On Non-Resident Voting in the Iranian Election

This Friday, June 14, 2013, millions will head to the polls to vote for the next president of the Islamic Republic of Iran. While the vast majority of votes will naturally come from voters inside Iran itself, many will also come from outside its borders as any documented Iranian citizen worldwide is eligible to cast a ballot in the race.

Last week, Hassan Qashqavi, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Consular, Parliamentary and Expatriates' Affairs and who also heads the Supervisory Body Overseeing Iran's Presidential Election Abroad, said, "The Iranian presidential election abroad will be held at 280 ballot stations in 120 countries on five continents concurrent with Iran."

According to official results, in the last presidential election in 2009, 234,812 votes were cast in countries outside Iran. In New York City, nearly 17,000 votes were cast, while in London, the number topped 10,000.

But just because Iranian citizens who don't live in Iran can legally vote, does that mean they should choose to exercise that right?

This question, along with some others, was posed to a number of writers, commentators, academics and friends of Iranian heritage.

Here are some of the questions, or variations thereof, that I posed:

Do you think that, beyond having the legal right, Iranians and Iranian citizens living outside Iran have the moral right to vote in Friday's presidential election despite not living in Iran?

If it is the obligation of Iranians living in Iran, and them alone, to chose the government under which they will live, whether they seek to challenge and change the system or to reinforce it, what role do Iranians abroad - some of whom have vastly different political and religious beliefs than Iranians in Iran - have in the vote?

Can "ex-patriot" voting be seen as a kind of foreign intervention for regime change (or reform), albeit a peaceful kind, or - conversely - could the act of voting itself be seen as legitimating a political system one may disagree with?

Are the circumstances different for Iranian citizens who have never visited Iran, never lived in Iran or who, perhaps, don't ever plan on going/returning?

Iranians are not monolithic. Like any large community of human beings the world over, Iranians and Iranian citizens, living in Iran or abroad, have diverse opinions on religion to politics to family and everything in between. Just like here in the United States, or any other country for that matter, there are those who support the government, and those who oppose it; those who think voting is important, those who consider it merely symbolic, and others who find it pointless, or worse.

Needless to say, the question of non-resident voting in general is certainly not unique to Iran; any national group with a diaspora could grapple with it.

The questions presented above are purposely broad, and not meant to be pointed or leading. They are supposed to be open-ended and thought-provoking, not presumptuous or limiting. They are not my own conclusions nor do they reflect my personal opinions. They are questions, only that, and if they read poorly or are misleading, the responsibility for their clunkiness is mine and mine alone.

Below are the generous responses I received from those I contacted. They are uniform only in their thoughtfulness, insight, and candidness. They reflect a diversity of opinion and consideration. Some are direct and concise, others extensive and multifaceted.

The contributors, so far, are:

Muhammad Sahimi, professor, USC; editor of IMENews.com
Jasmin Ramsey, journalist and editor, LobeLog
Hooman Majd, journalist and author
Farideh Farhi, scholar and affiliate graduate faculty, University of Hawaii
Holly Dagres, Middle East analyst and commentator; researcher at The Cairo Review
Reza Marashi, Research Director, National Iranian American Council (NIAC)
Farrah Joon, blogger, Sex and Fessenjoon
Arash Karami, Iran Pulse, Al Monitor
Saaghi Joon, blogger, Sex and Fessenjoon
Daniel Tavana, Research Associate, Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED)
Roshanak Taghavi, international journalist
Shirin Sadeghi, international journalist
Alex Shams, Co-Editor-in-Chief, Ajam Media Collective
Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi, PhD student, Queen's College, University of Oxford
Mehrnaz Shahabi, anti-war activist and independent researcher

All opinions expressed below are solely those of the authors themselves and in no way represent the organizations or affiliations identified.

I will update the post if and when I receive more.

For readers wishing to voice their own opinions on this matter, feel free to do so in the comments. But please, keep it civil.

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Muhammad Sahimi
Professor, University of Southern California; editor of Iran News and Middle East Reports

I do not believe that there is any problem with expatriates voting in a national election in Iran. That would just indicate that they care about what happens in their homeland. I do not believe that their voting violates the principle, which I believe in, that it is Iranians living in Iran who must decide what to do with the government, because, after all, the expatriates would be voting for someone who lives and works in Iran, and has risen in politics, to the extent that he/she wants to run for high office.

Jasmin Ramsey
Journalist and editor, LobeLog

The Iranian government also grants the children of Iranian-born parents Iranian passports upon request and requires military service from males upon entering Iran even if they're only visiting for a short period of time and have never been to Iran before (though this can be avoided in most cases through bribery). I'm not sure how this can be construed as "foreign intervention for regime change" as suggested in the question if the mechanisms for this kind of voting have been put in place by the Iranian government itself, which considers itself a republic.

Voting implies you care about what happens inside your country enough to do something about it (even if you're not there), though deciding not to vote can also be a political action, no matter how ineffective and/or counterproductive that could be. If the Iranian government allows Iranian citizens who don't live in Iran to vote then I commend that action as much as I would any step taken by them that brings their elections closer to becoming free and fair.

Hooman Majd
Journalist and author

You know, that’s a very good question, one that I ponder all the time. I've always maintained that someone like myself - who has made the choice to be American and live in America - doesn't have the right to tell Iranians how they should live, or what kind of government they should have. We in the States get offended - even the most progressive among us - when, say, the French tell us what an ass our president is, or how bad our democracy is, or how imperialist we are. That’s a little different, I grant you, because someone like me holds dual citizenship.

I really think what would be entirely moral and fair would be for the Iranian government to allow any Iranian living anywhere to vote, as long as he or she paid taxes in Iran. Paying taxes is one reason I think it’s fair for expat Americans to have voice (beyond the fact that unlike Iranian expats, most Americans do intend to return home at some point, and don’t usually take the citizenship of the country they live in). At any rate, since we Iranians don’t like taxes, not even inside Iran, that would probably mean a zero participation rate in the elections outside Iran. So you see, I struggle with the question myself. But I will endeavor to vote this time, too.

I would add that those Iranians who are for wholesale regime change don’t really vote, so it probably means that those who do abroad reflect that strata of society in Iran that is likely to vote for a reformist, or pragmatist. So be it.

Farideh Farhi
Independent Scholar and Affiliate Graduate Faculty, University of Hawaii - Manoa

I personally cannot and do not choose to look at the question of voting in moralistic terms. The bottom line is that Iranian laws allow anyone who has an Iranian birth certificate and passport to vote - or not vote - anywhere in the world and they can if they have access to a voting center (I for instance do not in Hawaii). This is a reflection of Iran's acceptance or comfort with the idea of dual nationality. And I accept that comfort both as a privilege and obligation. The only thing I object to is that Iran's acceptance of nationality - both in pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary times - is patrilineal and only extends to children of an Iranian mother if the father is also Iranian. Last year, a law was passed to change this but not in categorical way (only on a case by case basis).

As to the nature of expat voting, I cannot speak on the basis of data but my personal observations suggest that those who hope for regime change generally see voting as a legitimation mechanism and hence approach any kind of voting in the Islamic republic with disdain. Those who consider voting, on the other hand, are very much influenced by trends inside the country. So there was much interest in voting in in 2009 outside of Iran and today there is much debate about whether to vote or not and which candidate to vote for in the same way there is a debate inside Iran.

On the last question, I cannot speak to circumstances that impact voting or non-voting behavior. I can, however, hypothesize that those who have never visited Islamic Iran or as you say are delinked from the country for whatever reason are less likely to be engaged with Iranian politics at the micro level.

Holly Dagres
Middle East analyst and commentator; researcher at The Cairo Review

I think the beauty of the electoral process is that a person is free to vote if he or she chooses, there is no morality involved only a sense of it being a "right". Having that been said, Iranians who live abroad are a grand variety that not only consist of the Diaspora, but also Iranians who have vast ties to Iran and continue to live between two countries, if not more. Therefore, just because they are an expat of sorts does not take away their right to vote, it just adds a special touch -- most often by voting for a reformist candidate -- someone who share ideas most in common with Western views they are acquainted with. Nevertheless, Iranians abroad do not have that much of an impact on voting and it would be rather naive to view it as foreign intervention or even regime change because at the end of the day, these people are voting for the very candidates accepted by the Velayat-e Faqih. When it comes to the Diaspora, I would assume they do not have any ties with Iran and therefore probably no interest whatsoever in the voting process or the Islamic regime for that matter.

Reza Marashi
Research Director, National Iranian American Council (NIAC)

It's a double-edged sword. If you would've asked me this question in 2009 or prior, I would've said that Iranian Americans should consider voting, because it was tantamount to taking advantage of one of the most obvious tools they have at our disposal to help hold the Iranian government accountable and move the country in an overall better direction. It's never a moral responsibility to vote, but I would've argued that voting was an important step toward Iranian Americans being recognized as a substantial constituency, increasing their political clout in Tehran, and refuting the philosophy that a government's power does not come from the people. Some Iranian Americans still feel this way. Others do not. I don't fault either point of view.

Of course, the flip side to this -- perhaps even more poignant after the events of 2009 -- is that boycotting an election is a very powerful message that citizens and a diaspora can send. However, it's only after Iranian Americans start voting that they can engage in symbolic boycotts of elections in protest. Because Iranian Americans have never had a truly large voting presence in Iranian elections, a boycott on their part would be mostly symbolic. And perhaps most importantly, for the time being at least, the Iranian government views Iranian Americans less as citizens with voting power equal to Iranians inside Iran, and more as a dependable source of money and education that can occasionally be utilized inside Iran.

Farrah
Blogger, Sex and Fessenjoon

I think that policies put forth by the Iranian regime affect all Iranian citizens - regardless of their physical location. All Iranian citizens have the moral right to vote - just as US citizens have the right to vote even if they live in a different country. Because no matter what their location is, they still feel the burden of the country's laws especially if they have family, money, property, etc. in Iran.

I don't believe that expats or non-residents with different religious/political preference should have their vote taken away because their voice still resonates among Iranians within Iran - whether they are Muslim or not, Jewish or not, reformist or not. I think that it's very bold to assume that my political beliefs aren't supported anywhere within Iran... and vice versa. And if that's a reason for people to not vote - then why do we allow political parties in other countries? I believe it is absolutely crucial for every voice to be represented in a vote.

If you're asking whether I think it's WORTH voting in the Iranian election, well that's a different story...

Arash Karami
Writer on Iranian affairs; currently with Iran Pulse, Al-Monitor

These are difficult questions; there are some issues here that the Iranian ex-patriot community has been dealing with for three decades. One thing that is unanimous is that most Iranians outside the country care deeply both for Iran and Iranians (there are plenty of surveys to prove this). Some people don't believe in voting in Iranian elections because of what happened in 2009 or their general opposition to the government. Others think that there are some candidates that are better than others and can improve the lives of people living inside Iran, particularly on the economic front where most of the president's powers reside.

And part of it is self-interest too. For the expat community, Ahmadinejad's rhetoric was generally considered embarrassing and shameful. Between the seven candidates, there is a difference on certain specific issues and I don't begrudge anyone that wants to vote; it's their right and if they can help play an instrumental role in improving the lives of Iranians domestically, then one could argue that logically they should, even if they don't plan on ever going back. (My guess is that if Iran ever opens up, most expats will visit often, but most will never go back. Iran, especially Tehran and other major cities, have changed so much, most don't even know what it is they would be going back to.)

On the question of regime change as far as voting is concerned, the act of voting will not change the regime, which is precisely why some expats will never vote.

Saaghi
Blogger, Sex and Fessenjoon

Do I believe Iranians abroad have a legal right to vote? Absolutely.

A moral one? Not at all.

Unless an Iranian living abroad has spent a significant time in Iran, there is not much value in their perspective. Many of us born and raised abroad have grown familiar with our heritage and culture by making frequent visits to our motherland. This, by no means, translates into understanding the vast impact government policies and sanctions have on day-to-day life. If a vote is a tally-mark for change, how can I know what change is the right one? I would not vote in France's election, despite having traveled their many times-- and I don't believe I'm entitled to voting in Iran's election, despite my emotional or familial ties.

At the end of the day, an 'educated vote' is rare -- and I can read news articles all day, but my vote would be based on my biased firsthand experience of living in America, and rendezvousing Tehran during the Summer. I believe in aiding the Iranian people and my family in Iran in helping bring about the change they want by standing in solidarity with them, and that is silent, unconditional solidarity.

Daniel Tavana
Research Associate, Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED)

This might be a boring response, but I have two different answers. First, there is an important difference between Iranians and Iranian citizens. The latter have a constitutionally protected right to vote, whereas the former do not (unless they are eligible for Iranian citizenship and the state views them as citizens in accordance with the law). There are a number of Iranians living abroad who are citizens, and these people should be able to vote if they so chose, even if they live abroad. Many of them are students, family members, tourists, etc. who are Iranian citizens but cannot vote in-country. Diaspora Iranians, "ex-patriot" as you describe, do not have the right to vote in accordance with the constitution. Diaspora Iranians (non-citizens) can participate however they so choose: encouraging citizens to vote a certain way is not, in my opinion, a form of intervention or regime change. I don't think governments should ever systematically do that, for obvious reasons, but I do not see the harm in private citizens, be they of Iranian descent or not, express an opinion about a country they care about. The fact that these individuals might "have vastly different political and religious beliefs" (an assertion I don't even think can be empirically proven), is inconsequential. It is ultimately for the Iranian people, Iranian citizens, to decide what they want.

As for your question on morality, I'm not sure what you mean the "moral right to vote." I think the right to vote is a constitutionally protected one reserved for citizens of the state, who may choose to vote or not vote as they see fit. I, myself, am not an advocate of boycotts -- I think they consistently fail to accomplish the goals of those who advocate in their favor. But I think that's an entirely separate question.

Roshanak Taghavi
International journalist

Fundamentally, I don't see it as a question of morality. Citizens have a basic, legal right to vote—even those who have neither visited Iran nor lived there, or don’t plan to return. [Just as I— as a US citizen—had the right to cast an absentee ballot from Iran (where I was working as a reporter) during the 2008 U.S. presidential election. Even if I’d stayed overseas, I would still have had the right to vote as an absentee in the 2012 U.S. election, just like tons of other expats]. "Ex-patriot" voting is not “foreign intervention,” because those voting are citizens of Iran and may still consider it their country, no matter where they live.

For many of those in the diaspora, the ‘Iran’ of today may no longer be the ‘Iran’ they left (the country has changed so much both culturally and politically throughout the last thirty-plus years, and is still constantly changing) – but who they are today has, to some degree, been shaped by their Iranian heritage. If someone holds Iranian citizenship, and cares enough to keep it, he or she has the right to vote.

Yes, the act of voting itself may indeed be viewed as legitimizing a political system one may disagree with. But those same voters who might not necessarily like that political system could also view voting as a tool to instigate organic reform, however slow it might turn out to be.

Shirin Sadeghi
International journalist

The role Iranians abroad have in the election is that they have the right to vote: Overseas Iranians can vote from abroad if they have an Iranian birth certificate and passport. While the current citizenship requirements unfortunately exclude some Iranians (for example those whose mother is Iranian are usually excluded because they don't meet the patrilineal requirements), it does add to the numbers of voters (which is a good thing in any country), particularly because of the large numbers of Iranians in the diaspora at the moment.

There are many nations that envy this Iranian allowance -- Pakistan, for instance, only recently passed a law allowing overseas Pakistanis to vote and that won't even take effect until the next election.

As for a moral obligation, this doesn't really seem like a question of morality. For any system of government there are those who accept the system and are willing to work within it, those who do not accept it and refuse to acknowledge its legitimacy by participating in elections, and yet others who don't see their vote as bringing any kind of meaningful change. The fact is, some of the most passionate and well informed people refuse to vote in many countries around the world -- that's how they choose to exercise that right. Think of it this way: In the US, people have the right to bear arms, but not everyone does -- those who don't aren't lacking in morality.

Alex Shams
Co-Editor-in-Chief, Ajam Media Collective

As Iranians abroad, our status is defined by displacement from our homeland. Some imagine themselves in exile, unable to return. Others imagine themselves as a diaspora, able to return but unwilling due to opportunities abroad unavailable back home. But either way, we are all Iranian; the Iranian political process shapes both our lives as well as those of our friends and family in Iran.

Additionally, the Iranian political process has a tremendous affect on our status and our lives as Iranians abroad. As the US, the EU, and other international actors attempt to isolate Iran, our lives as Iranians who live transnationally become increasingly difficult. I think it is necessary for us to make our voices heard and to oppose the strangling of our homeland. In the same way that I think voting in the US elections for the candidate who promises to prevent a war on Iran and to ease sanctions is important (in the last elections, the Green Party), I feel there is a moral imperative for Iranians abroad to participate in the Iranian elections and vote. A slight improvement is better than none.

I believe that whenever any individual has the right to vote, it is imperative for her or him to exercise that right. We can only lay a claim on the political system if we take part in it. We can only demand to know, “Where is my vote?” if we actually cast our votes and participate in the political process. Otherwise I think we are being disingenuous. The act of voting itself lays a demand upon the political system to function, and if and when it does not function and our votes are not respected, it follows that we have the right to demand our votes be respected. If you don’t vote, it is harder to legitimize the demand that your voice be heard.

Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi
Final year PhD student focusing on modern intellectual and political Iranian history, Queen's College, University of Oxford

Do you think that, beyond having the legal right, Iranians and Iranian citizens living outside Iran have the moral right to vote in Friday's presidential election despite not living in Iran?

First, I'd like to stress that I am writing in a strictly personal capacity and I am not speaking as an 'analyst' or 'expert'. I am writing as a dual-citizen, who has the right to vote, if he so chooses.

I don't feel I can determine anyone's moral rights or obligations as far as voting is concerned. Ex-pat Iranian citizens have a legal right to vote; they can choose to exercise it or not. I won't be voting, since I personally have no respect for or trust in the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI)'s electoral system or the regime in any way, shape or form.

Furthermore, I don't see any guarantee my vote will even be counted, or that fraud will not take place. The selection of candidates is vetted by the unelected and unaccountable Guardian Council, half of which is comprised of retrograde clerics, is truly abysmal. I also cannot envisage my vote doing anything to improve the lot of Iran's many political prisoners and prisoners of conscience.

From another angle, I see no point in voting for a pseudo-'Reformist' candidate, since anyone who might legitimately be called a 'Reformist', has been effectively marginalised, including the ex-president, Mohammad Khatami (and I should add that I seriously disagree with the latter's politics and his conception of what 'reform' entails). Hasan Rowhani is the same man who denounced protesters of Iran's last election as "seditionists" and whose cries for justice he described as "pre-planned to be abused by the enemy". Now to play up to people in the crowds he has changed his tune. Election season in Iran, much like elsewhere, causes politicians to make promises they don't plan to keep, and in any case the Iranian president's executive authority is seriously stunted, as Mahmud Ahmadinejad, much to his chagrin realised in the course of his own presidency. The theocratic elements of the Iranian constitution and Supreme Leader Khamenei's control of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), military, judiciary, Guardian Council, Intelligence Ministry etc, have little stomach for views which happen to contradict their own, as Ayatollah Khomeini's one-time darlings, the left or Reformists, have now experienced first hand.

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Social Freedoms & Women’s Rights Take Center Stage in Iran’s Presidential Debate

Iran’s eight presidential candidates prepare to leave the set after their second of three televised debates in Tehran, Wednesday, June 5, 2013.

(AP Photo/IRIB, Mehdi Dehghan)

The Iranian presidential election, scheduled for June 14, is only one week away. As candidates jockey for endorsements, support and, ultimately, votes, a surprising frontrunner has emerged, according to a new university poll cited by Iranian media outlet Aftab News.

Hassan Rouhani, a former nuclear negotiator and current Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, is now leading the pack of eight candidates with 23.3%. His closest competition is Tehran mayor Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who garnered 18.4% in the survey, while reformist Mohammad Reza Aref stood at 14.3% and principlist Saeed Jalili – once widely considered the clear favorite – at a mere 7.5%.

Rouhani, a centrist in Iranian politics, is not only close to both former presidents Mohammad Khatami and Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in whose administrations he served, but also a trusted representative of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s head of state. A former parliamentarian, he holds positions on both the Assembly of Experts and the Expediency Council and is president of the Center for Strategic Research, an establishment Iranian think tank.

At the second of three presidential debates, held on June 5 and broadcast live on state television, Rouhani condemned government censorship and restrictions on social freedoms, including women’s rights. “Let people have more freedom,” Rouhani said, “Let’s not intervene so much in their lives. Cultural issues must be solved through culture itself. Police should be the last resort.” He also condemned the confiscation of satellite dishes from apartment building roofs as an “attack against people’s privacy,” and lamented, “We have created a policed climate.”

“The solution to the country’s cultural problems is to minimize the government’s interference and allow guild associations and experts to run their own affairs,” he declared, adding, “Women work but don’t enjoy equal rights. I’ll allocate special insurance for women and will form a women affairs ministry to return their trampled rights to them.”

Aref, a former Vice President with Master’s and Doctorate degrees from Stanford University, also chimed in with similar comments. The appropriate response to “cultural aggression isn’t censorship,” he explained, “but improving the quality of local productions.”

“An unprecedented security atmosphere has been imposed in recent years that caused lack of motivation among students,” Aref said. “The solution is not confrontation, elimination or shutting down. We are living in the age of communications. The solution is producing fine cultural works.” He also addressed the issue of censorship. “We should entirely minimize the state’s role in supervising art and cultural affairs. We should seriously work in diminishing government’s role in this sphere. Art and culture should be handed over to those who make art and culture,” he insisted, concluding, “The government must be at the service of culture, not dictate it to the people.”

Meanwhile, the more conservative candidates in the race variously declared their support for such things as internet filtering and gender segregation in universities. Jalili, for instance, responded to Rouhani’s comments about women’s rights by saying, “The main role for a woman is to be a mother. If we look at mother as a full time role to raise children properly, many social ills would be erased.”

The day before, June 4, Ayatollah Khamenei himself weighed in on the upcoming vote. ”A vote for any of these eight candidates is a vote for the Islamic Republic and a vote of confidence in the system and our electoral process,” he said, before adding some words of political wisdom. “Candidates shouldn’t make impossible promises. Speak in a way that if next year at this time you listen to a recording of yourself, or people do, you won’t be ashamed,” he said, in what Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian called “an apparent reference to Ahmadinejad.”

“Make promises that you can deliver on,” Khamenei continued, “so that afterward you don’t say that ‘they didn’t let me do this’ or ‘didn’t let me do that.’”

This final week of campaigning is sure to bring more sniping and more surprises. The third and final debate, which focuses on foreign policy, will take place today, Friday June 7.

[UPDATE: Frud Bezhan and others over at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty provided extensive, blow-by-blow coverage of the debate, which they described as "lively, entertaining, and heated." Also, the intrepid Joanna Paraszczuk of EA Worldview has posted some highlights from the debate here. Wire services Reuters and Associated Press have also published preliminary debate coverage.]

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Former Muftah editor Daniel Tavana, currently a research associate at the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED), has put together a comprehensive primer on the upcoming presidential election, detailing the electoral processes, candidates’ platforms, pre-election political atmosphere in Iran, as well as areas of potential concern, including the curtailing of press freedom, intimidation, and censorship.

Read his full report here.

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In other, perhaps more important news, the Iranian national soccer team defeated Qatar 1-0 in an important World Cup qualifying match on June 4. The single goal was scored by striker Rez Ghoochannejhad in the 66th minute off an assist by midfielder Mojtaba Jabari.

Highlights of the match can be seen here:

Next up, Iran plays Lebanon at Azadi Stadium in Tehran on June 11, just three days before the election. For more coverage of how soccer and politics often collide in Iran, read Holly Dagres’ recent report, published by Muftah earlier this week.

Reza Ghoochannejad, right, and Mohammad Raza celebrate at the Al-Sadd stadium in Doha on, Tuesday, June 4, 2013.

(Photo: Osama Faisal)

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Originally posted at Muftah.

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Iran: Beyond the Headlines, Beneath the Fold

A 2011 Andy Warhol exhibit at The Museum of Contemporary Art in Tehran, Iran.

Iran is in the news a lot these days. Perhaps more than usual. There’s constant chatter about the upcoming presidential election as campaigns heat up. There are overhyped reports and baseless accusations about Iran’s nuclear program. The United States Congress wants desperately, per the demands of their AIPAC benefactors, to impose a total trade embargo on the Islamic Republic, as the Canadian government has literally done just that, despite widespread acknowledgement that the heaping on of more and more sanctions against Iran is ineffective – and dangerous – policy.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration has, according to Ars Technica's Cyrus Farivar, “lifted digital sanctions that for more than two decades have prevented companies that do business in the US from also selling or distributing digital goods—including mobile phones, hosting services, VPNs, and software updates—to Iran.”

A bumbling, bipolar used-car salesman accused of being deployed by the Iranian government to hire a Mexican drug cartel to assassinate a Saudi Ambassador in Washington D.C. just received a sentence of 25 years in prison by a U.S. District Court. The usual cadre of neoconservative regime change advocates are continuing to publish the same worn-out warmongering screeds that they’ve been writing for the past decade.

But there are other stories about Iran, too. Ones that, amazingly, don’t include talk of enriched uranium, spinning centrifuges, elections, sanctions, or bombing. There are stories about young Iranian women practicing parkour on the streets of Tehran, Esfahan, and Lahijan. And stories about innovative and inspiring Iranian fashion designers Farnaz Abdoli and Shadi Parand. A beautiful photo essay, published Thursday May 29, 2013 by London’s Daily Mail, shows a side of Iran seldom seen in the mainstream Western press. Photographer Amos Chapple, during the course of three separate visits to Iran, snapped some incredible images, contrasting ancient villages with bustling cityscapes. ”‘I was amazed by the difference in western perceptions of the country and what I saw on the ground,” Chapple explains, echoing the sentiments of nearly everyone who has ever visited Iran with preconceived notions.

And just last week, NPR posted a performance by acclaimed Iranian singer Mohammad Reza Shajarian, which is described as “a brief master class in the art of singing. In the course of this love song, titled ‘Az Eshgh,’ the Iranian icon unleashes torrents of swooping, soaring, goosebump-inducing sound that’s still perfectly controlled at age 73.”

Watching the video below and listening to the incredible music, you’d almost be forgiven for believing there’s hope yet for peace and reconciliation.


From NPR's Anastasia Tsioulcas: Every Tiny Desk Concert provides its own particular thrill, but it’s not every day that we get to welcome one of NPR’s 50 Great Voices to our offices. With the visit of the incredible, honey-voiced Mohammad Reza Shajarian from Iran, we lucked out by having him sing on not just any day, but on the biggest holiday of the Persian calendar: Nowruz, the New Year.

Joined by three excellent collaborators, brothers Sohrab and Tahmoures Pournazeri (celebrated musicians in their own right as leaders of Iran’s Shams Ensemble) and French percussionist Robin Vassy, Ostad (“Master”) Shajarian gave what amounted to a brief master class in the art of singing. In the course of this love song, titled “Az Eshgh,” Shajarian unleashed torrents of swooping, soaring, goosebump-inducing sound — still perfectly controlled at age 73.

Full article

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Originally posted at Muftah.

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The Not-So-Complex World of Michael Bloomberg:When A White Person Does It, That Means It's Not Terrorism

(Photo Credit: Jeanne Noonan / New York Daily News)

Last week, a threatening letter laced with the deadly chemical ricin was sent from Shreveport, Louisiana to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg as a response to the mayor's outspoken support for stricter gun control laws.  Two identical letters, also containing the lethal substance, were addressed to both President Barack Obama and the head of the Washington D.C. lobbying group, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, which is managed and funded by Bloomberg himself.

The contents of the letters are clearly the work of a right-wing gun nut and read as follows:

"You will have to kill me and my family before you get my guns. Anyone wants to come to my house will get shot in the face. The right to bear arms is my constitutional, god-given right and I will exercise that right till the day I die. What's in this letter is nothing compared to what I've got planned for you."

Despite lethally targeting civilians and non-military officials far from any active battlefield, no one is referring to these acts as terrorism.  Not the press, not political pundits, not the intended victims.  No one.

In fact, Bloomberg himself was nonplussed by the whole ordeal, telling reporters on Thursday May 30, "I'm not angry. There are people who I would argue do things that may be irrational, do things that are wrong, but it's a very complex world out there and we just have to deal with that."

Yes, Mike, it is a very complex world.

This world is so complex, in fact, that an easily identifiable act of terrorism isn't considered terrorism for one simple reason: it probably wasn't committed by a Muslim, but rather by some white guy in the South.

Clearly, while white guys who send murderous mail are merely acting irrationally and doing something wrong, potential violence by members of the Muslim faith present a singular threat to our civilized society. So much so, in fact, that Michael Bloomberg himself believes our own laws and the bedrock of that very society are not good enough to defend against such a scourge to humanity.

Last month, following the horrific Boston Marathon bombing, Bloomberg declared that the American obsession with privacy, civil rights and basic freedoms were antiquated and trite when compared to the dire threat posed by hypothetical barbarian hordes of 'Islamists.'

At a press conference at the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative, Bloomberg said, "The people who are worried about privacy have a legitimate worry. But we live in a complex world where you're going to have to have a level of security greater than you did back in the olden days, if you will. And our laws and our interpretation of the Constitution, I think, have to change."

Yes, how complex it is.

So complex that, although a 2010 study by Duke University and the University of North Carolina found that Islamic terrorism accounted for only six percent of all terrorist attacks in the United States between 1980 and 2005 while a 2012 analysis by the Center for American Progress reported that a whopping "[f]ifty-six percent of domestic terrorist attacks and plots in the U.S. since 1995 have been perpetrated by right-wing extremists," Michael Bloomberg has made it his duty to illegally spy on and harass Muslim communities in the New York Metro area.

Bloomberg has presided over a massive, illegal covert domestic surveillance and ethno-religious profiling program that have targeted, alienated and traumatized Muslims throughout the Northeast, despite the fact that, following the September 11, 2001 attacks, more Americans have been killed in right-wing terrorist plots than by Islamic terrorists.

"NYPD surveillance has impacted every facet of American Muslim life," explains Nermeen Arastu, a volunteer attorney with the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF), which co-authored a March 2013 report entitled, "Mapping Muslims: NYPD Spying and Its Impact on American Muslims."

"The program has stifled speech, communal life and religious practice and criminalized a broad segment of American Muslims," Arastu added, "The isolationism that comes with being a 'spied on' community means that American Muslims are getting a fundamentally inferior opportunity to exercise their constitutional rights."

But, for Mayor Mike, just because a white guy tries to kill you via the postal service doesn't mean white people in general deserve to be spied on, rounded up, marginalized, and profiled.  Keep calm and carry on, he says.  These things happen.

This morning, on Chris Jansing's MSNBC show, USA Today Washington Bureau Chief Susan Page said it was "probably not fair to taint the entire gun rights movement with the actions of this disturbing letter because there is a serious debate and two sides to it when it comes to the issue of guns."  Jansing agreed. "Yeah, and it's unfortunate that, for a few, it comes to this," she said.

Not fair, she said.  Unfortunate, she said.

Last year, Bloomberg defended his Muslim surveillance program, claiming, "Everything the NYPD has done is legal, it is appropriate, it is constitutional," and, unsurprisingly, by invoking that sacred strawman: 9/11. "We have not forgotten the lesson of that terrible day on 9/11," he insisted, sanctimoniously adding, "We have to keep this country safe...Remind yourself when you turn out the light tonight."

Bloomberg's insistence that, "We don't target individuals based on race or religion. We follow leads," is fascinating because, just six months after he said this, an Associated Press report on court testimony by the NYPD stated, "In more than six years of spying on Muslim neighborhoods, eavesdropping on conversations and cataloguing mosques, the New York Police Department's secret Demographics Unit never generated a lead or triggered a terrorism investigation."

But Bloomberg's targeting of Muslims isn't his only method of rooting out the evil that lurks in the hearts of brown men.

A month ago, the billionaire mayor defended his racist Stop-and-Frisk policy by invoking - what else? - the ever-looming conversation-ender: the constant scourge and fear of terrorism. "Look at what's happened in Boston," he said. "Remember what happened here on 9/11. Remember all of those who've been killed by gun violence and the families they left behind."

Again he even claimed that our own laws and efforts not to discriminate against certain communities are making us less safe. "God forbid terrorists succeed in striking our city because of a politically driven law that undermines the N.Y.P.D.’s intelligence gathering efforts," he said.

The editors of the New York Times were unmoved by Bloomberg's fear-mongering defense of racial profiling.  "Mayor Michael Bloomberg trotted out shopworn, discredited arguments this week," they wrote, "while defending the constitutionally suspect police program under which hundreds of thousands of innocent New Yorkers have been detained and questioned on the streets every year."

They note, "[G]uns were seized in only 0.15 percent of all stops. In addition, only 5.4 percent of all stops resulted in an arrest, and about 6 percent led to a summons. This means that in nearly 90 percent of cases, the citizens who were stopped were doing nothing illegal. In some cases, prosecutors declined to automatically prosecute arrests made in connection with the program because they knew that the stops were illegal."

In 2011, 84 percent of all those stopped under the NYPD's Stop-and-Frisk rampage where black and Hispanic, despite respectively representing 23 and 29 percent of New York City’s total population.  Similar to its monitoring of Muslims, the NYPD's own data has shown that the Stop-and-Frisk program has done little to reduce shootings in the city.

Nevertheless, Bloomberg has defended discrimination and been unrepentant in his support for the program.  "Nobody should ask [NYC Police Commissioner] Ray Kelly to apologize — he's not going to and neither am I," Bloomberg said last year, adding, "I think it's fair to say that stop-question-and-frisk has been an essential part of the NYPD's work."

For his part, Kelly suggests that those targeted by discriminatory policies should acquiesce to the authoritarian abrogation of their own civil and constitutional rights.  "The best thing for a person to do when being stopped is cooperate," Kelly said during a radio interview last August. "Accept it as a fact of urban life."

Under Michael Bloomberg's reign, minority communities have been collectively punished for the criminal actions of a few.  In his complex world, blacks and Latinos are all potential gun-toting killers, while all Muslims are jihadists-in-training.  Yet, an actual gun-toting lunatic who actually tries to murder Bloomberg is an anomaly, an aberration, nothing to be concerned with. Simply something "we just have to deal with."

But terrorism?  No, never.  Not if the perpetrator is white and not Muslim.

Glenn Greenwald, a former constitutional lawyer and currently a columnist for The Guardian, has been addressing this double standard for years.  "Terrorism," he writes, "is simultaneously the single most meaningless and most manipulated word in the American political lexicon. The term now has virtually nothing to do with the act itself and everything to do with the identity of the actor, especially his or her religious identity. It has really come to mean: 'a Muslim who fights against or even expresses hostility towards the United States, Israel and their allies.'"

So while the NYPD continues to terrorize minority communities and the FBI continues to foil phony Muslim terror plots that it itself devises, plans and funds, rest assured that all the well-armed and well-represented white folks in our noble nation will continue to live free from suspicion, scrutiny, and surveillance no matter how much postal poison they send and mass shootings they carry out.

Maybe it's not complex after all, maybe it's just complexion.

Remember that when you turn off the light tonight.

*****


This article was featured in Issue 75 (June-July 2013) of ColdType and crossposted at both ConsortiumNews and Alternet.


*****

UPDATE:

June 28, 2013 - Speaking this morning on a local radio station, Bloomberg said some truly remarkable things.  Denouncing two City Council-passed bills that would rein in his racist Stop-and-Frisk policies, the mayor demonstrated he either has no grasp on reality, willfully ignorant, incapable of reading statistics, or simply enjoys lying into a microphone.

"The racial profiling bill is just so unworkable," he said. "Nobody racially profiles."

Bloomberg continued, "It's society's job to make sure that no one group is disproportionately represented as potential perpetrators."  Legislation, oversight, and regulation could also do that job, of course.

In order to prove what an arrogant Fascist he really is, Bloomberg concluded, "I think we disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little."

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Will Iran’s Next President Be Elected or Selected?

Iranian Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei casts his ballot in Tehran in parliamentary elections in 2012.

On Tuesday May 21, Iran’s Guardian Council announced the names of eight candidates vetted and approved to run for president in the nation’s upcoming June 14 election. The names of the two most high-profile aspirants,former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and top Ahmadinejad aide Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, both of whom were last minute registrants and subject to endless voter and media speculation, were not on the list.

The approved candidates are Saeed Jalili, Gholamali Haddad Adel, Mohsen Rezaei, Hassan Rowhani, Mohammad Reza Aref, Seyed Mohammad Gharazi, Mohammad Baqer Ghalibaf, and Ali Akbar Velayati.

Brief profiles of all the candidates have been posted by BBC News and the Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA).

Addressing his campaign staff after his disqualification, Rafsanjani said, “I know that I shouldn’t have run. I know them better than anyone else.” He added, with regard to the constant threats facing Iran from the United States and Israel, “In my opinion, with these scenarios and paths to destruction, they [the Iranian leadership] couldn’t possibly have managed the country worse. I don’t want to get involved in their types of attacks, but their ignorance is troubling. They don’t know what they’re doing.”

Nevertheless, Rafsanjani told his supporters, “Don’t despair. Under no condition should anyone be discouraged.”

Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), did not heed these words. Parsi is disheartened by the vetted field of candidates and namely by the rejection of Rafsanjani, which he views as a sign that the remaining democratic institutions and aspects of the Islamic Republic are rapidly contracting, signaling a political move by Khamenei “in the direction of complete dictatorship.”

“The differences between the approved candidates (with the exception of Hassan Rowhani and Mohammad-Reza Aref) are insignificant,” he writes, “and [] this is not so much an election by the people as it is a selection by Ayatollah Khamenei.”

Despite his own misgivings, New York Times best-selling author Hooman Majd has a slightly less pessimistic view. In a recent article for Foreign Affairs, Majd pushes back against “commentators [who, due to the disqualifications of Rafsanjani and Mashaei] have assumed that the Iranian public will approach the election with apathy, maybe even hostility.”

“[J]ust because the vote is not entirely free and fair,” he writes, “does not mean that Iranians will treat it as unimportant.” Contrary to Parsi’s determination, Majd notes that “it might be a mistake to lump the remaining candidates together,” noting that their economic and diplomatic portfolios present the Iranian electorate with at least some options.

He elaborates on a few of the front-runners:

Saeed Jalili, the current secretary of the Supreme National Security Council and top nuclear negotiator, is generally considered a staunch conservative and a loyal technocrat; if he were to win, he would likely follow the supreme leader’s advice and orders to the letter. That means it is unlikely Iran would offer a new tone in nuclear talks — indeed, in economic terms, it appears that his view on sanctions is that in the long run they help Iran by making the country more self-sufficient. (That view may not sit well with voters who are currently suffering the effects of those sanctions.)

Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, the charismatic and highly regarded mayor of Tehran, is known as a pragmatic conservative; although many reformists and regime opponents inside Iran resent his past as a Revolutionary Guard commander and police chief, others recognize that he is less of an ideologue when it comes to social issues in Iran. As mayor, he has earned a reputation as an efficient manger, and as president, he would likely emphasize improving Iran’s international economic ties.

Hassan Rowhani, for his part, is a substantially different candidate than both Jalili and Qalibaf. As a a close associate of Rafsanjani and one-time nuclear negotiator under former President Muhammad Khatami, he could certainly change the tone, if not the substance, of nuclear diplomacy, and thus improve Iran’s relations with the outside world. Furthermore, although he is a cleric, he is not known for hard-line social views. If Rowhani earns the backing of Rafsanjani and Khatami, as some suggest he might, he is likely to introduce familiar faces from earlier reformist administrations into his own cabinet to help determine social and economic policy.

As for the presumed disinterest on the Iranian street, Majd suggests a bit of skepticism and humility. ”[N]o one can predict when one of the candidates will figure out how to energize Iranians this time around — whether Rowhani, for example, can ignite the race by appealing to reformists and what is left of the opposition, or whether Qalibaf can leverage his charisma and popularity as mayor of Iran’s largest city,” he explains, concluding, “In short, it would be presumptuous to think of the election as simply a rubber stamp for the authority of the supreme leader and the Revolutionary Guards.”

For what it’s worth, an online (and admittedly non-scientific) poll on the Iranian news site Asr-e Iran currently shows Rowhani leading the pack with nearly 35% of the vote, while the low-profile reformist candidate Mohammad Reza Aref has almost 21% and Qalibaf just under 20%. Conservative candidates, those most closely aligned with Khamenei himself, trail far behind. The presumed favorite Jalili has barely 9%; Velayati only 6%.

Whether this accurately reflects the preferences of Iran’s voters obviously remains to be seen.

*****

Originally posted at Muftah.

*****

Outsourced Trolling, Weak Replies and More Bad Research:Javedanfar's Former Students Unsuccessfully Defend Their Mentor

In response to a recent article I wrote addressing a number of false statements made by Israeli analyst Meir Javedanfar in an April 22 Guardian op-ed, a few comments were posted on Muftah, an online magazine for which I am an editor, and where my article was originally posted.

The comments, in general, are inane and eye-roll worthy.  Still, as they were clearly posted at the explicit urging of Mr. Javedanfar himself (rather than own up to - or somehow attempt to defend - his obvious errors), I thought they merited some sort of reply.

Below are the three comments as they appear on Muftah, followed by my reply.  Tova's comment, the third, is by far the most substantive, as it contains at least some semblance of an attempt to try to poke holes in my analysis of Javedanfar's report.  It doesn't.  Quite the contrary, in fact, it reaffirms Javedanfar's (and, apparently, his supporters') unfortunate lack of basic research skills and analytic acumen and further demonstrates how rampant falsehoods and conventional wisdom continue to proliferate when it comes to discussing Iran's nuclear program.

The three commenters, who call themselves Valerie, Ali Soltani, and Tova, are all located in Israel, namely Herzliya, where Javedanfar lectures at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC), a private university.

Here they are:

1. Valerie says:

   9 May 2013 at 10:34 am

   Meir Javedanfar is one of the most respected experts in the study of current Iranian affairs. I interviewed him and quoted his articles many times for my MA dissertation. Who is the writer of this article? has he ever spoken to Mr Javedanfar?
2. Ali Soltani says:

   10 May 2013 at 12:49 pm

   Its difficult to know whether the author is criticizing arguments or personally attacking the other person. It seems that the writer has a lot of anger issues against Javendanfar. Did they use to be friends? Very badly written.
3. Tova says:

   16 May 2013 at 6:52 am

   I am a former student of Mr Javedanfar. I know he is busy and does not want to waste his important time on replying to articles which use the word “muck” as a description of his name. I can understand why.
   But with his permission, I will clarify the most glaring inaccuracy of this article.
   This article says that Iran had said before that it wants to make nuclear fuel.
   There is a difference between saying and doing. Iran has said many things that it has not done. The fact remains that Iran started converting 20% enriched uranium to fuel after the imposition of the EU oil sanctions. This was confirmed by the IAEA report in August 2012 which stated that Iran had recently started doing so.
   2- The writer of this article seems to have very little understanding of the difference between nuclear fuel. He says that Iran inserted fuel rods at the beginning of 2012 and because of that Mr javedanfar is wrong. Absolutely not. Mr Javedanfar clearly points to 20% enriched uranium being converted to fuel, not 3.5% which is what happened with fuel rods at the beginning of that year.
   He accuses Professor Javedanfar of ” dearth of actual insight – or basic research skills”. This is most true about the writer of this article after his failure to read Professor Javedanfar’s article properly before comparing it to “Muck”, which of course shows lack of professionalism and ad hominem attack.
   3. In another article, the writer of this article says Mr Javedanfar is lying because IAEA report which he pointed to in this Guardian article http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/may/29/nuclear-talks-iran-sanctions does not say Iran was working on a nuclear trigger. Mr Javedanfar clearly showed in this article http://iran-israel-observer.com/2012/12/31/refuting-richard-silverteins-accusations-against-meir-javedanfar/ that the IAEA does say that, yet the reporter has never corrected his false accusations. One has to ask why.

   Truth being a rare commodity indeed, when it comes to the writing of this shoddy “fact check” article which falsely accuses Professor Javedanfar of being a “show off” as well as other personal attacks.

   I hope Professor Javedanfar does not mind me writing this. I know he has many important lectures to give and conferences to attend to. But we as his former students will stand up against such personal attacks, shoddily covered up as “fact checking”.

This was my response:

It is delightful to see Mr. Javedanfar task his former students with defending his honor and scholarship. That they seem not to be aware of the English phrase “muck and mire” – on which the title of the article is a variation – is of no consequence. Anyone reading the piece will see that it contains no ad hominen against Mr. Javedanfar, merely a critique of his analysis based on a whole lot of fully-sourced evidence.

It should first be noted that, in none of the responses above or in Javedanfar’s own brief responses made on his Twitter account, is the veracity of the documented timeline, events described or statements quoted challenged or questioned.

Javedanfar’s primary claim that “the Iranian government had refused to even address its 20% enriched uranium process” with the P5+1 prior to the announcement of EU sanctions in January 2012 is demonstrably false. His defenders in this forum conveniently ignore this point outright, focusing instead on a more minor point presented towards the end of my article. Yet this is the central point made by Javedanfar in his Guardian analysis – that Iran is now negotiating over its 20% stockpile as a direct result of EU sanctions, thus vindicating the efficacy of the sanctions – a point which falls flat when one looks at a calendar and reads what Iranian officials had been saying for quite some time, long before the announcement of EU sanctions. On this, both Javedanfar and his acolytes are silent.

Considering this timeline cannot actually be challenged based on facts, Javedanfar's defenders like Tova (see above) skip this point all together. Rather, we see the focus turned to Javedanfar's ancillary contention that Iran only started converting some of its 20% stockpile to fuel plates after the EU announcement.

As made perfectly clear in my own analysis above, Javedanfar is employing a post-hoc ergo propter hoc argument here. Iran's intentions and technical progress had been evident for months; their publicly-declared intention was clearly to convert their 20% stockpile to plates usable in the TRR. Iranian officials had been saying as much and scientists had been working to achieve this goal for a year-and-a-half before the EU sanctions were agreed upon. The cause-and-effect claim made by Javedanfar doesn't work.

Yet, Javedanfar's defender above claims that my pointing this out constitutes "the most glaring inaccuracy" in my article simply because "[t]here is a difference between saying and doing." Unfortunately for Tova and Mr. Javedanfar, this is not much of a counter-argument as the stage had been set long before the EU sanctions announcement for this process to begin, up to and including testing the fuel conversion on 3.5% LEU before beginning to convert the 20% material.

In short, Iran wasn't just "saying" – it was also "doing"; no, not the actual conversion (I never claim as such), but the research and development, industrial installation and testing necessary to begin 20% conversion.

The IAEA confirmed in its November 8, 2011 Safeguards report (GOV/2011/65 F.33-37) that, as of mid-October of that year, Iran had continued installing "process equipment for the conversion of UF6 enriched up to 20% U-235 into U3O8 [triuranium octoxide]" at its Uranium Conversion Facility in Esfahan.

In early October 2011, Iran had also informed the IAEA that it had transferred a small amount of enriched material to the R&D section of its Fuel Manufacturing Plant (FMP) in order to "conduct research activities and pellet fabrication," for the purposes of making nuclear fuel. On October 15, 2011, the IAEA inspected the TRR and "confirmed that, on 23 August 2011, Iran had started to irradiate a prototype fuel rod..."

More importantly, the report stated, "On 22 October 2011...[the IAEA] confirmed that Iran had started to install some equipment for the fabrication of fuel for TRR [at its Fuel Manufacturing Plant in Esfahan]. During the inspection, the Agency verified five fuel plates containing natural U3O8 that had been produced at the R&D laboratory at FMP for testing purposes."

October 2011 comes before January 2012.

In this regard, my timeline and Mr. Javedanfar’s are the same; only he omits everything that happened before January 23, 2012 in his analysis of Iran’s 20% conversion progress, while I include a few years of vitally important context.

For Mr. Javedanfar to claim Iran made the decision to convert its 20% stockpile to fuel plates only after the EU announcement is an assumption conjured only to bolster his support for sanctions and is unrelated to the historical record. As the logical fallacy goes, just because the sun comes up after the rooster crows doesn't mean the rooster’s crowing caused the sun to rise.

The other point made by the above commenter relates to an issue of false attribution in another opinion piece written by Javedanfar in The Guardian and which I addressed nearly two years ago. It seems clear that Javedanfar has asked his dear defender to bring up this old news in order to discredit my own writing, which, to be honest, is kind of sad. It’s also a bad idea since he’s already officially lost that argument.

To recap, here's exactly what Javedanfar wrote in The Guardian in May 2011:

Last week brought new indications that the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran want to make a nuclear bomb.

The disclosure was part of the newly released nine-page report by the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). It stated that "Tehran has conducted work on a highly sophisticated nuclear triggering technology that experts said could be used for only one purpose: setting off a nuclear weapon".

As seen above, what he wrote was, "It stated…." IT STATED. But it – the "newly-released" IAEA report he refers to – didn't state that, contrary to the only meaning that sentence, especially with its inclusion of quotation marks, could possibly have in the English language. No, only The New York Times stated that in its lede. The IAEA report never mentions "experts" saying anything about anything. The report merely details the accusations inferred from forged Israeli documents that don’t stand up to scrutiny.

This is precisely the issue I brought up at the time about Javedanfar’s false attribution, which serves to lend IAEA credibility to a speculative and alarmist statement actually made by David Sanger and William Broad, whose writing on the Iranian nuclear program has long been littered with unfounded inferences and disingenuous innuendo.

But more to the point, Javedanfar didn't write, "according to The New York Times…" before quoting the paper. He explicitly wrote that the IAEA report itself came to those conclusions when it did not.

Beyond this, the allegations about the "neutron generation and associated diagnostics" (to which Javedanfar is implicitly referring) had already been noted by the IAEA in its February 2011 report and therefore was not a "new indication" or a "disclosure" as he declared.

Furthermore, the nuclear triggering technology allegation had already been eviscerated by linguist George Maschke and investigative journalist Gareth Porter years earlier. The "uranium deuteride" initiator claim is taken specifically from phony documents reported upon by the Times of London in December 2009. Porter has dismantled this hoax here and here.

Unsurprisingly, the nuclear trigger claim comes from the same font of forgeries that AP reporter George Jahn relied on for his widely-mocked Evil Nuclear Graph of Doom nonsense published in November 2012.

What Javedanfar omits from his commentary is that the authenticity of such documentation has long been questioned; instead he accepts the allegations made by anonymous tipsters in the Israeli government as proven fact. This is irresponsible.

In his 2012 memoir, former IAEA Director General Mohammad ElBaradei explains, "The accuracy of these accusations has never been verified; however, it is significant that the conclusions of the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate were not changed, indicating that they, at least, did not buy the ‘evidence’ put forward by Israel." (The Age of Deception, p.291)

More to the point, the above commenter suggests that Javedanfar's claims have been verified and yet, with reference to me, "the reporter has never corrected his false accusations. One has to ask why."

This is amazing. Here, again, is the Guardian article being discussed.

Scroll down to the bottom of the article. Here, clear as day, is a correction – added by the Guardian editors earlier this year, after being appraised of my exposure of Javedanfar's false attribution – which reads in full:

This article was amended on 11 January 2013. In the original, the phrasing implied that a quotation in the second paragraph was from an IAEA report. It was actually from a New York Times article about the IAEA report.

It appears that Javedanfar's own editors found my analysis more compelling and factual than Javedanfar's rendering. The above commenter makes no mention of this. One doesn't need to ask why.

In her conclusion, the above commenter describes my analysis of Javedanfar's recent Guardian piece as a "shoddy 'fact check' article which falsely accuses Professor Javedanfar of being a 'show off'..."

At no point does Tova challenge a single fact presented by me in the above article. Furthermore, never once in my article do I accuse Javedanfar of being a "show off" or make any suggestion to that effect (What does that even mean? What would he be showing off? His lack of factual information?), so it makes no sense that the phrase is in quotation marks.

Tova concludes by writing, "I hope Professor Javedanfar does not mind me writing this. I know he has many important lectures to give and conferences to attend to." Well, yes, Javedanfar's time must be precious enough for him to outsource a weak rebuttal to a "former student" like Tova and acolytes like "Valerie" and "Ali Soltani." His students also appear to believe he's a professor, when he's not; he's a lecturer. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Yet while Tova's humility is endearing, it's also phony. Why would Javedanfar "mind" her replying when her comment itself begins by admitting that she is undertaking the task of responding to my article "with his permission"?

I do hope this clears things up, Tova – and Meir. In the future, rather than pretending you haven't been caught presenting faulty information, you should probably just apologize for the error and then move on. What you've done here is kind of embarrassing.

Cheers,
NS

*****