The decades-long conflict between the United States and Iran seems to be headed toward escalation. The American announcement[1] that aircraft carriers and B-52 bombers have been deployed, along with reports of plans to post 120,000 troops to the Middle East, has put the region on high alert. Iranian president Hassan Rouhani’s statement[2] that Iran will no longer abide by all of the terms of the 2015 nuclear agreement (JPOAC) that it signed with the United States and five other world powers signals that the crippling sanctions have forced the Iranians’ hand. Indeed, Iran has issued an ultimatum that without economic progress in 60 days, it will cease adhering to the limits of enrichment. This move would arguably bring Iran closer to nuclear capability. Iran’s message, however, should not come as a surprise. The strict limits of the nuclear agreement were only agreed to in exchange for economic relief, which came to a halt through the United States’ imposition of various new punitive sanctions on Iran. Additionally, the special purpose entity Instex (Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges), set up by France, Germany, and the United Kingdom to assist Iran in legally bypassing U.S. trade sanctions, has not yet had the desired impact. Despite the willingness of European nations to facilitate non-dollar trade with Iran, the U.S. sanctions have succeeded in choking off the Iranian economy.[3] This effective assault on the Iranian economy has taken away the clearest incentive for Iran to continue to fully comply with the nuclear agreement and has increased the chances of military confrontation.
Given the precariousness of the current situation and its potential for escalation, it is vital to separate writing that intends to inform from biased writing intended to evoke fear. Among the many voices calling for further diplomacy and peaceful solutions, there are some who hope to profit from fabricating a crisis on the presumption of an existing Iranian nuclear threat—even in the absence of convincing evidence.
The mainstream U.S. media is slow to demand verification of alleged Iranian threats.[4] Even the Economist called American warnings of an imminent Iranian attack on American forces or its allies “suspiciously unspecific.”[5] Given the plethora of information available about the U.S.–Iran conflict, keeping track of what is fact and what is not has become a daunting task. It has become difficult for the public to distinguish between actual and perceived threats—a difficulty that poses a real danger in this highly volatile situation. The Trump administration has a strained relationship with truth (fake news), and the danger that prejudiced information may concretize itself as fact (to justify an attack on Iran or even a war) is not insignificant.
As an example of a media piece that presents only specifics to create a false sense of reality, consider last Friday’s TelosScope article by the German author Matthias Küntzel, a frequent commentator on Iran. His writings, whose inflammatory tendencies are well-documented, aim to demonize Iran’s every action in an attempt to portray the country as a threat to world peace. Küntzel cherry-picks information to persuade his readers that Iran is dishonest in its actions, thereby posing an imminent threat to global security. In his latest piece, he argues that President Rouhani’s May 8, 2019, announcement to limit Iran’s compliance with the nuclear treaty demonstrates an intent to develop nuclear weapons—hence violating international law. But his argument is based on his own presumption that Iran is not in compliance with the nuclear treaty and poses an immediate danger.
To show that Iran is not to be trusted, Küntzel maintains that Iran has already been breaching the terms of the nuclear agreement. As proof, he provides two pieces of “evidence” while omitting information that would provide a fuller picture. First, he announces the discovery of plans and studies on the construction and testing of nuclear bombs in Tehran. No source for this claim is given, but it likely relies on reports from last year that Iranian nuclear documents were stolen from a warehouse in Tehran in a secret raid by Israeli intelligence.[6] However, the archival documents that were found predate the nuclear agreement of 2015, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was already aware that an Iranian military nuclear program existed. According to the IAEA director general Yukiya Amano, the stolen documents did not contain any evidence that Iran had violated the nuclear agreement.[7] Second, to underline the obviousness of Iranian subterfuge, Küntzel inaccurately quotes the senior adviser to the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Ali Akbar Velayati. He claims that the demand of the IAEA to enter military facilities in case of doubt was dismissed by Velayati, who reportedly said it was “just a dream . . . and will never happen.” Küntzel fails to mention the fact that this comment was made in reference to the U.S. demands (Nikki Haley, August 2017) that the IAEA inspect Iranian military sites. He also omits the detail that, under the nuclear agreement, there must be grounds or evidence for a violation by Iran before access to military sites must be granted to the IAEA. In fact, no proof was ever offered to justify an inspection of Iranian military sites. Moreover, the actual statement by Velayati to reporters about the U.S. request to inspect Iranian military sites was: “The Americans will take their dream of visiting our military and sensitive sites to their graves.”[8]
Furthermore, Küntzel leaves out the verifiable fact that according to the most recent IAEA report[9] (February 22, 2019), Iran has been holding up its end of the nuclear agreement. Readers are thus led to believe that Iran is indeed breaking the terms of the nuclear agreement—and will continue to do so in the future. Küntzel does not think that President Trump’s unilateral decision to withdraw from the nuclear agreement[10] and the implementation of drastic sanctions,[11] which caused widespread suffering among the Iranian population,[12] are the keys to understanding this fabricated crisis. He fails to see that the United States’ hostile actions have pushed Iran into a corner where it has no incentive to fully comply with the nuclear agreement. Despite readily available evidence[13] that contradicts Küntzel’s linear argument, he steadfastly holds on to his objective to provide selective information about the Iranian alteration of the agreement to direct readers into concluding that Iran is hell-bent on building a nuclear weapon. Make no mistake: the argumentation style used by Küntzel is meant to portray Iran as the indisputable wrongdoer and is ultimately meant to justify an attack on Iran—whether in the form of harder-hitting sanctions or of military strikes. The deceptive method of meshing selective facts with his own biased interpretations, while leaving out crucial information that would contextualize the issue at hand, is Küntzel’s preferred modus operandi.
This kind of alarmist writing is not new. It was also used to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq through unsubstantiated intelligence on weapons of mass destruction, which, it turned out, did not exist.[14] Just like false evidence, the absence of relevant contextual information has the potential to create a false picture of reality. Informational inaccuracies can then pave the path toward war—just as much as wrong facts can. When it comes to war, less (information) is not more. On the contrary, a lack of accurate information is precisely what allowed the Trump administration to successfully, and within a very short time, create the illusion that an unspecified imminent Iranian threat was looming. Given that the potential for miscommunication is very high and that the nuclear agreement will probably dissolve, it seems likely that tensions will escalate. Moreover, President Trump’s tweet from May 19, 2019, that “if Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran,” has not eased the tensions. Instead, it sets the stage for yet another catastrophic war in the Middle East that the United States could be hoodwinked into joining—under the pretense of a defensive war.
Notes
1. Edward Wong, “Citing Iranian Threat, U.S. Sends Carrier Group and Bombers to Persian Gulf,” New York Times, May 5, 2019.
2. Tamer El-Ghobashy, Michael Birnbaum, and Carol Morello, “Iran Announces It Will Stop Complying with Parts of Landmark Nuclear Deal,” Washington Post, May 8, 2019.
3. John Dizard, “Trying to Bypass Us Sanctions on Iran Is Futile,” Financial Times, April 26, 2019.
4. Ben Armbruster, “The Media’s Shameful Handling of Bolton’s Iran Threat Claims Recalls the Run-Up to the Iraq War,” Lobe Log, May 11, 2019.
5. “America and Iran Are on a Collision Course,” Economist, May 11, 2019.
6. Joby Warrick, “Papers Stolen in a Daring Israeli Raid on Tehran Archive Reveal the Extent of Iran’s past Weapons Research,” Washington Post, July 15, 2018.
7. Chaim Levinson, “Netanyahu’s Reveal of Iranian Nuclear Archive Damaged Israel, Senior Intelligence Officials Say,” Haaretz, April 8, 2019.
8. Parisa Hafezi, “Iran Rejects U.S. Demand for U.N. Visit to Military Sites,” Reuters, August 29, 2017.
9. Board of Governors Document GOV/2019/10, “Verification and Monitoring in the Islamic Republic of Iran in Light of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2231 (2015),” IAEA, February 22, 2019.
10. Michael C. Bender, Michael R. Gordon, and Rebecca Ballhaus, “Trump Withdraws U.S. From Iran Accord,” Wall Street Journal, May 8, 2018.
11. “Statement from the President on the Reimposition of United States Sanctions with Respect to Iran,” White House statement, August 6, 2018.
12. Erin Cunningham, “Fresh Sanctions on Iran Are Already Choking off Medicine Imports, Economists Say,” Washington Post, November 17, 2018.
13. “Verification and Monitoring in Iran,” IAEA website.
14. Julian Borger, “There Were No Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq,” Guardian, October 7, 2004.
