Middle East: Atomic agitation
Financial Times
08-Jan-2010 (one comment)

Just over a month ago, a group of veteran US and Israeli diplomats met at Harvard to play out scenarios for one of the most momentous issues facing the world this year – Iran’s nuclear programme.

In the simulation, as in real life, the stakes were high. If Iran comes within reach of a nuclear weapon – as Washington and its allies fear – the power map of the Middle East will alter, the rules that have held back atomic proliferation for decades may be damaged beyond repair and the US and Israel will see a bitter foe empowered as never before. Not least, US President Barack Obama will also have failed on a key foreign policy objective.

The result of the Harvard simulation was not promising for the White House. Tehran emerged the victor, ending 2010 closer to the bomb, with a western push for sanctions backfiring, and Russia and China talking to Iran behind their partners’ backs.

As Robert Gates, US defence secretary, caustically remarked recently: “There are no good options” on Iran.

For all that, the moment of decision long dreaded by Washington has finally arrived. Mr Obama campaigned for the presidency on the idea of “engagement” with Tehran, and took office emphasising his willingness to negotiate without conditions over the nuclear programme and other issues. But he also said he would judge the effectiveness of his policy by the end of 2009. That time is now past: today the president is left contemplating the failure of his ... >>>

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Abarmard

The Western style propaganda to shape public openion

by Abarmard on

And this was done in Harvard?

I believe that American institutions (in political studies) are dropping in ranks and sadly becoming followers of political systems rather than free thinking. You can't tell me that this political "experiment" was realistic and considered all alternatives, and not the Israeli point of view alone!

Here is how propaganda works, it first gives you "facts" but not in the full context, then it provides you with "peaceful approaches that ultimately "failed"" (this will ensure that the audience is fully aware of the PEACEFUL nature of the source country) to create scare and make you listen, then bombards you with fictions without providing any sources or proof. This approach, a new model based on democratic countries of "free press" has been extremely successful to shape the population's public opinions.

In reality, many countries that had strive to reach their own democracy but were attacked by these kinds of media propaganda. In most developing countries where democracy is extremely fragile, it takes a few small lies to destroy the home grown democratic basis or free press all together. It works very interesting in a way that the "dictatorial" countries begin to create censorship in order to protect themselves against these kinds of lies, and it works against them. So it's a win win situation for the soft attacker.

This is another example of such method. In this case, if the Iranian regime answers to these baseless accusations, they have admitted that there might be some truth to it. If they ignore it, their lack of response would allow many readers to take this writing for a fact. If they allow the paper to be published in Iran, people would believe that free world would not lie to them and if they censor this the public would criticize the system for not allowing the free flow of information. See the problem?

This can get really long, so I'll stop here.