The London Blasts: Media Review

DAY 91: 6 October 2005

Contents

Terror And Realism - Putin And Blair / Realism From Mark Curtis

Blaming Iran - Today's Big Lie

TERROR AND REALISM

TERROR - PUTIN AND BLAIR

Little attention is paid in today's papers to yesterday's love-fest between Tony Blair and Vladimir Putin. Guardian diarist Giles Foden noticed:

'President Putin attended a meeting of Cobra, the cabinet security committee, at Downing Street yesterday. It's almost certainly the first time in history someone so influential in Russian politics has attended such a secret meeting in Britain - unless one were to count Harold Wilson, whom spooks of the time thought too friendly with the Soviets.'

Why this extraordinary meeting place? Bronwen Maddox, Foreign Editor at The Times, had some perceptive comments (page 40):

'Putin made clear that he intends to use Russia’s wealth in oil and gas to drive a hard bargain with Europe...'

'For Blair’s part, he indulged Putin with a gesture of pure theatricality: holding the talks in the “Cobra” meeting rooms, the underground, high-security command centre used by the Prime Minister to coordinate emergency response.'

'Putin, a former Russian intelligence agent, is the first foreign leader to be given this backstage tour; he would perhaps appreciate it more than most, although he would also be the last to show it. The stunt added colour to the theme both leaders had decided would dominate the day: the fight against terrorism and fundamentalism.'

'“Russia and the Russian people, like Britain and the British people, know the threat which global terrorism poses,” Blair said after the meeting. But this is a phoney claim to agreement. Each leader says he is fighting Islamic fundamentalism. Yet wherever Britain might ask for Russian co-operation, in practice it will run into a point of sharp difference...'

'Britain has chosen not to bring its many-sided rows with Russia to a head — not over Iran, or Central Asia, or Chechnya. There is a case that it should — and that it should work more energetically to glue together the EU position, in the face of impressive Russian efforts to splinter it.'

'But sending Putin home with snapshots of Cobra rooms and some platitudes about terrorism is a way of keeping the lid on the row, for now.'

Putin's war grinds on, and spreads. Human rights continue to violated on a breath-taking scale, on Putin's orders. The Chechen leader who called for a ceasefire and talks in February, Aslan Maskhadov, was ignored and then killed, on Putin's orders.

So of course Mr Blair should mark the sixth anniversary of Putin's invasion of Chechnya (29 September) by inviting him into the Cabinet Security Committee, and standing shoulder to shoulder with the butcher of Grozny, in a united front against 'terrorism and fundamentalism'. Both men have made enormous contributions to the growth of terrorism and fundamentalism, and both men benefit enormously - in political terms - from the growth of terrorism and fundamentalism.

Both men are world-class terrorists.

REALISM - MARK CURTIS

Mark Curtis, Britain's pre-eminent radical historian, has a very useful article in today's Guardian - 'Covert support of violence will return to haunt us' - reminding us of British crimes of commission and omission in relation to Vietnam and Indonesia 40 years ago, and in Iraq today.

He remarks:

'In Iraq and Indonesia, these policies have rebounded on us, in the form of anti-western terrorism. Until secretive and unaccountable policy-making is democratised, disastrous foreign policies will continue to be conducted in our name, and our leaders will continue to get away with murder.'

'As bloodshed mounts each day in Iraq, what prospect is there that British ministers will be held accountable for the illegal invasion and occupation that triggered this carnage? If past precedents are anything to go by, not much. But the likelihood is that, as in London earlier this summer, it will be we who pay the price for that failure to hold our leaders to account.'

BLAMING IRAN

IRAN - UK STARTS TO BEND TO US POLICY

Here's a classic example of the need to read sceptically and with Chomsky's 'intellectual self-defence' mindset.

The front page story in most papers is that Britain blames Iran for the growing lethality of the insurgency in Iraq. But, read carefully, there is enough material in the papers today to totally destroy the official line. Add in a little expert opinion from outside today's papers, and the whole thing is exposed as an absurdity.

But the media swallows it.

This story is important not only in the Iraqi context, in terms of demonizing the insurgency and the Shia community, but also in terms of the US drive to confrontation with Iran, and Britain's position within this process.

JNV has pointed out in the past that even as the Prime Minister built the case for war against Iraq, he laid down a marker for the future, indicating his resistance to war with Iran. When Mr Blair presented the famous '45 minute' weapons dossier to Parliament on 24 September 2002, he said:

'People say, "But why Saddam?" I do not in the least dispute that there are other causes of concern on weapons of mass destruction. I said as much in this House on 14 September last year. However, two things about Saddam stand out. He has used these weapons in Iraq itself—thousands dying in those chemical weapons attacks—and in the Iran-Iraq war, started by him, in which 1 million people died; and his is a regime with no moderate elements to appeal to.'

This was a clear reference to Iran, which is probably the most democratic state in the Middle East apart from Israel, and which certainly has elements which Western Governments regard as 'moderate' (in other words, willing to bend to Western priorities).

But now Mr Blair is willing to turn the heat up on Iran - because Iran has failed to submit to EU blandishments, and has refused to accept that its entirely lawful activities are deserving of extra-special procedures not applied to other potential proliferator states.

MEDIA ANALYSIS

Let's start obediently:

Relations between Britain and Iran are deteriorating, because of the breakdown in talks over Iran's nuclear programmes, and the election of President Mahmoud Amadinejad, according to Ewen MacAskill, Simon Tisdall and Richard Norton-Taylor in the Guardian.

One British official claimed that Iran had now started military support for the insurgency. :

'Britain and Iran clashed openly last night after a senior British official directly accused Tehran of supplying Iraqi insurgents with sophisticated roadside bombs that have killed eight British soldiers and two security guards since May.'

'The bombs, triggered when an infra-red beam is touched, have created havoc among British forces in southern Iraq. They release a projectile capable of penetrating armoured vehicles, against which the British army has virtually no defence.'

'The British official said the bombs were designed and manufactured by the Tehran-backed guerrilla group Hizbullah, based in Lebanon, and were channelled to Iraq via Iran. "Iran's motives certainly don't seem that benign. If Iran wants to tie down the coalition in Iraq, then that is consistent with supplying insurgent groups." '

'He said Iran was providing help not only to their co-religionist Shia insurgents but to Sunni insurgents too. "There is some evidence that Iranians are in contact with Sunni groups." '

'He specifically blamed the smuggling of the bombs to Iraq on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, a military organisation which has traditionally directed Iran's links with insurgent groups in the Arab world and which is answerable to Iran's highest executive body, the national security council. It is chaired by Mr Ahmadinejad, a former commander of the IRGC who replaced the moderate, pro-western former president, Mohammad Khatami.' (Guardian, pages 1-2)

'The British official refused to be drawn on whether the Iranian Revolutionary Guard had been acting on the orders of the Tehran Government or operating independently.' (Times, page 2)

Okay, now let's start questioning the official version.

SADR?

Firstly, there's something odd in the identification of the perpetrators. Michael Evans says in The Times (page 2):

'The attacks are believed to be the work of a breakaway section of the followers of Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shia cleric, as well as Sunni insurgents.'

This is reported elsewhere as well, as the view of the 'official' breaking this story.

We were under the impression that al-Sadr was noted for his lack of support in Iran. Iraq expert Juan Cole wrote in the Washington Post in August 2004:

'Sadr complains about Iranian dominance of Iraqi Shiism, [but] the religious leadership has long been multinational, and few doubt Sistani - who was born in Iran but has lived in Najaf since 1952 - has Iraq's best interests at heart. The hard-line clerics in Iran generally support Sistani, whom they see as one of their own and whose vision of an Iraq ruled by a Shiite-dominated parliament is acceptable to them. Sistani is also a favorite with many of Iran's reformers, but he has asked Iran to keep out of Iraqi domestic affairs.'

That was a year ago. Today, Juan Cole says:

'Personally, I think that if Iran were going to give any Iraqi group weapons, it would be the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. The Iranians distrust the Sadr Movement, which is Iraqi nativist and often anti-Iranian, and would distrust a splinter group from it all the more.'

Doesn't add up.

SUNNIS?

While it is entirely plausible that there are connections between elements of the al-Sadr movement and Sunni insurgents (al-Sadr has made a real effort to build connections across the sectarian divide), does it really make sense for the Iranian Government to be assisting Sunni insurgents, as alleged?

Christopher Adams and Roula Khalaf report in the FT:

'The British official said there was evidence of contacts between Iran and Sunni extremist groups, such as Ansar al-Islam, which operated in northern Iraq before the 2003 invasion and was known to have ties with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.'

'Sunni groups, however, are fighting against the interests of Iran's Shia allies, and trying to undermine a government that Tehran backs.'

More computational problems.

POLICY?

Even if the new devices come over the Iranian border, is the Iranian Government to blame? Kim Sengupta reports in the Independent (page 8):

'[O]bservers warned against jumping to the conclusion that this was deliberate Iranian government policy. They pointed out that the long and porous border between Iran and Iraq made policing extremely difficult.'

THE DEVASTATING DOUBTS

Let's go back to where we started, with the Guardian front page article (which runs over to page 2). In the third-to-last paragraph (is there a word 'ante-penultimate'?) on page 2 we get to the real meat of the story:

'There are differing views within the British intelligence community as to the level of Tehran's involvement. British military sources insisted last night there was no hard evidence that the explosives technology came from Iran. Defence sources suggested that blaming the IRGC for supplying the explosives technology was going too far. Other military officials said there was "so much expertise in Iraq" the bombs could have been made by former members of Saddam Hussein's security forces.'

Firstly: 'no hard evidence that the explosives technology came from Iran'. That's clear from the whole way the official's remarks are phrased, but no one is leading with 'British accusations against Tehran - no evidence produced'.

Secondly: 'Defence sources suggested that blaming the IRGC for supplying the explosives technology was going too far'. This is people in the MOD, saying that it is not possible to identify the part of the Iranian Government that might be involved.

Thirdly: 'military officials said there was "so much expertise in Iraq" the bombs could have been made by former members of Saddam Hussein's security forces.' So the claim that these bombs had to come from Hezbollah, and therefore had to be transmitted via Iran, falls down at the first hurdle, according to British military officials who are in a position to judge these matters.

CENSORING THE STORY

All of this is devastating for the official story. It may well have been gathered together by Richard Norton-Taylor, the intelligence correspondent. What may have happened next is that Ewen MacAskill and Simon Tisdall went back to their source with these bombshells, and got palmed off with some extraordinary cynicism:

'The difference in opinion may reflect concern on the part of the military that a sharpening confrontation with Iran could increase the chances of further attacks on British troops.'

So these expert assessments from within 'the British intelligence community' are not the honest opinion of the military sources involved, but an attempt by military intelligence to calm down the diplomatic temperature.

While the unsupported and unbelievable concoctions of an unnamed 'senior diplomat' (so described in the Telegraph) are merely honest comment unconnected to US attempts to heat up the diplomatic temperature.

Whatever the rationale for the doubts expressed by British military intelligence - and there is no reason to doubt that they are merely assessing the situation as they see it - the fact is that these doubts exist, and any newspaper worth its salt would have uncovered them in five minutes as it attempted to assess these headline-grabbing claims.

The Guardian deserves credit for seeking them and printing them, but the revelation is buried at the end of the article, immediately countered by a kill-paragraph, and not picked up anywhere else in the paper. Tone, placement and frequency of repetition, all used to effectively censor the story that was completely (self-) censored by all the other newspapers.

JNV welcomes feedback.