(The CAMERA Op-Ed below was posted on The Hill newspaper’s Congress Blog on Aug. 27, 2015 in response to an omission-laden commentary by Arab-American Institute head James Zogby. Zogby alleged a pattern of discrimination by Israeli immigration authorities against Arab Americans. The Hill serves members of Congress, staff, policy analysts, lobbyists and others.)

James Zobgy’s recent commentary “US passports scoffed at by Israel; US stands by” (Aug. 24) misleads readers through omissions. Zogby, the founder and President of the Arab-American Institute, falsely asserts that “in the past year Israel has continued…their practice of discriminating against persons of Arab descent” and cites the stories of what he implies to be two disinterested parties to advance this allegation.

The author cites two specific individuals who he claims were detained, interrogated and denied entry into Israel at Ben Gurion International airport—and relies exclusively on their accounts to allege mistreatment. Zogby identifies the two men, George Khoury and Habib Joudeh as simply “American citizens of Palestinian descent.”

Yet, Joudeh, identified only as a “pharmacist” by Zogyby, has been the vice president of the Arab American Association of New York since 1994. The director of that association, Linda Sarsour, has falsely accused Israel of ethnic cleansing and has dismissed reports of attacks by terror group al-Qaeda as conspiracy theories.

George Khoury—identified only as a “professor” and “deacon at his church”—is an anti-Israel activist who has previously alleged that as a nation, the Jewish state commits crimes “daily.” By failing to disclose the background, biases and associations of the two men, but uncritically recounting their unsubstantiated allegations, the author misleads readers.

Zogby also claims that “because both men were of Palestinian descent, Israel would not honor their U.S. passports or recognize the men as American citizens. Both were told they had to acquire Palestinian IDs and then, as Palestinians enter the West Bank.” However, for identifying the men as Palestinian Arabs and not as American citizens, it’s not Israel that Zogby should be faulting. It’s the Palestinian Authority.

According to Article 5 of the Palestinian National Charter those who were born in what is today land governed by the Palestinian Authority—as both Joudeh and Khoury were—are Palestinian. Apparently Israeli officials were following a definition made by the Palestinian National Charter. Unless Zogby is advocating that American officials should nullify Palestinian laws, rules for entry for those defined as Palestinian are well-known and publicly available.

Israel—similar to most other countries—has laws and procedures that stipulate points of entry. Unless individuals are approved in advance and special permission granted, entry to Israel for those classified as Palestinian Arabs is through the Allenby Bridge border crossing.

That two men with unmentioned histories of anti-Israel advocacy attempted to subvert long-standing, well-publicized procedures and cross into Israel illegally instead of by the Allenby Bridge crossing—as thousands of others have done—seems to indicate a purposeful attempt to create an anti-Israel narrative.

As for Zogby’s claim that Israel discriminates against “persons of Arab descent” in general, it overlooks that the last national elections in Israel were overseen by an Israeli Arab and that Arab citizens in Israel have increased their representation in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset. Israeli Arabs have sat on Israel’s Supreme Court and been appointed to cabinet-level positions. Arab citizens in Israel, a minority, have vastly greater social, economic and political rights than in most Arab countries, rights equal to those of the Jewish majority. By way of contrast, the small populations of Jews remaining in Arab countries have no such comparable rights, often in law, always in practice.

The numerous omissions in the author’s commentary indicate an agenda that, without essential context, leaves readers ill-informed.

Durns is Media Assistant for the Washington D.C. office of CAMERA—the 65,000 member Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America

—Sean Durns

Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas questioned the Holocaust while nevertheless comparing Israelis to the Nazi regime that murdered millions of Jews in an Aug. 23, 2015 speech.

In remarks broadcast on official PA television, Abbas told a group of Polish journalists visiting Ramallah: “They [Jews] say they made sacrifices in World War II—we respect what they say.” As Palestinian Media Watch notes in their report on the Fatah leader’s comments, Abbas with that wording presents the Holocaust as “something Jews say” happened.

The PA president and Fatah movement head then proceeded to compare the world’s sole Jewish state—reestablished in the wake of the Holocaust and that has provided refuge to millions of Jews who faced antisemitism in other lands—to Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime:

“They [Israel] should not treat us the way they were treated [by the Nazis]. We must not be a victim of the victim. I did not do anything bad to him.”

Abbas was born in 1935 in British Mandatory Palestine. The genocide of European Jewry took place between 1939 and 1945. However, Abbas has sanctioned terrorist attacks against Israelis and helped finance the 1972 Munich Olympic Games massacre that killed 11 Israeli athletes, one of whom was also an American citizen. As Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat’s right-hand man for decades, Abbas was complicit in PLO terrorism generally.

Often described by U.S. and some Israeli officials as a peace partner, Abbas in his comments also ignored the role that Palestinian Arab leadership played during World War II. Before Arafat, the most notable representative of Palestinian Arab nationalism was Haj Amin al-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem.

During World War II, al-Husseini was forced by the Allies to flee to Berlin for having supported Hitler and the Axis powers. The mufti personally met with Hitler in November, 1941 and thanked the Nazi leader, stating: “The Arabs were Germany’s natural friends because they had the same enemies as had Germany, namely…the Jews.”

“The objectives of my fight are clear,” the Mufti wrote in his diary after the meeting. “Primarily, I am fighting the Jews without respite, and this fight includes the fight against the Jewish National Home in Palestine” (The Siege: The Saga of Israel and Zionism, Conor O’Brien, 1986).

Yugoslavia later sought to indict al-Husseini as a war criminal for his role in recruiting Muslim volunteers into the ranks of Hitler’s SS, who went on to murder Jews in Croatia and Hungary.

The next generation of Palestinian leaders, led by Arafat, would transition from working with Hitler to being clients of the Soviet Union and its communist-bloc satellites. It was under Soviet sponsorship that Abbas, then a mid-ranking PLO emissary, completed his Ph.D. from the Oriental College in Moscow.

Abbas appears to be rehashing allegations from his Soviet-era dissertation charging Zionist collaboration in Nazi persecution of European Jews and revisionist denigration as to the scope of the Holocaust.

That work, later published as a book, was entitled “The Other Side: the Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism,” as CAMERA has previously documented (“Where’s the Coverage? Abbas is No Angel,” May 20, 2015). In it, Abbas claimed the figure of six million murdered Jews in the Holocaust to be a “fantastic lie” and a “myth”—statements he would try to distance himself from after being elected PA head.

Characterizing anti-Zionist, rejectionist Palestinian Arab leadership in the 1930’s and 40’s, the usually sympathetic head of the Arab Legion, British General Sir John Glubb, once remarked, “Like the Bourbons, [they] have learnt and forgotten nothing in the past 10 years” (The Road to Jerusalem: Glubb Pasha, Palestine and the Jews, Benny Morris, 2003).

It seems little has changed.

The Palestinian Media Watch report on Abbas’ remarks can be found here.—Sean Durns

U.S. tax-payer funded Radio Free Europe (RFE) recently echoed Iranian propaganda meant to show the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds (Jerusalem) Force, Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, in a favorable light. Soleimani has led Quds Force—designated a terrorist entity by the U.S. government—subversion and aggression in Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon.

Entitled “Wanted for Terrorism, Commander of Iran’s Quds Force is Actually Kind and Emotional, Brother Says” (Aug. 25, 2015), an article on RFE’s website appears as part of the Persian Letters blog. The blog describes itself as offering “a window into Iranian politics and society…bringing under-reported stories, insights, and analysis, as well as guest Iranian bloggers” including “clerics, anarchists, feminists, Basij members, to bus drivers.”

RFE was created by the U.S. government to help win the Cold War by countering Soviet propaganda. That it would pass off accounts from members of a paramilitary organization, the Basij, controlled by the mullahs and used to suppress regime critics is disturbing. That it fails to challenge a work of hagiography originally presented as fact by an Iranian state-run outlet, Fars News, about Soleimani, a U.S.-listed terrorist and murderer of U.S. service personnel and non-combatants defies description.

RFE acknowledges that Soleimani is a “wanted man” who has been “linked to support for terrorism,” and was sanctioned in 2012 for his “alleged role in an assassination plot against the Saudi ambassador in Washington.” After calling Fars News Agency a “Persian-language news outlets affiliated with the powerful IRGC,” the U.S. broadcasting agency proceeds to uncritically repeat its Soleimani puff piece.

RFE briefly mentions that “the Fars interview appeared to be part of Iran’s efforts to boost the IRGC commander’s profile and portray him as a selfless national hero who plays an instrumental role in the volatile Middle East.” Writing in The Weekly Standard, Lee Smith, a senior fellow at the D.C.-based Hudson Institute, observed that Tehran’s efforts to give the Quds Force leader publicity are meant to impress upon the “Obama White House” that if they “want anything done in the Middle East, you’ll have to go through Iran and you’ll have to deal with Qassem Suleimani.” (“The Iranian Regime’s Mr. Fix It,” June 30, 2014)

The U.S.-broadcasting organization, while including its qualifications, nevertheless provides free media for a terrorist once called by retired U.S. General and former CIA Director David Petraeus a “truly evil figure.” Petraeus’ description stems in part from the Quds Force’s role in setting up Iranian factories to manufacture deadly roadside bombs called EFPs (explosively formed projectiles). These are estimated to have caused the deaths of up to 1,000 U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Soleimani’s deeds and Petraeus’ categorization contrast sharply with the article posted by RFE. It repeats family member descriptions of the terrorist as “a serious person, but very kind and emotional.”

Soleimani’s brother, Sohrab Soleimani, mentions “Qassem has a [belt] in karate, he used to work as a fitness coach in a bodybuilding club.” In addition to recounting the murderer’s fitness regimen, his brother explains that the Quds force commander “loves the children of the martyrs [Iranians and IRGC members killed] so much that sometimes his own children become jealous.”

Sohrab notes that the Quds Force leader’s globe-trotting terrorist activities often keep him from his family, leaving him “little time to devote to his own life, yet his attention for his [family and friends] has not diminished.” In RFE’s words: “[Sohrab] Soleimani also said that his older brother has always made sure that his close relatives did not take the wrong path in life.”

RFE failed to portray Soleimani accurately—as a ruthless terrorist leader responsible for countless combatant and non-combatant deaths as part of Iran’s drive for regional dominance and international influence. It did not challenge the propaganda of a theocratic, totalitarian government but rather disseminated it. It thereby failed to fulfill its mandate of providing news, information, and analysis to countries “where the free flow of information is either banned by government authorities or not fully developed.” And it did so at American taxpayer expense and oppressed Iranians’ need for truth, not propaganda, about their rulers.—Sean Durns

Now that negotiations between the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia, China, and Germany with Iran over its presumed nuclear weapons program have been completed, some commentators and politicians have anticipated renewed U.S. involvement in Palestinian-Israel diplomacy. But a position paper submitted by head Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat to Palestinian Authority leaders on June 18, 2015 suggests a retreat from previous commitments to end terrorism and support a two-state solution.

According to a July 1 analysis of Erekat’s paper by Lt. Col. Jonathan D. Halevi (Israel Defense Forces, Ret.), now with the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, the main points include:

1. Annulling Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO’s) recognition of Israel;

2. Insisting on the “right to return” of Palestinian “refugees” along with their descendants to Israel;

3. Strategic cooperation with Hamas and Islamic Jihad by integrating them into the PLO’s institutions;

4. Waging an all-out “peaceful and popular struggle” against Israel (defined by Palestinian leadership as local terror attacks), coupled with a legal battle against Israel in the international arena aimed at constraining Israel’s ability to defend itself against Palestinian terror; and

5. A diplomatic campaign to recruit international support to coerce an Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 armistice lines.

CAMERA has pointed out both Western news media’s reliance on Erekat as a source and the Palestinian negotiator’s tenuous acquaintance with facts. See, for example “Saeb Erekat—Highly Visible, Highly Unreliable,” March 3, 2015

Halevi’s analysis, “The Palestinian Leadership’s Regression in the Peace Process” based on what Erekat proposed to his peers, not statements to Western reporters, offers an important perspective on relations between Israel and the Palestinian leaders. Halevi’s interpretation is informed and provocative. It should have been the subject of significant reporting. It was not. Where was the coverage? —Rosie Lenoff, Research Intern

Commentary presented as fact in The Washington Post by Professors Todd Gitlin and Steven M. Cohen misleads readers through omissions, distortions, and a lack of context (“The Jewish leaders who don’t speak for American Jews,” Aug. 16, 2015). The authors use a dated poll from The Los Angeles Jewish Journal to claim that a majority of American Jews support the Iran nuclear deal reached July 14 between the United States, Russia, France, China, United Kingdom, Germany and the Islamic Republic over the latter’s purported nuclear program.

A closer examination reveals significant problems with their presentation.

Gitlin and Cohen assert that a majority of American Jews support the Iran nuclear deal in its current form. They make this assertion based on a July 16-20 Jewish Journal survey, conducted mere days after the agreement was reached, purporting to show 63 percent of American Jews favoring the deal. However, other more recent polls indicate that as the particulars of the agreement have become more well-known, American Jews increasingly oppose it. This is similar to the rest of the American public.

A week after The Jewish Journal poll, The Israel Project—referred to only briefly by the professors—conducted a poll showing 51 percent of respondents opposed the deal. Further indication of this trend can be seen in a July 30-August 4 Quinnipiac University opinion survey showing 53 percent of New York Jewish voters opposed the deal.

Dismissing or ignoring more recent polls while citing as proof of Jewish majority support a poll conducted in the first week after the deal was announced—before controversial details were more widely reported—is misleading at best and disingenuous at worst.

The authors correctly noted that most major Jewish organizations oppose the deal. They explain away this contradiction to their claim of majority backing within the Jewish community by making the unsubstantiated claim that these organizations are not truly representative of American Jews. They point to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations denial of membership to J Street. But J Street seems to be the sole Jewish organization, self-described as pro-Israel but whose lobbying has been mostly pro-Palestinian, supporting the deal in its current form.

Yet, Gitlin and Cohen fail to mention that the reason for J Street’s exclusion may be the not-so thinly veiled anti-Israel character of some of the group’s alliances and backers. The latter includes a member of J Street’s board who has argued that Israel should not exist, the former partnership with the National Iranian American Council, an anti-Iran sanctions outfit whose researcher, Beheshteh Farsheshani, has falsely asserted “Israel spends our money on terrorism, war, fear, racism.”

The professors also omit that affiliated members of Jewish organizations—akin to “likely voter” categories in other politically oriented polls versus the general public—tend to be more involved and better informed regarding subjects of concern to the organized Jewish community, such as the Iran nuclear deal, than those with no affiliation or, in the specific case of the Jewish Journal poll, do not identify as religiously Jewish. Instead, they assert that differences in support can be explained by affluence of those affluent contributors polled. This overlooks that pro-deal organizations like J Street have received much of their funding from affluent contributors. Billionaire anti-Israel investor George Soros was a primary source of funding for J Street, a fact founder Jeremy Ben Ami initially denied.

By flogging a poll already overtaken by events—and explaining away its inconsistencies through omissions and canards, Gitlin and Cohen mislead Post readers both on the opinions of American Jews more likely to be informed and active on the Iran nuclear deal and on the representative nature of major Jewish organizations.

Are most black Americans members of the NAACP or the Urban League? No. Does The Post consider those organizations representative of African-Americans? Yes. Please drop the double standard when it comes to American Jews.—Sean Durns

USA Today correspondent Shira Rubin falsely equated anti-Israeli violence with anti-Palestinian violence in her article “Israel cracks down on Jewish extremists in West Bank.” (Aug. 6, 2015). Immediately, on Aug. 6 CAMERA requested a correction that would more accurately reflect the disparity in the amount of attacks by Palestinians in the West Bank and those of Israeli settlers. The unpublished letter to the editor listed below was sent following the newspaper’s refusal to issue a correction.

“Dear Editor:

Shira Rubin’s article ‘Israel cracks down on Jewish extremists in West Bank’ (Aug. 6) claims that ‘Jewish settlers and Palestinians have long engaged in tit-for-tat violence [emphasis added].’ However, suggesting that violence between the two groups is comparable is not borne out by figures from the pro-Palestinian advocacy group B’Tselem showing that from 2000-2011, Israeli civilians were murdered by Palestinians nine times more than the other way around. Twenty-three Palestinian Arabs were killed by Jewish settlers in circumstances that were not independently confirmed whereas in that same period 215 Jewish civilians were murdered by Arabs in the West Bank. If violent but not fatal attacks by Palestinian Arabs against Israeli Jews and planned or attempted strikes against Jews aborted by Israeli security forces were also included, the fallacy of the ‘tit-for-tat’ comparison would be even clearer.

Sean Durns
Media Assistant, Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America
Washington D.C.”
—Sean Durns

USA Today featured reporting by Peabody award-winning reporter and GlobalPost special correspondent Reese Erlich (“Iran’s Jewish community gets behind nuclear deal with U.S.,” August 7, 2015) that omitted key details on the treatment of Jews in the Islamic Republic of Iran. By uncritically relaying comments of a people under surveillance and failing to fully note the threats they face, the article misleads readers.

Interviewing Jews in Tehran, Erlich asserts that “most Iranian Jews strongly disagree with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu” over his objections to the agreement between the United States, Germany, Russia, France, China, the United Kingdom and Iran over the latter’s purported nuclear program. The reporter bases his claims on responses from individuals in the “city’s small Jewish community” he interviewed.

But, why is Iran’s Jewish community now so “small”?

Erlich briefly mentions that “over 100,000 Jews lived in Iran prior to the 1979 revolution, but many left right afterward”—leaving a population of only 12,000 to 30,000. Not only does he fail to account for the discrepant estimates of the current Jewish population, he fails to elaborate why so many Jews fled—in some instances perilously over mountains and desert—and why those who remain might be reluctant to publicly identify themselves as “Zionists.”

After taking power in 1979 and ushering in the Islamic Revolution, some wealthy Iranian-Jews found themselves put on show trials. The first private citizen to be executed by tribunal was Habib Elghanian, an Iranian Jew who stood accused of “economic imperialism” and contacts “with Israel and Zionism.” As Moment Magazine noted, “his real crime was that he had failed to follow established custom for Jews and maintain a low profile.” (“How Jew-Friendly Persia Became Anti-Semetic Iran,” Nov. 2006)

This relevant background may have something to do with why Iranian Jews stressed to Erlich that they “consider themselves Jews but not Zionists.” Not only does Erlich fail to provide context, he also uncritically notes the comments of an Iranian Jew who tells him, “There (is) no need for guards in front of our synagogues.” This omits that one possible reason is the iron fist of the regime, which suppresses all sectors of society and uses controlled violence for its own ends. The brutal suppression of peaceful protests in 2009 over the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is perhaps the most conspicuous example of Iran’s enforced police state conformity.

In other words, a reporter was granted access to the dwindling members of a Jewish community suppressed since the 1979 Islamic Revolution that brought the mullahs to power and—not surprisingly—they stated publically that they support the nuclear deal and that conditions in their community are just fine. One can imagine—in a country that persecuted other minorities, the baha’i’s for example—what would have happened to Jews quoted by Global Post/USA Today if they expressed anything but support for the theocratic government.

The annals of journalism record other instances of reporters failing to appreciate the nature of the leaders and regimes they covered. Dispatches from The Nation journalist Lincoln Steffens in 1919 infamously lauded the “imagination” of dictator Vladimir Lenin and were filled with testimonies from people throughout Russia supporting the newly-created Soviet Union and what was a rapidly decreasing crime rate —while failing to note the brutal means used to stabilize and support the regime

Outlet—i.e. Kansas City Star journalist Edgar Snow—whose exclusive access during China’s civil war in the 1930’s to Chinese Communists and their leader Mao Zedong, but not the opposing Chinese Nationalists whom he privately disdained—led the reporter to look past despotic tendencies already in evidence. Instead he wrote approvingly of future mass murderer Mao and his Communists as “agrarian reformers” who sought peace.

Similarly, New York Times reporter Herbert Matthews—labeled by biographer Anthony DePalma as “the man who invented Fidel”—was granted access to rebel and future Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. Matthews claimed in 1959 that the future Communist leader was “not only not a Communist, he is decidedly anti-Communist.”

Perhaps most infamously, exclusive access to another of the twentieth centuries largest mass murderers—Soviet dictator Josef Stalin—led to New York Times reporter Walter Duranty becoming an apologist both for Stalin’s show trials against regime opponents and his forced starvation of Ukrainian peasants.

Erlich—who previously wrote an article with actor and counterculture iconoclast Peter Coyote referring to the terrorist-supporting regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad as a possible “ally”—would have better served Global Post and USA Today readers by disclosing in greater detail the history of Iranian Jews under the mullahs. Had he provided more context—instead of transcribing statements uncritically—readers would have been much better informed.—Sean Durns

Author Kai Bird’s review in The Washington Post of former National Public Radio (NPR) correspondent Sandy Tolan’s book The Lemon Tree (“The Middle East: A Land of Two Peoples,” June 25, 2006) failed to note the false Israeli-Palestinian equivalence that drove the narrative of Tolan’s book. In a July 9, 2006 letter published by The Post, CAMERA observed:

“Kai Bird’s review of Sandy Tolan’s The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East (Book World, June 25), refers to two people. One is a Palestinian who ‘cannot relinquish U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194’, which resolves that ‘the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live in peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so.’ The other is an Israeli who ‘cannot accept that measure, which she believes means bartering with the Jewish character of the Israeli state.’

Resolution 194 (adopted in 1948) recommended ‘at the earliest practicable date’ the return of refugees who intended to live in peace with their neighbors in what became Israel in 1948, or their resettlement in Arab countries and compensation for damages or loss of property. The Palestine Conciliation Commission was instructed ‘to facilitate the repatriation, resettlement and economic and social rehabilitation of the refugees.’ But the ‘earliest practicable date’ never arrived. The Arab states, expecting to win the war they had begun by violating U.N. General Assembly Resolution 181 (which called in 1947 for the partition of British-ruled Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab one), voted against Resolution 194. The refugees and their hosts rejected resettlement and compensation. Later, having lost, the Arabs began claiming that Resolution 194 had established a ‘right of return’ to homes inside Israel proper. The central figures in Tolan’s book remain symbolic, but in fact the Palestinian holds nothing to ‘relinquish’ and the Israeli is not obligated to ‘accept’ or ‘barter.’

ERIC ROZENMAN
Washington Director, Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America
Washington, D.C.”

CAMERA has previously documented biased reporting by Tolan (“NPR Bias Triggers New CAMERA Action,” Sep. 1998). The former correspondent, now an Associate Professor at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, seems to have continued to take the Palestinian narrative. His most recent book, Children of the Stone, focuses on Palestinian participants in the First Intifada who became musicians.

An April 28, 2015 talk by Tolan at Zaytuna College in Berkeley, California to promote his new book was co-sponsored by supporters of the anti-Israel boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement Jewish Voice for Peace and American Muslims for Palestine (AMP). AMP was created in 2005 from the Islamic Association of Palestine—a propaganda arm of United States listed terror group Hamas. The Anti-Defamation League has noted AMP “seeks to delegitimize and demonize the Jewish state.”—Eric Rozenman

David Albright is both founder and president of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS). Albright first came to the public’s attention as a nuclear expert who questioned whether Iraq had an active nuclear weapons program prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 and for his work in identifying attempts to build nuclear weapons by the al-Qaeda terror group. In a Washington Post commentary (“What Iran’s hostile reaction to the Parchin issue means for the nuclear deal,” Aug. 11 2015), the scientist and former weapons inspector called attention to satellite imagery suggesting that Iranian officials are attempting to erase evidence of nuclear activity at Parchin.

Albright notes that Parchin is a “site…linked by Western intelligence and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to past work on nuclear weapons.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif responded to the publication by the institute of evidence that “Iran could be again sanitizing the site to thwart environmental sampling that could reveal past nuclear weapons activities there.” Zarif called the images lies.

The nuclear expert observes that “instead of acknowledging the concern, the Iranians chose to deny the visible evidence in commercial satellite imagery.” Albright said that his organization has taken a neutral position on implementation of the deal negotiated by the United States and five other countries with Iran. He added that information about renewed Iranian activity at Parchin doesn’t come from opponents of the July 14 agreement reached between America, Germany, France, Russia, China, the United Kingdom and Iran over the latter’s purported nuclear program—but rather a neutral observer.

“Iran’s reaction,” Albright notes, “shows that it may be drawing a line at Parchin.” This development troubles the veteran weapons inspector who notes “concern” about the site have “become more urgent now that there is a debate raging over whether the IAEA will have adequate access to this site under the terms of its deal with Iran….concern is further heightened because Iran demanded to do sampling itself instead of letting the IAEA do it.”

The nuclear expert called that Iranian proposal “risky and unprecedented.” He noted that in previous instances of nuclear detection at the Iranian Kalaye site and the North Korean plutonium separation plant at Yongbyon, “the success of sampling that showed undeclared activities depended on samples being taken at non-obvious locations identified during previous IAEA visits.” Yet, if the Iranian’s demands are met and possible evidence of previous military-related nuclear activity is destroyed it will be “doubtful” that inspectors can convincingly verify that Iranian nuclear weapons work has ceased.

Albright calls on the Obama administration and Congress to not lift sanctions unless Iran addresses IAEA concerns about past military dimensions of Tehran’s purported program. “To do otherwise,” he states, “is to make a mockery of the nuclear deal.”

David Albright’s article in The Washington Post can be found here. —Sean Durns

News media often report that U.S.-led negotiations with the Islamic Republic of Iran over its purported nuclear program were initiated by Tehran following increased international economic sanctions. Both journalists and President Obama himself—who announced on July 14, 2015 that talks concluded “after two years of negotiations”—have asserted or implied that negotiations began in 2013 after the election of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Rouhani is a regime-insider often misleadingly labeled a “moderate” despite his supervisory role in terrorist attacks in Argentina and political assassinations in Europe, as CAMERA has previously noted (“Iran Becoming Responsible Player,” July 8, 2015).

Yet, several high-level Iranian officials made assertions that—if true—would indicate that the often cited chronology of nuclear talks with Iran is mistaken. They claim the Obama administration secretly initiated contacts in 2011 through the government of Oman, following a letter from then-U.S. Senator John Kerry (D-Ma.) recognizing Iran’s “right” to enrich uranium. This would mean that talks began not with Rouhani’s administration but with the government of Holocaust denier and anti-Western extremist, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

According to a recent report from the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, delivered a June 23, 2015 speech proclaiming:

“This issue of negotiating with the Americans is related to the term of the previous [Ahmadinejad] government, and to the dispatching of a mediator to Tehran to request talks. At the time, a respected regional figure came to me as a mediator [referring to Omani Sultan Qaboos] and explicitly said that the U.S. President [Obama] had asked him to come to Tehran and present an American request for negotiations. The Americans told this mediator: ‘We want to solve that nuclear issue and lift sanctions within six months, while recognizing Iran as a nuclear power.’”

Hossein Sheikh Al-Islam, an advisor to Majils [the Iranian Parliament] Speaker Ali Larijani echoed the ayatollah’s version.

Larijani told Tasnim news agency on July 7 that Kerry had given a letter to Iran recognizing its right to enrich uranium. “We came to the [secret] negotiations [with the United States] after Kerry wrote a letter and sent it to us via Oman, stating that America officially recognizes Iran’s rights regarding the [nuclear fuel] enrichment cycle.”

“Sultan Qaboos was dispatched by Obama to Khamenei with Kerry’s letter…..On this basis the negotiations began, and not on the basis of sanctions, as they [the Americans] claim in their propaganda.”

More recently Iranian Vice President and head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization Ali Akbar Salehi, who served as foreign minister from 2010-2013, agreed with these accounts. Salehi stated that after entreaties through Omani officials, he put forward the precondition that the United States must recognize the right of Iran to enrich uranium—a demand which “received a positive response.” The former foreign minister claimed that Kerry “had already been appointed by Obama to handle the nuclear dossier [vis-à-vis Iran]” when he was acting as “head of the Senate Foreign Relations committee.”

MEMRI also notes that the ‘Nuclear Iran’ web site, affiliated with Iran’s former nuclear negotiation team, reported on Apr. 20, 2014: “Before the 2013 presidential elections, three rounds of talks took place in Oman, and at these talks the Americans officially recognized Iran’s [right] to enrich [uranium].” MEMRI reported that a relative of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Ahmad Khorshidi, told the website Entekhab in 2014 that three rounds of talks took place prior to President Rouhani taking office.

The full report by MEMRI on Iranian officials contradicting U.S. media and public officials can be found here.—Sean Durns