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This gem from Victor Grossman in Berlin, appears in today's Morning Star:

News flash: The descendants of Long John Silver and Captain Flint have put in claims for damages.

As they pointed out, it was the passengers and crew of the ships captured who were the criminals since it was they who had beaten the men with knives and iron bars. It was necessary for the men to shoot and kill some of the attackers, acting in self-defence. To determine the facts they were willing to let a commission of impartial buccaneers decide.

Have I been dreaming after seeing a Johnny Depp film, or perhaps just watching the news?


Meanwhile, the UN Security Council prepares to vote on a US-backed plan for imposing swingeing new sanctions, not on serial international law breaking, nuclear-armed Israel, but on a Middle Eastern country which hasn’t attacked anyone and has no nuclear weapons. You really couldn’t make it up could you?

UDATE: Shamefully, the UN Security Council has just imposed fresh sanctions on Iran on account of its non-existent nuclear weapons programme. Bravo to Turkey and Brazil for voting against this nonsense.

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What terrible news for the 'Bomb Iran' brigade:

From The Hindu:

Tehran: Iran on Monday agreed to swap a major part of its low enriched uranium stocks on Turkish soil for an equivalent amount of uranium enriched to 19.75 per cent, potentially ending a stand-off with the U.S. and Europe that threatened to spiral into sanctions.

Iran needs the higher grade enriched uranium to fuel the Tehran Research Reactor, used by it to produce medical isotopes.

The deal was reached after 18 hours of negotiations ending 4 a.m. among Iran, Turkey and Brazil, leaving Washington and its allies red-faced. The U.S. and Europe are pressing for the punitive route and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had predicted last week that the Brazilian-Turkish attempt at mediation would fail.

And what is the response of Britain’s neocon Foreign Secretary to this news?
Reuters reports:

Britain said work on a new U.N. sanctions resolution must go on. Iran's move "may just be a delaying tactic," said Foreign Secretary William Hague.

How utterly predictable. And how utterly pathetic. Hague and co are itching to impose swingeing new sanctions on Tehran - and the nuclear issue is just a pretext.

Does Hague’s reaction remind you of anything? Think back to the period 2002-3, when no concession that Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi government made was ever enough for the neocon warmongers. The very same people who were gunning for Iraq then, are gunning for Iran now.

As Alan Hinnrichs says in his excellent letter in the Morning Star:

The UK anti-war movement needs to get off its knees and mobilise now for the possible eventuality of war with Iran. It will simply not be enough to do as the SWP would have us do and march from A to B then go home.

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First they came for the Yugoslavs. Then the Afghans. Then the Iraqis-up to 1m killed since the illegal invasion of 2003. Now it’s the Islamic Republic of Iran that is menaced by the advocates of perpetual war.


But before the military attacks, come the lies.  Lots and lots of them.

As the neocon-inspired propaganda campaign against Iran goes into overdrive, I thought it was time we had a new regular feature: Iran Lie Watch.

For starters: compare and contrast.

The Guardian, 1st January 2010.

David Petraeus says hostage Peter Moore was 'certainly' held in Iran


General David Petraeus, the head of US Central Command, today confirmed a US intelligence assessment which said the freed British hostage Peter Moore was "certainly" held in Iran for at least some of his 31 months in captivity.



As Moore arrived back in Britain at RAF Brize Norton this evening, Petraeus told a press conference in Baghdad: "I am on the record as having said that our intelligence assessment is that he certainly spent part of the time, at the very least, in Iran."

The First Post, 12th March 2010.

Peter Moore: Iran did not kidnap me

Peter Moore, the British IT consultant kidnapped on May 29, 2007 in Iraq and held hostage for three years by Shia extremists, has spoken about his ordeal. In the first interview about his time in captivity, Moore says he was held in Basra - not in Iran, as many reports had claimed - and denies there was any significant Iranian link to the group beyond some covert funding. He also dismisses the suggestion the kidnap was orchestrated by Iran's Republican Guard, insisting the kidnappers – a group calling themselves the League of the Righteous - were "Iraqi resistance" with "representation" in Iraq's government.



Will General David Petraeus be making an apology to Iran over his false accusation?  And will we see this story covered on the numerous neocon blogs and websites?

Don't hold your breath.

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….but don’t expect Nick Cohen, Melanie Phillips or Mike Blogger to write about it.

Tehran has said that it had captured the leader of a sectarian terror group with alleged links to Western intelligence services - that says it has killed dozens of Iranian civilians and officials over the past few years.

Iranian Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar told a news conference that Abdolmalek Rigi, chief of the Jundallah Sunni islamist group, had been arrested outside the country as he was "preparing for a new act of sabotage."

After his capture, Mr Rigi was brought to Iran.

Iran's intelligence minister Heidar Moslehi claimed that US officials had provided Mr Rigi with an Afghan passport and that he had had contacts with the CIA and Mossad - and had met a Nato military official in Afghanistan in April 2008.
Mr Moslehi said that Iran "reserved the right to sue the US and UK" on the basis that they co-ordinated Mr Rigi's terror attacks in Iran.

Jundallah has claimed responsibility for numerous attacks in Iran.

According to Iranian state media, the group has "carried out mass murder, armed robbery, kidnapping, acts of sabotage and bombings" targeting "civilians and government officials, as well as all ranks of Iran's military."

In the group's latest attack on October 18 last year, more than 40 people - including tribal elders and 15 members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards - were killed in a Jundallah attack in Pishin.

In July 2008 respected US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh alleged that US congressional leaders had secretly agreed to former president George W Bush's $400m (£260m) funding request for a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, aimed at destabilising its leadership by "working with opposition groups and passing money."

From: The Morning Star.

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In my First Post piece earlier this week, I highlighted western double standards when it comes to post-election protests:

In the 2006 presidential elections in Mexico, official results showed that the neo-liberal, anti-leftist and pro-American Felipe Calderon had won by 0.58 per cent.
The left-wing 'Coalition for the Good of All' alleged voting irregularities in more than 30 per cent of polling stations and organised massive street protests. But the protesters' cause was not championed by Washington and the election controversy was barely mentioned in the mainstream western media. Why? Because the "right" side had won.

Unlike in Iran of course, when in last year’s election, the "wrong" side, i.e. President Ahmadinejad, won. And that’s why the BBC’s Newsnight are, we are told, ‘watching events in Iran closely.’ (hat tip Ed on Media Lens message board)

What I’ve seen from Iran today is hundreds of thousands of people gathering in Tehran to celebrate the 31st anniversary of the country’s Islamic revolution. How very inconvenient for the BBC and other hawk-eyed Iran ‘watchers’. But of course, in the view of the Biased Broadcasting Corporation, the opinions and views of the people who support President Ahmadinejad don't count, it's only the supporters of the Twittering 'democratic' opposition who matter.

If, like me, you are sick and tired of the BBC’s very biased reporting of events in Iran, and their highly selective coverage of anti-government protests around the globe, then details on where to complain can be found here.

Always remember, it’s meant to be our BBC.

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If you've been taking the US and Britain's recent pronouncements on Iran seriously, you're probably just about ready to stock up on canned food and start digging a fallout shelter in your back garden.

Secret underground nuclear facilities? Breaches of non-proliferation rules? Dark hints of military action to stop the mad mullahs from a crazed attack on Israel?

To listen to Barack Obama and Gordon Brown, you'd think the world was plunging into a new cold war.

So we should treasure the words of former British diplomat Richard Dalton. They're a rare sign that someone in the Establishment is willing to talk sense on Iran - although Dalton doesn't go nearly far enough.

....Dalton could and should have been far more damning in his criticism of Western sabre-rattling. It's not enough to say there's no solid evidence of Iran's nuclear ambitions and no proof that the Qom facility is designed for making weapons. Technically true, certainly, but not enough by a long way.

Here's what Dalton could have said, if he wanted to tell the whole truth.

He could have said that Iran has no nuclear ambitions and no plans to attack any other country.

Iran has an official policy, restated again and again, of "no first strike." It hasn't started a war of aggression in modern history - unlike, say, the US, Britain or Israel. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has forbidden nuclear weapons as un-Islamic and he maintains that Iran is not trying to develop them.

And the US intelligence agencies all agree that he's telling the truth.

You can read the whole of today’s excellent Morning Star editorial here.

Over the next few weeks and months we can prepare to be bombarded with propaganda that Iran’s non-existent nuclear weapons programme poses a ‘threat’ to the west.

And by and large the same people who will be trying to convince you that Iran is a ‘threat’ are the same people who told you that Yugoslav forces were committing ’genocide’ against the Kosovan Albanians in 1999, and that Iraq possessed WMDs in 2003.

Both those claims were totally bogus- as is the claim that Iran threatens us today.

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I've just received my 'Geneva Press Kit' from 'The Israel Project', a Zionist lobbying organisation whose aim is to 'inform' journalists about the threats that Israel faces and why it is so imperative for the 'international community' to impose even more draconian sanctions on Iran. I'd like to share it with you.

Economic sanctions helped to end apartheid in South Africa. They also helped change Libya’s nuclear policy. Now they can be used to end the nuclear crisis in Iran.

The Iranian nuclear program must be halted to protect everyone. Only economic sanctions can peacefully require Iran to stop pursuing nuclear weapons.

That’s why the international community must take urgent action now to peacefully stop the threat of a nuclear Iran. Here are nine ways to curb the threat and avoid war.

• Until Iran halts its nuclear program, the international community should stop doing business with companies that supply refined petroleum to Iran. Due to a lack of oil refinery facilities in Iran, it must import 40% of its refined fuel. Halting such imports into Iran will help encourage it to stop its nuclear program and support of terrorism.

• Governments that care about security and peace must ban banks from providing credit, insurance or loan repayment guarantees to foreign oil companies that supply fuel to Iran or help expand the country’s domestic refining capacity.

• The international community should prohibit insurance companies from insuring
tankers going to Iran. The majority of tankers carrying gasoline to Iran are insured by Lloyds of London, a company that should be forbidden from helping the world’s largest state sponsor of terror.

• Freeze more Iranian bank assets. In 2007, Bank Melli, Iran’s largest state-owned bank, cashed in its dollar assets for Euros. The Iranian banking strategy depends on the Euro. In June 2008, all of the EU’s 27 member-states agreed to freeze any assets held by Bank Melli in their jurisdictions. Those EU measures, taken in 2008, signaled growing impatience with Iranian foot-dragging in negotiations over halting uranium enrichment. Now that more time has passed with no changes to the Iranian enrichment program more must be done. The French and German governments must divest their large holdings in Bank Melli Iran.

• Issue travel bans. All Iranian government employees and their families should have their foreign assets frozen. They should also be subject to travel bans until Iran is verified to have stopped its nuclear program and support of terrorism.

• Ban arms sales to Iran. In 2006, the United States called on all countries to stop arms exports to Iran but much more must be done to verify that it has occurred.

• Increase targeted broadcasting into Iran through various communications channels including Radio Free Europe, Voice of America, the BBC and especially private broadcasting entities. Support the democracy activists by broadcasting events inside of Iran so that the activists can more easily learn what is occurring in the various cities and towns in Iran.

• Ban Iranian commercial airlines from entering European Union countries for failure to meet international safety standards.

•Work quickly and effectively with the international community to ensure that Iran does not get nuclear weapons.

The Israel Project's Geneva Press Kit very helpfully provides a list of
'Expert Sources on Iran'

And guess who's on the list? Dr. Michael Ledeen, Freedom Scholar, Foundation for Defense of Democracies;
Tel: 202-207-0190, Tel: 301-370-1443 (cell); E-mail: mledeen@defenddemocracy.org

Ledeen is a notorious neo-con propagandist, a fanatical supporter of the illegal invasion of Iraq.
John Laughland has the low-down on Ledeen here.

No further comment is necessary.

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Half close one's eyes and we could have been back in Bush-time, amid the ripest hours of the propaganda barrage for the US-led onslaught on Iraq. The familiar backdrop: the UN General Assembly, in this instance migrating to the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh. The theme: disclosure of fresh, chilling evidence of the duplicity of a pariah nation and of the threat it poses to the civilised world.
Then it was GW Bush's Secretary of State, Colin Powell, enthusiastically relaying a string of lies and blatant forgeries. Last week it was President Barack Obama, flanked by his Euro-puppets, dispensing an equally mendacious press release that was swallowed without a hiccup by the Western press.

writes Sasha Cockburn in his brilliant First Post piece about the Iranian nuclear 'bombshell' that wasn't.

I don’t know about you, but what Obama, Brown and Sarkozy reminded me of last week when they made their ludicrous statements about Iran was the 1940s comedy trio The Three Stooges.

Three supposedly grown-up men, trying to convince us that Iran’s non-existent nuclear weapons programme poses a threat to the peace and security of the world. It would be quite hilarious- if the repercussions of their actions- the imposition of even more draconian sanctions on the Islamic Republic which will adversely affect the lives of millions of ordinary Iranians- were not so serious.

Make no mistake, the Iranian nuclear ‘crisis’ is as contrived as the Kosovo ‘crisis’ of 1999 and the Iraq WMD ‘crisis‘.

As I wrote in 2006:
'Leaders meet to discuss Iran crisis." It all sounds rather familiar. In 1999,"leaders" met to discuss the Kosovo "crisis"; we now know there was no genocide in Kosovo. In 2003, "leaders" met to discuss Iraq's weapons of mass destruction crisis; we now know there were no WMD in Iraq. Now it's Iran nuclear ambitions that represent the "crisis". If past form is anything to go by, we can be fairly sure that once again this is a crisis of the Western powers' making.

UPDATE: Mehdi Hasan has an excellent post on media propaganda on Iran.

As commenter ‘Just Observer’ says:

I can't believe this is turning into a repeat of what happened in Iraq and the world is again accepting it blindly. Why?.

FURTHER UPDATE: If, like me, you are opposed to both sanctions and military intervention against Iran, then please consider lending this excellent campaign your support.

FURTHER UPDATE:
From today's Guardian:

The UN's chief weapons inspector, Mohamed ElBaradei, said today he had seen "no credible evidence" that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, rejecting British intelligence allegations that a weapons programme has been going on for at least four years.

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This article of mine appears in the First Post.

No Western leaders have yet congratulated President Ahmadinejad on his controversial election victory in Iran. But among the list of leaders who have done so is a name that many will find surprising: President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan.

Karzai telephoned Ahmadinejad to congratulate him on his victory, saying that relations between Afghanistan and its Western neighbour had "expanded" during Ahmadinejad's time in office and that he hoped ties would continue to strengthen.

You won't read too much about it in the mainstream Western media, but the truth is that in a battle which the US President and British Prime Minister repeatedly tell us is fundamental to our own security - Iran is on 'our' side.

Shia Iran's opposition to the Sunni fundamentalists of the Taliban is longstanding - in fact, over the past 20 years or so, it's fair to say that Iran has been more consistently and firmly opposed to the Taliban than the United States.

After the Taliban took power in 1996, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, denounced the group as an affront to Islam, and the killing of 11 Iranian diplomats and truck drivers in 1998 almost led to an Iranian invasion of Afghanistan, which was averted by the intervention of the US and UN.

After 9/11, Iran played a key role in the toppling of the Taliban and participated with the US and other Western countries on post-war planning for Afghanistan. Iran's contribution to the anti-Taliban struggle was acknowledged by US officials: James Dobbins, who worked with diplomats from Iran and other neigbours of Afghanistan to create the first post-Taliban government, said that the Iranians were the "most active" of the foreign backers of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, while Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that two days before the fall of Kabul, there were places in Afghanistan "where there are some Iranian liaison people, as well as some American liaison people" working with the same Afghan forces.

But in May 2003, under pressure from the neocons, President Bush cancelled co-operation with Iran.

Since then, US officials have claimed that Iran is actually working against Western interests in Afghanistan and has been aiding the Taliban. But hard evidence to support these claims has proved as elusive as Iraqi WMD. The allegations of US officials have been refuted by those closest to the action - like General Dan McNeill, the former top US commander in Afghanistan, who said there was "no information to support" the assertion that Iran had provided weapons to the Taliban.

In fact, Iran's line on the Taliban remains as uncompromising as ever. Only last October, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki warned the West not to hold talks with the Taliban: "We advise them to think about the consequences of the talks... which are taking place in the region and in Europe and avoid being bitten in the same spot twice."

So why if Iran is on 'our side' in the war against the Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan, does the West remain so hostile to Tehran? The answer, of course, is the enduring influence of the neocons, who see the world through a pro-Israeli prism.

Iran is opposed to the Taliban and it is certainly no friend of al-Qaeda. But because of its sponsorship of Hamas and Hezbollah, it is deemed by the 'Israel-firstists' to be public enemy number one. The neocons have successfully managed to conflate Israel's perceived enemies with those of the West: Iran is seen as a threat to Israeli hegemony in the Middle East, therefore it's a threat to the US and Britain. They've also managed to spin the myth of a coherent and unified Islamic network of terror, which includes Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria, the Taliban and al-Qaeda - and before 2003, Saddam Hussein's Iraq, too. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claims: "These terrorist states and terror organisations together form a terror network, whose constituent parts support each other operationally as well as politically."

Bowing to neocon and Zionist pressure to isolate Iran is undoubtedly hampering Western efforts in Afghanistan. Enlisting the Islamic Republic's support in the battle against the Taliban is no guarantee of success - but it would certainly increase the chances.

Last weekend, we heard that Iran was preparing a new package of "political, security and international" issues to put to the West. It's highly likely that Afghanistan will be among the issues covered in that package and that there will an offer of Iranian co-operation in return for concessions on the country's nuclear energy programme.

The pro-Israeli lobby will do all it can to get the proposals rejected; but if, as Obama, Brown et al state, it is really true that the war against the Taliban is fundamental to our national security, and that it is a conflict that must be won, then Western leaders would be wise to give them the most serious consideration.

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Anti-War.Com reports:

New International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Yukiya Amano may have been the candidate of choice for Western nations, and in particular Israel, but he sought to assure the world today that he would remain independent and would seek to de-politicize the office.

In particular, Amano noted that going through the IAEA’s documents he didn’t see any evidence that Iran was trying to develop nuclear weapons. The IAEA had repeatedly certified that Iran was not diverting any of its civilian program’s enriched uranium to any other purpose, but outgoing chief Mohamed ElBaradei claimed to have a “gut feeling” that Iran secretly wanted the technology.

Amano seems less inclined, at least so far, to rely on his gut and is looking for hard evidence to back up the allegations by Western nations in general and Israel in particular, that the Iranians have a covert program.

More on this story here. But don't expect to read about it on any neocon websites.

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For too many years now, the Western media have looked at Iran through the narrow prism of Iran's liberal middle class — an intelligentsia that is addicted to the Internet and American music and is more ready to talk to the Western press, including people with money to buy tickets to Paris or Los Angeles. Reading Lolita in Tehran is a terrific book, but does it represent the real Iran?

Most of the demonstrations and rioting I've seen in the news are taking place in north Tehran, around Tehran University and in public places like Azadi Square. These are, for the most part, areas where the educated and well-off live — Iran's liberal middle class. These are also the same neighborhoods that little doubt voted for Mir-Hossein Mousavi, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's rival, who now claims that the election was stolen. But I have yet to see any pictures from south Tehran, where the poor live. Or from other Iranian slums

Before we settle on the narrative that there has been a hard-line takeover in Iran, an illegitimate coup d'état, we need to seriously consider the possibility that there has been a popular hard-line takeover, an electoral mandate for Ahmadinejad and his policies. One of the only reliable, Western polls conducted in the run-up to the vote gave the election to Ahmadinejad — by higher percentages than the 63% he actually received. The poll even predicted that Mousavi would lose in his hometown of Tabriz, a result that many skeptics have viewed as clear evidence of fraud. The poll was taken all across Iran, not just the well-heeled parts of Tehran.

You can read the whole of Robert Baer's brilliant article on the Iranian elections, and their aftermath, here.

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Oh dear. How very embarrassing. For the last few days we have heard ad nauseum from western reporters and foreign policy ‘experts’ telling us that the Iranian elections were ‘too close to call’ and that there was a real chance of the man the west wanted to win -Mousavi- triumphing.

And what was the result of the election that was ‘too close to call’?

A landslide victory for President Ahmadinejad.

How did the western reporters get it so wrong? Well, wishful thinking undoubtedly played a part.

But I think the main reason is that they spent too much time chatting to English-speaking well-heeled middle-class types in the posh suburbs of Tehran and not enough time to ordinary working-class Iranians for whom Ahmadinejad is a hero.

The coverage of the Iranian election reminded me of the way the western media portrayed the Presidential election in Belarus in 2006. The reporting made it seem as if there were huge sections of the population in favour of the-‘pro western’ candidate, who was going to privatise the economy, line up obediently to join NATO and the EU and embark on the economic ‘reforms’ so beloved by western capital.

The result of the election: a landslide victory for President Lukashenko.

The western media had neglected the opinions of old age pensioners, peasants, factory workers and the working-class in general. In other words they'd forgotten about the majority of the population- the people who have benefited most from Lukashenko's rule. And of course when the result was announced, there were the inevitable cries of 'How can it be so!', and 'It's a fix!', as there have been after the Iranian poll.

Let’s hope that after getting the Iranian election so embarrassingly wrong, the western media learns its lesson. As Abbas Barzegar writes in this excellent piece:

In the future, observers would do us a favour by taking a deeper look into Iranian society, giving us a more accurate picture of the very organic religious structures of the country, and dispensing with the narrative of liberal inevitability. It is the religious aspects of enigmatic Persia that helped put an 80-year-old exiled ascetic at the head of state 30 years ago, then the charismatic cleric Khatami in office 12 years ago, the honest son of a blacksmith – Ahmedinejad –four years ago, and the same yesterday.

A final point regarding the western coverage of the Iranian elections. It seemed compulsory for western commentators to use the adjective ‘hardline’ whenever they mentioned the Iranian President.

And to use the word ‘reformer’ when mentioning his main challenger.

Here's what those terms actually mean in this context.

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Well, that was my reaction on hearing Gordon Brown's speech to The Knesset this afternoon. Brown talked not of Iran's nuclear energy programme, but its 'nuclear weapons' programme, even though there is no evidence whatsoever that such a programme exists.

Back in 2003, in the lead-up to the illegal invasion of Iraq, the propagandists for war talked of Saddam's WMD as a matter of fact- even though, once again, there was no evidence of their existence. The 'Iranian nuclear threat' is simply Iraqi WMDs Mark 2. It beggars belief that those who used bogus claims to take us into a disastrous war five years ago are now trying to do exactly the same thing again.

UPDATE: There's a good piece from Jonathan Steele on Brown's 'nuclear weapons' claim on Comment is Free.

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When Iran carried out missile tests last week, they were widely condemned as being 'provocative', by the usual suspects. Defence commentator Robert Fox claimed that Iran was playing a 'dangerous' game. In fact, by making it clear that Iran had no intentions to attack anyone, but that if it was attacked, it would retaliate in no uncertain fashion, Tehran was playing a very sensible game, as I argued here.

And what do we get a few days after the tests? A major shift in US policy towards Iran. The US is to attend talks with Iran, and it seems is set to station diplomatsin Tehran for the first time since the Islamic Revolution of 1979.

Anyone out there who still thinks Iran was playing a 'dangerous game'?

UPDATE: I've been trawling around some of the leading neocon blogs and websites in the US and UK (clothes peg on nose of course) and guess what they've had to say about this major policy shift. Yup, you've guessed it, nothing. A big fat nulla.
What a surprise! I wouldn't like to be a cat, or a dog, in a neocon household tonight.

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