The Times also took another mocking swipe at Brazil and Turkey, which voted against the new sanctions from their temporary seats on the Security Council.
"The day's most disturbing development was the two no votes in the Security Council from Turkey and Brazil," the Times wrote. "Both are disappointed that their efforts to broker a nuclear deal with Iran didn't go far. Like pretty much everyone else, they were played by Tehran."
Though this Times point of view fits with neocon orthodoxy that any reasonable move toward peace and away from confrontation is a sign of naivete and weakness the fact is that the Iran-Turkey-Brazil deal was torpedoed by the United States, after Obama had encouraged it. This wasn't a case of the two countries being "played by Tehran."
The Real Agenda
The Times star columnist Thomas L. Friedman has more explicitly laid out the real goal regarding Iran, not nuclear safeguards, but "regime change." In a May 26 column, Friedman wrote that the United States should do whatever it can to help Iran's internal opposition overthrow President Ahmadinejad and Iran's Islamic-directed government.
"In my view, the "Green Revolution' in Iran is the most important, self-generated, democracy movement to appear in the Middle East in decades," Friedman wrote.
"It has been suppressed, but it is not going away, and, ultimately, its success -- not any nuclear deal with the Iranian clerics -- is the only sustainable source of security and stability. We have spent far too little time and energy nurturing that democratic trend and far too much chasing a nuclear deal."
Friedman's argument again tracks with the neocon case for war with Iran as he earlier was onboard for war with Iraq claiming that "regime change" was the only acceptable outcome.
As an institution, the New York Times also played a key role in making war with Iraq inevitable, with bogus reporting about Iraq getting aluminum tubes for nuclear centrifuges. Similarly, in the case of Iran, the Times and other leading U.S. news outlets have promoted the propaganda line that Iran's presidential election last June was "fraudulent" or "rigged."
However, an analysis by the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes found that there was little evidence to support allegations of fraud or to conclude that most Iranians viewed Ahmadinejad's reelection as illegitimate.
Not a single Iranian poll analyzed by PIPA whether before or after the June 12 election, whether conducted inside or outside Iran showed Ahmadinejad with less than majority support. None showed the much-touted Green Movement's candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi ahead or even close.
"These findings do not prove that there were no irregularities in the election process," said Steven Kull, director of PIPA. "But they do not support the belief that a majority rejected Ahmadinejad." [For details, see Consortiumnews.com's "Ahmadinejad Won, Get Over It!"]
Nevertheless, President Obama has refused to contest Washington's conventional wisdom on the Iranian election or to buck the neocon-favored trend toward a heightened confrontation with Iran.
Having let his administration rebuff the Iran-Turkey-Brazil deal in favor of more UN sanctions and soon even tougher U.S. sanctions, Obama has let his foreign policy either drift or be piloted toward a worsening crisis.
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