The corporate media in both the UK and US are attempting to portray the Iranian desire to have the arms embargo lifted, as a new and extraneous demand that could torpedo the nuclear deal. This is an entirely false portrayal.
The issue has been included in the talks since, quite literally, the very first Iranian position document. And there is a reason for that. It is absolutely part and parcel of the issue and in no way extraneous to it. If there were any real journalists employed by the corporate media, that is obvious right on the face of UN Security Council Resolution 1747 of 2007 which imposed the arms embargo. The sole and exclusive reason given for the arms embargo is Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme. And it specifically states that, once the nuclear proliferation issue is resolved, the embargo will be lifted.
(b) that it shall terminate the measures specified in paragraphs 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
and 12 of resolution 1737 (2006) as well as in paragraphs 2, 4, 5, 6 and 7 above as
soon as it determines, following receipt of the report referred to in paragraph 12
above, that Iran has fully complied with its obligations under the relevant
resolutions of the Security Council and met the requirements of the IAEA Board of
Governors, as confirmed by the IAEA Board;
It is the United States, not Iran, which is introducing extraneous factors, banging on about Yemen, Iran and Hezbollah, which are nowhere mentioned in the Security Council Resolutions.
The way this is being reported in the media is the exact opposite of the truth. The United States is attempting to welch on a deal which was not only open, but forms the very text of the security council resolution. None of the BBC’s highly paid analysts, reporters, or guest commenters is capable of noting this basic fact.
Craig
I’m first to post!
As ever spot on article.
If Iran opens for inspection will Israel?
Sorry to go off topic but…So the leaders of China, India, Russia, Kazakhstan, Brazil, Belarus, Iran, Pakistan all meet together in RUSSIA as part of BRICS/SCO meetings (a first in itself) – and when I search for UFA on BBC/Guardian/etc etc websites there is nary a mention. 1984 redux. Craig – please do something!!
TS,
Don’t fret. The usual suspects will be along shortly to perform their usual Squealer from Animal Farm routines explaining away how reality is all a figment of our fevered imagination, or that it is all lies or some such other bullshit.
Just get the popcorn out and enjoy the spectacle of those whose existence consists of tying themselves in illogical knots trying to convince others to share their self delusions.
Hey dont go for a solitary walk in the Highlands like Robin Cook, the devils will have yo ass in no time at all. God bless and protect.
BTW-the presstitutes and God denying devils infesting the MSM have no concept of the afterlife and fear of the Fire. Although the many near death experiences have detailed the visions of a flash rerun of an entire life, at the physical expiry of the body.
The oligarch owned media puppets are damned if they are going to get kicked off the gravy train by starting to tell the truth, and report the actuality.
The arms embargo, of course refers to the defensive anti aircraft weapons systems that Iran had paid for and Russians had taken their money and then welched on the deal as part of the sanctions.
I just heard a news report on the radio here in the U.S. saying that the agreement with Iran is going to be signed tomorrow morning.
Don’t be so silly!
zionistan is above all laws and convention it has get of jail card for any situation. Fact that the plutonium to build their hydrogen bomb was stolen from under the noses of the US forces, is only a rumour and slander, a calumny!
I’m not sure if “stolen” is the right word, since it was taken while LBJ and his administration deliberately looked the other way.
Just another stick to beat Iran with. Look! Lots of hydrocarbons but no US bases, just like the other Middle-East counties the Neocons want to attack:
http://www.killick1.plus.com/map.jpg
Aidworker1, 8:45 pm:
Iran is open for inspections. In 2007 Iran drew back on some of its commitments under the “Additional Protocol”, which other NPT signatory countries are not subject to.
I have a friend who, for a long time dismissed my political positions as those of an “Internet conspiracy theorist”. He’s an avid Grauniad reader and considers himself well-informed. It nearly came to blows one day when, regarding Ukraine, I told him to look at the evidence displayed on my computer monitor. He refused and made to leave. I stood in his path and told him to either view the evidence, stop berating me, or attack me to get past. He read the article. It finally made an impression and he started reading this blog.
About three months back he was visiting, and rather sheepishly asked me “is it really true that Iran has a right to enrich uranium?”
It’s amazing how effective the corporate media propaganda is.
So where do you suggest we look for reliable media which is not propaganda of one sort or another?
Fwister, sorry, no easy answers. Craig’s pretty good, but all news media has spin. Wikipedia at least has links to an assorted cross-section of somewhat conflicting propagandist sources. All I can really suggest is (1) pick some subjects and explore them in depth (you can’t hope to cover everything), (2) read widely; deliberately seek out contradiction, and (3) apply critical thinking. I’ve been at it about ten years and there’s still much I wonder about.
“The way this is being reported in the media is the exact opposite of the truth.”
On most issues, except perhaps the weather and sport results, I assume that this is the case with all MSM world affairs’ stories (mostly agency stories), though I have not followed these negotiations as closely as some other topics.
Your last post on which I did not comment, about the effects of paracetamol, set me thinking. Collins Concise Dictionary describes Paracetamol as “A mild analgesic drug.” It says nothing more about it. Before your post I did not know it could lead to liver failure and it appears to be one of the most effective means of suicide though perhaps not intentional, just as in your case of people increasing the dose for pain relief. It can be bought over the counter of most general stores and grocers. Another thing I discovered about paracetamol was that it can also cause kidney failure.
I thought back to the end of May, when Resident Dissident was full of Putin having poisoned Vladimir Kara-Murza. Now it might be the settings the search engines have put on my computer, or it may be the way search engines have gone in general but I tried to find out if there was any impovement in his condition, having been admitted into hospital with Putin poisoning. I typed in “Vladimir Kara-Murza” and “improvement”. I got scores of the “poisoned” stories at the end of May beginning of June. But nothing on his improvement.
So I tried Russian searches and eventually found this.
http://echo.msk.ru/news/1579222-echo.html
It basically says that Vladimir Kara-Murza had been flown abroad for rehabilitation on 7th July. It mentions the political groups he supports, that he was admitted into hospital on 26 May 2015 and subsequently diagnosed with kidney intoxication and kidney malfunction.
Please everyone, as an experiment, type in “Vladimir Kara-Murza” and “improvement” to see if it is my settings, or if all the search engines (I tried a few) are programmed just to deliver the sites they want you to see. Thanks.
Clark, I quite agree with you.
Why does one never hear about the Eurodif story, when Iran’s billion dollar investment in 1974 made French nuclear research and development possible?
As far as I understand it, none of the IAEA’s protocols justifies no notice inspections of Iran’s military sites particularly given the fact that in 2013 the country signed, and abided by – without incident – the verification conditions of the Joint Plan of Action.
These no notice inspections have a very dark history in places like Iraq which doesn’t bode well for Iran that after having read Scott Ritter, seem more than anything to be heavily politicised and intelligence-based exercises. These exercises appear to have no purpose other than to attempt to implicate Iran with nuclear weapons development as was the case, for example in 2002/03.
The CIA simply has no credibility in this area. Operation Merlin was evidence of this. Folks’ may recall that in 2007 or thereabouts Iran had (justifiably) denied the IAEA inspectors access to its Parchin site on the basis that such a highly sensitive military installation would likely lead to an intelligence-driven fishing expedition.
Iran also dismissed as spurious the source of another allegation at the site at Marivan predicated on a set of forged documents. As Scott Ritter has stated:
“Iran has been put in the impossible position of having to prove a negative. If it accepts inspections based on allegations it knows to be baseless, then it’s opening itself up to an endless cycle of foreign intrusion into its military and security infrastructure, and the inability of inspectors to discover something of relevance will only reinforce the belief that something is being hidden. We saw this happen before in Iraq, and the end result was a war based on flawed intelligence and baseless accusations that left many thousands dead and a region in turmoil.”
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article42261.htm
I am in no doubt that the attempts by the US to fabricate the (non) existence of an Iranian nuclear weapons programme is a cover for regime change in Iran and to return the country to the status of a vassal state of the West. Iran is still regarded as unfinished business.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_program_of_Iran
So the biggest intelligence agency in the world believes that Iran is not building nuclear weapons, so why all the fuss?
I suspect the demonisation of Iran’s nuclear programme is mostly strategic, partly pro-Israeli propaganda, partly to hold back Iran’s industrial and scientific development, and partly commercial – Iran has a “research reactor” (which is the standard name for such reactors) fuelled by uranium enriched to 20%, which can produce valuable isotopes for industrial, medical and scientific purposes. There aren’t many such reactors worldwide and I suspect that certain commercial concerns don’t want any competition from Iran.
Once a country has nuclear power reactors it is more problematic to “bomb the infrastructure back into the stone age”, as the West did to Iraq and Libya. The rest of the world would object to the nuclear pollution released; charges of wanton recklessness would be raised. When Israel destroyed Iraq’s reactors it did so before they were fuelled.
Countries with nuclear power reactors can’t just just be smashed with air-strikes – ground troops have to be sent in; there has to be confidence that the reactors can be militarily taken and secured such that a nuclear disaster doesn’t ensue. This follows even if the reactors aren’t directly attacked; reactors need to be tended or they’re likely to melt down. But sending in ground troops is unpopular with the voters back home.
Having said all that, I’d rather Iran (and all other countries) would stop building power reactors – look at the three ongoing Fukushima meltdowns – but you can see why possession of functioning reactors conveys a strategic advantage.
Fwister— Google—Global research latest news.
Clark, I agree with your analysis except for the last sentence.
Fwlster, further to my answer above, the Talk and History pages of Wikipedia articles can supply some good leads. On contentious issues, use the article size entries on History pages to find links to references that have been removed; for instance “(249,730 bytes) (-361)” with the “(-361)” in red. Talk pages can be terribly tedious – sometimes it seems like all Talk page contributors have OCD – but both methods can turn up leads outside the mainstream. Warning – engage bullshit detector; there are good reasons for most rejections.
Rationalwiki can be used to supplement Wikipedia, but it’s less rigorous so even more care is needed. For both Wikis, always check the referenced sources.
The Washington Times is worried that the USA has conceded too much to Iran.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jul/12/iran-nuclear-deal-imminent-negotiators-say-lawmake/
Daniel, do you mean you’re in favour of nuclear power? Have you considered what will happen if the global economic system collapses? Power reactors are serious contamination accidents waiting to happen. Damn things get too hot and blow up, melt down, spew radionuclides everywhere. We don’t need them; there’s plenty of environmental power. Just the variation between El Niño and La Niña is equivalent to about half a million nuclear power stations.
War, conflict, international rivalry are the biggest threats to humanity’s future. Without them, with international security, a country like Iran could build solar concentration like this:
http://www.desertec.org/concept/
That’s just one of many possibilities, but such technologies are fragile and vulnerable to military attack. No, countries have to build nuclear power stations because it’s suicidal for their enemies to attack them.
Naysayers will point out that environmental energy sources are unpredictable and thus suffer from unreliable base-load. The answer is serious international energy grids; the sun is always shining and the wind is always blowing somewhere, we just need to share the generated power around enough. High-Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) transmission grids can do that:
http://www.desertec.org/concept/technologies/
But that would require international cooperation and security. Destroying the electricity grid is standard military operating procedure when “toppling a government” or implementing “regime change” for “humanitarian intervention”; consider Iraq and Libya.
“Rationalwiki can be used to supplement Wikipedia”
Rationalwiki is crude mainstream narrative repair and maintenance.
99% of Wikipedia is honest and useful. That’s why it’s so effective at laundering the remaining 1%.
Node, agreed. Rationalwiki sometimes covers matters that are excluded or have been removed from Wikipedia as “not sufficiently notable”, which is a favourite WP rule that shills use to excise embarrassing information. It also has some articles that expose fraudsters and charlatans. But yes, set your bullshit detectors to maximum on Rationalwiki.
@Fedup 10:47pm
“zionistan is above all laws and convention it has get of jail card for any situation. Fact that the plutonium to build their hydrogen bomb was stolen from under the noses of the US forces, is only a rumour and slander, a calumny!”
I remember they also got their hands on some plutonium from the UK by devious means.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/mar/10/past.freedomofinformation
“Daniel, do you mean you’re in favour of nuclear power?”
Yes, Clark, that’s right. George Monbiot’s arguments I personally find to be persuasive.
Daniel, I used to find them persuasive. That was before Fukushima.
Just tonight I looked up the energy flux for El Niño. Grief, we’ve been to the Moon five times, discerned the composition and structure of the stars, generated nuclear power, built the uncensorable Internet, sent probes to Pluto and beyond, unravelled the genetic code and genetically engineered organisms, proven quantum non-locality, detected and mapped the radiation of the Big Bang, worked out how to reach nearby stars within a lifetime using ’60s technology (Project Orion)…
…yet we can’t harvest less than 0.02% of the solar energy incident upon Earth?
Come on. All that’s lacking is the political will.
Daniel, I’m in favour of nuclear technology. I hope Iran develop their research reactors and become international (and prosperous) suppliers of isotopes for home, industry, medicine and science. I hope transmutation reactors are developed to destroy the “spent” fuel from nuclear power generation and weapons manufacture. Nuclear tech is great; an integral and indispensable part of science and technology.
But not for power generation and not for weapons.
Clark, Thanks for your informative responses and contributions in general which I always find interesting and invariably worthy of further investigation. I’m no expert on the subject and clearly you are able to arrive at a more definitive view than I am. On he surface, it would appear your argument is sound, but after reading his many articles and viewing the many debates Monbiot has been involved in on youtube, I just have a nagging feeling that he may be on to something. I guess I am appealing to his experience and knowledge which is probably not the wisest policy. I admire him for virtually standing alone among his peers on this issue. Do you think he has some vested interests in the nuclear power industry that sways his support for it?