Iran and the experts

Writing in Znet, Sasan Fayazmanesh, professor of Economics at Cal State Fresno, offers some perspective on the "expertise" being offered on Iran. With Dick Cheney having the Pentagon draw up contingency plans for nuking Tehran, you'd think there would be more interest in really understanding what's going on in that country, but no—all we hear from the MSM and politicians of both parties is this steady droning on about "evil mullahs" and the "rogue state" of Iran.

Maybe this is the reason:

... Almost the entire news media in the US seems to be relying on one or another “expert” from various institutions whose job it is to propagate misinformation, disinformation, and just plain lies. A day does not go by without one hearing or reading about “information” provided by an “expert” from the Hoover Institution, American Enterprise Institute, National Review, Weekly Standard, Project for the New American Century, Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, Hudson Institute, Saban Center, etc. (for an introduction to these centers of propaganda see: http://www.csmonitor.com/specials/neocon/spheresInfluence.html).

With these kinds of “experts” the chances of the US public getting anything remotely close to the truth is nil. What is worse is that these media “experts” are usually the same ones who are, in the first place, formulating the US foreign policy. Given these “experts,” is it any wonder that for more than half a century the US foreign policy towards Iran has been nothing but a series of blunders and blowbacks? Is it any wonder that the CIA coup of 1953 led by some “experts,” such as Kermit Roosevelt, ultimately resulted in the “Islamic Revolution” of 1979? Is it any wonder that the symbiotic relation, nourished by the “experts,” between the shah, the US and Israel—during which the CIA and Mossad protected the shah and trained his notorious police force, Savak, in exchange for export of Iranian oil, purchase of arms from the US and Israel, and the shah’s anti-Arab policies—resulted in the expulsion of Americans and the Israelis from Iran following the revolution? Is it any wonder that the insistence of some “experts,” such as Henry Kissinger, to allow the shah back into the US led to the takeover of the US Embassy? Is it any wonder that the green light that some “experts,” such as Zbigniew Brzezinski, gave to Saddam Hussein to invade Iran, the subsequent arming of Saddam—including giving him chemical agents—the attempt by both the US and Israel to prolong the Iran-Iraq War resulted in the death of nearly a million people and hatred for the real architects of the war? Is it any wonder that Israeli “experts,” such as Shimon Peres and his various cohorts of agents and merchants of death, led the US into a tragicomedy known as the “Iran-Contra scandal”? Is it any wonder that as a result of the policy of the “experts,” Saddam came out of the Iran-Iraq War militarily stronger than when he entered it, and then invaded Kuwait? Is it any wonder that the US’s first invasion of Iraq and the subsequent economic sanctions against Iraq, all designed by the USraeli “experts,” led to the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis and increased animosity towards the US in the Arab world? Is it any wonder that the policy of sanctioning Iran, directed by the Washington Institute-AIPAC “experts,” was a massive failure, which caused the Clinton Administration, in a last-ditch effort, to reverse course to please the angry corporate lobby? Is it any wonder that, as the result of the “expert” advice from the Machiavellian students of Leo Strauss and Irving Kristol, the US invaded Iraq, for the second time, under false pretexts? Is it any wonder that these same “experts” fooled an entire nation into believing that the war against Iraq would be a cakewalk? Is it any wonder that these “experts” have caused, so far, the death of over 1,750 US soldiers, and tens of thousands of Iraqis, in an atrocious war with no end in sight? Is it any wonder that after the Iraq war fiasco these “experts” quietly moved away, set up camp elsewhere, and focused their attention on Iran, Israel’s main target? Is it any wonder that, as a result of the “brilliant” policies of these “experts,” Iraq now has precisely the kind of Shiite dominated government that the USraelis have been trying to overthrow in Iran, Iran has a more conservative government, and the two governments of Iran and Iraq are now closer to each other than at any time in the modern history of the Middle East? With these “experts,” who needs amateurs?

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