PBS Mask of Respectability Sells Iran Nuclear Propaganda
Sins of Omission
Millions of viewers were exposed to this dialogue, and millions more will see it in syndication. As they watch, few will be aware of some damning omissions.
First, Iran is fully within its rights under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and its agreements with the International Atomic Energy Commission (IAEA). It has the right, as do all signatories, to develop peaceful nuclear energy (as contrasted with non-peaceful nuclear energy of the kind being perpetually pursued by the United States).
Second, there isn’t a shred of evidence that suggests Iran is trying to develop a nuclear warhead. Not if you believe successive National Intelligence Estimates of the United States. Perhaps Rogers has overlooked these fine reports. After all, he repeatedly misrepresents Iran’s civilian nuclear energy program, calling it a “nuclear weapons program”. He would deserve censure for this, were not his voice drowned in the din of his Republican and Democratic colleagues rehearsing the same lie.
Third, Iran made concessions in this agreement. It agreed to limit its uranium enrichment to five percent, a level from which, perhaps, a dirty bomb might be cobbled together, were Iranian leadership of a mind to pursue collective suicide by building and using one. It also agreed to halt fuel production at the Arak site. An additional facility would likely have to be built there to reprocess spent fuel into plutonium, like enriched uranium a fissile material usable in a nuclear weapon. It also agreed to convert all its existing 20 percent enriched uranium into unusable formulae. Lastly, it agreed to grant the IAEA regular access to its enrichment facilities. For this, a mere four billion of its rightful monies was unfrozen by the U.S. and its allies. The remaining tens of billions in sanctions on the Iranian economy and money tied up in foreign banks have been left in place, frozen, and untouched. No matter that these sanctions have had devastating effects on the Iranian economy and society.
Fourth, the United States’ attempt to sharply curtail Iran’s nuclear program is hypocritical, to put it mildly. Not only did the U.S. support civilian nuclear energy in Iran during the Shah’s reign decades ago, but America can hardly be regarded seriously when it suggests that other nations don’t have the right to pursue nuclear weapons. The United States possesses thousands of nuclear weapons, and its viciously aggressive and perennially aggrieved Middle Eastern proxy Israel has an additional 80 nuclear weapons—and a total monopoly of weaponized uranium in the Middle East. Rogers seems to think Iran has an interest in not only pursuing a weapon, but in launching a pointless and suicidal arms race against the two most powerful nuclear states in the world. Not to mention his conjuring of a certifiable former Israeli prime minister whose own histrionic notions—that Iran would instantly bomb Israel if only it could—has been contradicted by saner members of the Israeli military who have admitted that Iran poses no “existential threat” to its statehood, including former defense minister Ehud Barak.
