed out when Preval disappeared from public sight after the Jan. 12 earthquake and presided over a stalled reconstruction that has helped few people regain homes or income.
"We stood up for Preval then, but now we stand up against him. We thought he would bring us food, education, health … We thought he would stand for the people. But he betrayed us," said Clarel Meriland, an unemployed 23 year old who took the streets as a teenager in 2006.
[…]
2) Europeans Criticize Fierce U.S. Response to Leaks
Steven Erlanger, New York Times, December 9, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/10/world/europe/10wikileaks-react.html
Paris – The United States considers itself a shining beacon of democracy and openness, but for many Europeans Washington’s fierce reaction to the flood of secret diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks displays imperial arrogance and hypocrisy, indicating a post-9/11 obsession with secrecy that contradicts American principles.
While the Obama Administration has done nothing in the courts to block the publication of any of the leaked documents, or even, as of yet, tried to indict WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for any crime, American officials and politicians have been widely condemned in the European news media for calling the leaks everything from "terrorism" (Rep. Peter T. King, Rep.-New York) to "an attack against the international community" (Secretary of State Hillary Clinton). Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates called the arrest of Mr. Assange on separate rape charges "good news," while Sarah Palin called for him to be hunted as an "anti-American operative with blood on his hands" and Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and Republican presidential candidate, said that he should be executed.
For Seumas Milne of The Guardian in London, which has shared the latest WikiLeaks trove with The New York Times, the official American reaction "is tipping over towards derangement." Most of the leaks are of low-level diplomatic cables, he noted, while concluding: "Not much truck with freedom of information, then, in the land of the free."
John Naughton, writing in the same British paper, decried the attack on the openness of the Internet and the pressure on companies like Amazon and eBay to evict the WikiLeaks site. "The response has been vicious, coordinated and potentially comprehensive," he said, and presents a "delicious irony" that "it is now the so-called liberal democracies that are clamoring to shut WikiLeaks down."
A year ago, he noted, Mrs. Clinton made a major speech about Internet freedom, interpreted as a rebuke to China’s cyber-attack on Google. "Even in authoritarian countries, information networks are helping people to discover new facts and making governments more accountable." To Mr. Naughton now, "that Clinton speech reads like a satirical masterpiece."
The Russians missed no opportunity to criticize Washington over the leaks. On Thursday, in Moscow, Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin said that the West had no right to preach to Russia about democracy. Asked about cables depicting him as the "alpha-dog" boss of a corrupt and undemocratic bureaucracy, he said: "Do you think the American diplomatic service is a crystal clean source of information?"
Mr. Putin then criticized the arrest of Mr. Assange. "If it is full democracy, then why have they hidden Mr. Assange in prison? That’s what, democracy?" Mr. Putin asked. "So, you know, as we say in the village, some people’s cows can moo, but yours should keep quiet. So I would like to shoot the puck back at our American colleagues," he said.
German newspapers were similarly harsh. Even the Financial Times Deutschland (independent of the English-language Financial Times), said that "the already damaged reputation of the United States will only be further tattered with Assange’s new martyr status. And whether or not the openly embraced hope of the U.S. government that along with Assange, WikiLeaks will disappear from the scene, is questionable."
Mr. Assange is being hounded, the paper said, "even though no one can explain what crimes Assange allegedly committed with the publication of the secret documents, or why publication by WikiLeaks was an offense, and in The New York Times, it was not."
[…]
3) WikiLeaks avoids shutdown as supporters worldwide go on the offensive
Joby Warrick and Rob Pegoraro, Washington Post, Wednesday, December 8, 2010; 10:53 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/08/AR2010120804038.html
Over the past several days, the anti-secrecy Web site WikiLeaks has been hit with a series of blows that have seemed to threaten its survival. Its primary Web address was deactivated, its PayPal account was frozen, and its Internet server gave it the boot.
The result: WikiLeaks is now stronger than ever, at least as measured by its ability to publish online.
Blocked from using one Internet host, WikiLeaks simply jumped to another. Meanwhile, the number of "mirror" Web sites – effectively clones of WikiLeaks’ main contents pages – grew from a few dozen last week to 200 by Sunday. By early Wednesday, the number of such sites surpassed 1,000.
At the same time, WikiLeaks’ supporters have apparently gone on the offensive, staging retaliatory attacks against Internet companies that have cut ties to the group amid fears they could be associated with it. On Wednesday, hackers briefly shut down access to the Web sites for MasterCard and Visa, both of which had announced they had stopped processing donations to WikiLeaks.
WikiLeaks’ long-term survival depends on a number of unknowns, including the fate of its principal founder, Julian Assange, who is being held in Britain while awaiting possible extradition to Sweden related to sexual-assault allegations. But the Web site’s resilience in the face of repeated setbacks has underscored a lesson already absorbed by more repressive governments that have tried to control the Internet: It is nearly impossible to do.
Experts, including some of the modern online world’s chief architects, say the very design of the Web makes it difficult for WikiLeaks’ opponents to shut it down for more than a few hours.
"The Internet is an extremely open system with very low barriers to access and use," said Vint Cerf, Google’s vice president and the co-author of the TCP/IP system, the basic language of computer-to-computer communication over the Internet. "The ease of moving digital information around makes it very difficult to suppress once it is accessible."
Thus, despite the global uproar over the release of sensitive U.S. diplomatic cables, Assange’s Web site remained defiantly intact Wednesday. Over the past week it has continued to publish a steady stream of leaked State Department documents with little visible evidence of injury from repeated, anonymous cyber-attacks or the multiple attempts to cut off its access to funding and Web resources.
[…] The isolation of WikiLeaks has prompted cries of censorship and government interference.
"I can use my credit card to send money to the Ku Klux Klan, to antiabortion fanatics, or to anti-homosexual bigots, but I can’t use it to send money to WikiLeaks," said Jeff Jarvis, a new-media critic and director of the interactive journalism program at the City University of New York’s Graduate School of Journalism. "The New York Times published the same documents. Should we tell Visa and MasterCard to stop payments to the Times?"
It is ironic, Jarvis said, that the U.S. protests against Assange’s campaign of leaks come weeks after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton criticized Chinese efforts to restrict freedom of the Internet. While Western governments are used to seeing secrets leaked through traditional media, they are struggling to adjust to a new era in which raw data can be easily and rapidly disseminated around the world.
"There is an information war, and it’s about control," he said. "The choice is to either live in a transparent world or shut down the Internet."
4) Mideast Peace Key to Countering Iran, Arabs Told U.S. Diplomats
Eli Clifton and Jim Lobe, Inter Press Service, December 8, 2010
http://ipsnorthamerica.net/news.php?idnews=3427
Washington – Gleeful Israeli leaders and their neo-conservative supporters here have spent much of the past week insisting that the State Department cables published by Wikileaks prove that Sunni Arab leaders in the Middle East are far more preoccupied with the threat posed by an ascendant and possibly nuclear Iran than with a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
But a closer look at the relevant cables shows a far more consistent message to Washington coming from its Arab allies: that curbing Iran and resolving the Israeli- Palestinian conflict are inextricably linked and that the most effective way of achieving the former is make tangible progress on the latter.
Indeed endorsements of "linkage" – the notion, accepted at the highest levels of the U.S. military, that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will help promote U.S. strategic interests in the Middle East – emerges as a recurring theme in previously confidential discussions with Arab leaders and U.S. diplomats on how best to counter Iran’s growing regional power and deter Tehran’s nuclear programme.
That’s not the message, of course, that Israel and its backers have been touting since the first batch of 220 documents was released Nov. 29 by Wikileaks.
Indeed, none other than Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately seized on purported anti-Iranian comments by the Arab leaders quoted prominently in the New York Times as vindication of Israel’s position.
[…] While that line has since been repeated continuously by neo- conservative bloggers, columnists, and publications, they find little echo in the cables themselves.
"[T]he key to containing Iran revolves around progress in the Israel/Palestine issue," Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan told visiting U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner during a Jul. 15, 2009 meeting, according to one cable dated five days later.
"To win [over Arab public opinion], the U.S. should quickly bring about a two-state solution over the objections of the Netanyahu government," added bin Nayef, whose bristling hostility toward Iran was made plain by his comparison – highlighted by the Times – of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Adolf Hitler.
Five months later, in a Dec. 9, 2009 meeting with Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman, bin Zayed returned to that theme. He "emphasized the strategic importance of creating a Palestinian State (i.e., resolving the Israeli- Palestinian conflict) as the way to create genuine Middle Eastern unity on the question of Iran’s nuclear program and regional ambitions," the cable’s author reported.
A May 27, 2008 cable describes a conversation between Rep. Jeff Fortenberry with Gamal Mubarak, son and heir apparent of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Asked by the congressman how best to counter Iran’s nuclear programme, Mubarak replied, "Egypt and Saudi Arabia, as well as Jordan, are the ‘heavyweights’ that can counter Iran."
The cable goes on to describe Mubarak as "advocat[ing] movement on the Israeli/Palestinian track to remove a prime issue that Iran can use as a pretext."
"Speaking to PolOffs [political officers] in early February 2009, immediately after the Gaza War, Director of the Jordanian Prime Minister’s Political Office Khaled Al-Qadi noted that the Gaza crisis had allowed Iranian interference in inter-Arab relations to reach unprecedented levels," according to a cable from the U.S. Embassy in Amman shortly after the three-week Gaza War between Israel and Hamas ended in January 2009.
Jordan’s government also depicted the ongoing Israeli- Palestinian conflict as a key factor in the expansion of Iran’s regional influence, according to the Apr. 2, 2009 cable.
"Jordanian leaders have argued that the only way to pull the rug out from under Hizballah – and by extension their Iranian patrons – would be for Israel to hand over the disputed Sheba’a Farms to Lebanon," it went on. "With Hizballah lacking the ‘resistance to occupation’ rationale for continued confrontation with Israel, it would lose its raison d’etre and probably domestic support."
During a Feb. 14, 2010 meeting with Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, Qatar Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani suggested that Israel’s efforts to rally U.S. and Arab support for a more confrontational policy toward Iran was really related to the Israel-Palestine conflict. "[T]he Israelis," he is reported as telling his guest, are "&using Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons as a diversion from settling matters with the Palestinians."
Three days later, according to a cable sent Feb. 22, 2010, UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nayan warned another Congressional delegation led by Nita Lowey, a strong Israel supporter in the House of Representatives, against a military attack on Iran. According to the cable, the minister ended the meeting with a "soliloquy on the importance of a successful peace process between Israel and its neighbors as perhaps the best way of reducing Iran’s regional influence."
[…]
5) 2nd study traces Haitian cholera to South Asia
Jonathan M. Katz and Malcolm Ritter, Associated Press, Thursday, December 9, 2010; 5:58 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/09/AR2010120904820.html
Port-au-Prince, Haiti – Scientists reported Thursday the strongest evidence yet that a cholera outbreak that has killed more than 2,000 people in Haiti can be traced to South Asia.
The analysis fits with, but does not prove, the controversial idea that the disease came from U.N. troops dispatched from that region.
DNA analysis found that cholera bacteria recovered in Haiti were nearly identical to strains predominant in South Asia, and different from those found in Latin America, researchers said.
That indicates that cholera was introduced by people, rather than arriving through ocean currents or arising within Haiti, as has been suggested, said Harvard researcher Dr. Matthew Waldor.
The most likely explanation is that the germs were released in excretions from people, but they could also have come from contaminated food or water brought in by people arriving from South Asia, he said.
Waldor is an author of a report published online Thursday by the New England Journal of Medicine. The paper confirms a South Asian link reported last month by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, and presents a more detailed analysis of the DNA.
Cholera has sickened nearly 100,000 people in Haiti since October, and it’s feared the germ could infect six times that number. Before the current outbreak, no cholera had been confirmed in Haiti since World Health Organization record keeping began in the mid-20th Century. And no cases had been suspected for at least a century.
The origin of the outbreak became politicized with suspicions that U.N. soldiers from Nepal brought the disease to Haiti and transmitted it because of sanitation problems at their base. The suspicions were strengthened when sanitation problems and questionable human waste-dumping practices were found by journalists.
A week of anti-U.N. riots broke out. Riots are again raging in Haiti over a disputed political election and clashes with U.N. peacekeepers are a constant occurrence.
On Tuesday, The Associated Press obtained a copy of an undisclosed report by French epidemiologist Renaud Piarroux that said "no other hypothesis could be found" to explain how a strain never before seen in Haiti erupted in a village far from the coast and the earthquake zone, in an area directly abutting the peacekeepers’ base.
[…] The World Health Organization, the United Nations and the U.S. CDC have said pinpointing the outbreak’s origin was unimportant, likely impossible and counterproductive to fighting the disease. Several epidemiologists and public health experts, however, have said seeking the origin was important for scientific and social reasons, in Haiti and globally.
In any case, Waldor said the finding that the germ was brought in by outsiders suggests that preventive steps should be taken whenever troops or relief workers are sent to a disaster scene from a nation where cholera is widespread. Such people should be routinely screened for the disease or given antibiotics or a dose of vaccine, he said.
[…] The new study says it’s important to try to keep Haiti’s cholera from spreading elsewhere. Waldor said evidence suggests that if the Haitian strain reached Latin America, it might replace the local strains and cause a more severe and lethal disease in that region.
So that provides further rationale for a large cholera vaccine campaign in Haiti, he said, although he noted that is "not immediately possible" because the vaccine is in short supply. Perhaps production could be stepped up over the next few months, he said.
Iran
6) Israel on Iran: So wrong for so long
Justin Elliott, Salon, Sunday, Dec 5, 2010 14:01
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/12/05/israeli_predictions_iranian_nukes/index.html
The extremely long history of incorrect Israeli predictions about when Iran will obtain a nuclear bomb
Officials at the U.S. Department of State, we learned from the secret cables released by WikiLeaks last week, have serious questions about the accuracy – and sincerity – of Israeli predictions about when Iran will obtain a nuclear weapon. As one State official wrote in response to an Israeli general’s November 2009 claim that Iran would have a bomb in one year: "It is unclear if the Israelis firmly believe this or are using worst-case estimates to raise greater urgency from the United States."
So we thought this was as good a time as any to look at the remarkable history of incorrect Israeli predictions about Iran – especially given that the WikiLeaks trove is being used to argue that an attack on Iran is becoming more likely.
According to various Israeli government predictions over the years, Iran was going to have a bomb by the mid-90s – or 1998, 1999, 2000, 2004, 2005, and finally 2010. More recent Israeli predictions have put that date at 2011 or 2014.
None of this is to say that Iran will not at some point get a nuclear weapon – though the Iranian government has maintained that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes. That said, Iran has not fully cooperated with international inspectors. But even assuming that Iran is seeking a nuclear weapon, estimates still vary widely on when it will reach that goal.
So what the below timeline should show us is a few things: making accurate predictions about the future is difficult; the Israelis are almost certainly not always offering good-faith assessments of intelligence on Iran; and reporters and the public should demand evidence for assertions about an Iranian nuclear program, whomever the source. Here we go:
October 1992: "Warning the international community that Iran would be armed with a nuclear bomb by 1999, Peres told France 3 television in October 1992 that ‘Iran is the greatest threat [to peace] and greatest problem in the Middle East … because it seeks the nuclear option while holding a highly dangerous stance of extreme religious militantism.’"
Source: Then-Foreign Minister Shimon Peres in an interview with French TV, as described in the book "Treacherous Alliance."
November 1992: "But the Israelis caution that a bigger threat to Middle East serenity – not to mention their own country’s security – lies in Teheran, whose regime they say is sure to become a nuclear power in a few years unless stopped."
Source: New York Times, "Israel Focuses on the Threat Beyond the Arabs – in Iran"
[…]
7) In wake of WikiLeaks scandal, Arab leaders are cautious on Iran censure
Meris Lutz, Los Angeles Times, December 8, 2010
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2010/12/middle-east-wikileaks-arab-leaders-gulf-cooperation-council.html
Beirut – Arabian peninsula states have adopted a conciliatory tone on Iran a little over a week after U.S. diplomatic cables released by the watchdog site WikiLeaks appeared to show serious anxiety among Arab leaders over Tehran’s growing power, and even enthusiasm in some corners (and at certain points) for a military attack on its controversial nuclear program.
Gulf Cooperation Council Secretary-General Abdul Rahman Atiyyah stopped short of an outright repudiation, but he described the content of the leaked cables as "guesses or analyses that can hit or miss" and that "generated misunderstandings," according to the Abu Dhabi-based National newspaper.
The council wrapped up a two-day summit in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, on Tuesday, gently calling on Iran to cooperate with the international community over its nuclear program in order to end sanctions against Tehran. The closing statement also reiterated Arab support for Iran’s right to a peaceful nuclear program.
The council includes Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar as member states.
Its official stance on Iran stands in sharp contrast to comments made by Arab leaders in the secret documents leaked a little over a week ago, in which the heads of Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain were among those who lobbied the United States to strike at Iranian nuclear facilities.
Afghanistan
8) Gates Gets A Sobering War Update
The Defense secretary flies to two U.S. bases near the Pakistani border and also meets with the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan. U.S. officials say his findings will inform a White House review.
David S. Cloud, Los Angeles Times, December 8, 2010
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-afghanistan-gates-20101208,0,3022832.story
Kabul – Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates received a sobering update on security in eastern Afghanistan during a visit Tuesday, reflecting the uneven nature of the Obama administration’s claims to be making progress in suppressing the Taliban insurgency.
Gates and other officials are in a difficult position, arguing that the troop increase is beginning to show signs of turning around the 9-year-old war but also conceding that stability in Afghanistan, and large-scale withdrawals of U.S. and European forces, may not be possible before 2014.
Eastern Afghanistan is one of the places where insurgents remain potent.
Briefing Gates at an outpost in Kunar province, Lt. Col. J.B. Vowell, commander of the U.S. Army’s 2nd Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment, said there had been a "surge in fighting" since his battalion arrived in March and that during the summer attacks ran well above 2009 levels.
Vowell attributed the increase in violence in the remote and rugged province in part to the presence of additional U.S. troops, which he said allowed the Taliban to recruit fighters in a place known for its isolation and hostility to outsiders, including the Afghan government in Kabul.
[…]
Israel/Palestine
9) U.S. hurting peace chances by giving up on Israeli settlement freeze, analysts say
Janine Zacharia, Washington Post, Wednesday, December 8, 2010; 11:00 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/08/AR2010120803317.html
Jerusalem – The Obama administration’s decision to stop seeking a new Israeli settlement freeze as a way back into talks with the Palestinians has diminished prospects of achieving a peace accord within a year and eroded U.S. credibility in the region, analysts said Wednesday.
The decision also represented a belated recognition that even if they had persuaded Israel to renew a construction moratorium in the West Bank for three months, U.S. officials would have faced an even more difficult problem after that expired.
President Obama understood "that after three months of a second settlement freeze, he would have found himself without any kind of agreement and facing repeated demands to extend the freeze again, necessitating another exhausting bargaining session with [Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin] Netanyahu," Haaretz newspaper political commentator Akiva Eldar wrote Wednesday.
Israelis and Palestinians traded blame Wednesday over who was responsible for the U.S. decision, which has left both sides perplexed about the way forward and hoping for clarity from a speech on the Middle East that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will deliver in Washington on Friday.
Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said the U.S. decision would have "grave consequences in the region."
"If you cannot have him stop settlements for a few months, what do you expect get out of him on Jerusalem or the 1967 borders," Erekat said of Netanyahu in an interview Wednesday. "I think Mr. Netanyahu knows the consequences for the American administration’s credibility in the region."
[…] Erekat also said in light of the breakdown and decisions by Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay this week to unilaterally recognize Palestine as an independent state, the Palestinians would formally appeal to the U.S. to do the same.
[…]
10) Israel Says It Will Permit More Exports From Gaza
Isabel Kershner, New York Times, December 8, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/09/world/middleeast/09gaza.html
Jerusalem – Israel said on Wednesday that it would allow increased exports from Gaza, the Hamas-run Palestinian enclave, in order to improve the economy and ease hardship.
Exports have been almost completely banned since Hamas, the Islamic militant group that won Palestinian elections in 2006, took full control of Gaza in June 2007. Israel eased the blockade on goods going into the area last summer under intense international pressure following its deadly interception of a Gaza-bound aid flotilla from Turkey. Now, Israel says, there has been a 92 percent increase in the number of trucks entering Gaza daily.
.But the international calls for more measures have not ceased. Israel recently approved the export of strawberries and flowers from Gaza to Europe. Now it says it will begin to allow exports of more agricultural produce, including citrus fruits, furniture, textiles and some other goods, both abroad and to the West Bank.
Israeli officials said the new policy would be carried out over time, as there were logistical issues and security problems to resolve.
[…] Gisha, an Israeli advocacy group that promotes freedom of movement for Palestinians, questioned why Gaza’s merchants would still be barred from marketing their goods to Israeli merchants, as they did before 2007.
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