Gareth Porter

What Did Bush Know on Iran, and When Did He Know It?

Gareth Porter — 2007-12-05T23:30:00Z

President Bush continues to insist Iran threatens the United States despite the new National Intelligence Estimate refuting most of his key claims. This week's consensus report from all sixteen U.S. intelligence agencies concludes Iran shut down its nuclear weapons program more than four years ago. News reports say the White House was briefed on the new intelligence assessment as early as July, but Bush says he didn't find out the specifics until last week. We speak with investigative journalist Gareth Porter.

Commander's Veto Sank Threatening Gulf Buildup

Gareth Porter — 2007-05-15T09:29:00Z

"A source who met privately with Fallon around the time of his confirmation hearing and who insists on anonymity quoted Fallon as saying that an attack on Iran "will not happen on my watch". Asked how he could be sure, the source says, Fallon replied, "You know what choices I have. I'm a professional." Fallon said that he was not alone, according to the source, adding, "There are several of us trying to put the crazies back in the box." [...] Despite Vice President Dick Cheney's invocation of the military option from the deck of the USS John C. Stennis in the Persian Gulf last week, the strategy of escalating a threat of war to influence Iran has been put on the shelf, at least for now."

- / Inter Press Service

Dems' Me-Too Iran Talk

Gareth Porter — 2007-02-27T07:12:00Z

As the Bush administration ratchets up its military threat to Iran, the leadership of the Democratic party is providing a free pass to continue on that potentially disastrous course. Congressional leaders have tacitly or explicitly accepted the necessity of keeping the “military option”—meaning a massive, unprovoked air attack on Iran—“on the table,” as have all three of the leading candidates for the party's presidential nomination.

The Democratic leadership in Congress has defined the Iran issue only in terms of c ongressional prerogatives to declare war; none have seen fit to say that threatening Iran with an unprovoked attack is an unacceptable option.

Leading Democrats refuse to reject the option of aggressive war against Iran because they have bought into one of the central myths of the U.S. national security elite: that the U.S. must use its unchallenged military dominance to coerce Iran on uranium enrichment. (...)

- / TomPaine.com

Rove Said to Have Received 2003 Iranian Proposal

Gareth Porter — 2007-02-27T06:10:00Z

WASHINGTON, Feb 16 (IPS) - Karl Rove, then White House senior political advisor for President George W. Bush, received a copy of the secret Iranian proposal for negotiations with the United States from former Republican Congressman Bob Ney in early May 2003, according to an Iranian-American scholar who was then on his Congressional staff.

Ney, who pleaded guilty last year and was sentenced to prison in January for his role in the Jack Abramov lobbying scandal, was named by former aide Trita Parsi as an intermediary who took a copy of the Iranian proposal to the White House.

Parsi is now a specialist on Iranian national security policy and president of the National Iranian-American Council (NIAC), a non-partisan organisation that supports a negotiated settlement of the conflict between Iran and the United States. (...)

- / TomPaine.com

U.S. Briefing on Iran Discredits the Official Line

Gareth Porter — 2007-02-14T11:35:00Z

WASHINGTON, Feb 13 (IPS) - The first major effort by the George W. Bush administration to substantiate its case that the Iranian government has been providing weapons to Iraqi Shiites who oppose the occupation undermines the administration's political line by showing that it has been unable to find any real evidence of an Iranian government role.

Contradicting recent claims by both Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defence Robert Gates that U.S. intelligence had proof of Iranian government responsibility for the supply of such weapons, the unnamed officials who briefed the media Sunday admitted that the claim is merely "an inference" rather than based on a trail of evidence. (...)

- / Inter Press Service

Shi'ite power a law unto itself

Gareth Porter — 2007-02-07T22:46:00Z

WASHINGTON, Feb 6 (IPS) - The supreme irony of President George W. Bush's campaign to blame Iran for the sectarian civil war in Iraq, as well as attacks on U.S. forces, is that the Shiite militias who started to drive the Sunnis out of the Baghdad area in 2004 and thus precipitated the present sectarian crisis did so with the support of both Iran and the neoconservative U.S. war planners.

The U.S. policy decisions that led to the sectarian war can be traced back to the conviction of a group of right-wing zealots with close ties to Israel's Likud Party that overthrowing the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq would not destabilise the region, because Iraqi Shiites would be allies of the United States and Israel against Iran. (...)

- / Inter Press Service

Iran Proposal to U.S. Offered Peace with Israel

Gareth Porter — 2006-05-25T01:15:00Z

WASHINGTON, May 24 (IPS) - Iran offered in 2003 to accept peace with Israel and cut off material assistance to Palestinian armed groups and to pressure them to halt terrorist attacks within Israel's 1967 borders, according to the secret Iranian proposal to the United States.

The two-page proposal for a broad Iran-U.S. agreement covering all the issues separating the two countries, a copy of which was obtained by IPS, was conveyed to the United States in late April or early May 2003. Trita Parsi, a specialist on Iranian foreign policy at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies who provided the document to IPS, says he got it from an Iranian official earlier this year but is not at liberty to reveal the source. (...)

- / Inter Press Service

Is U.S. Planning More Attacks on Shiite Militias?

Gareth Porter — 2006-04-04T00:47:00Z

WASHINGTON, Apr 3 (IPS) - Last week's attack by U.S.-led Iraqi paramilitary forces on a building that Shiite leaders claim was a mosque may have marked the beginning of a new stage of U.S. policy in which Iraqi forces are used to carry out military operations against Shiite militia forces — especially those loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr.

However, such a strategy risks uniting the Shiites against the U.S. military occupation and leading to a showdown that makes that presence politically untenable.

Just before the operation against the mosque complex, which the U.S. military referred to as a "terrorist base", U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad hinted broadly that the United States would soon target the Shiite militias for the brunt of its operations. (...)

- / Inter Press Service

Victory Is...Negotiable

Gareth Porter — 2005-12-17T05:29:00Z

While U.S. President George W. Bush continued to claim a strategy for ”victory” in Iraq in recent speeches, his administration has quietly renounced the goal of defeating the non-Al Qaeda Sunni armed organizations there.

The administration is evidently preparing for serious negotiations with the Sunni insurgents, whom it has started referring to as ”nationalists,” emphasizing their opposition to Al Qaeda's objectives.

The new policy has thus far gone unnoticed in the media, partly because it has only been articulated by U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and the spokesman for the U.S. command in Baghdad. (...)

- / TomPaine.com

Sunnis Opt for Voting — and Armed Resistance

Gareth Porter — 2005-12-13T03:20:00Z

WASHINGTON, Dec 12 (IPS) - Leading Sunni clerics and insurgent organisations are unofficially encouraging voting by Sunnis in Thursday's parliamentary elections for a slate of candidates who are calling for a timetable for U.S. troop withdrawal.

The decision to support participation in the election is the latest step in an evolving Sunni strategy that now combines armed struggle, participation in electoral politics and negotiations for a peace settlement — all aimed at ending the occupation and gaining bargaining leverage for Sunnis in post-Saddam Hussein politics.

The policy in favour of Sunni participation in the election has been facilitated by an agreement worked out between armed militants and the slate of Sunni candidates running under the banner of the "Iraqi Accord Coalition". Those candidates are pledging to call for a timetable for foreign troop withdrawal and to oppose the "federal" provisions of the constitution once they are elected to parliament. (...)

- / Inter Press Service

Bush Policy Rules Out a Deal on Zarqawi

Gareth Porter — 2005-12-06T05:05:33Z

WASHINGTON, Dec 5 (IPS) - U.S. President George W. Bush's adamant rejection of a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq effectively slams the door on a recent reported offer from Sunni resistance groups to eliminate the al Qaeda terrorist haven in Iraq as part of a negotiated peace agreement.

At the recent Iraqi reconciliation meeting in Cairo, leaders of three Sunni armed organisations — the Islamic Army, the Bloc of Holy Warriors and the Revolution of 1920 Brigades — told U.S. and Arab officials they were willing to track down terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and turn him over to Iraqi authorities as part of a negotiated settlement with the United States, according to the highly respected London-based Arabic-language Al-Hayat newspaper.

Other press reports have confirmed the presence of Sunni resistance leaders on the fringes of the conference, and Al Hayat reporters were on the scene covering the conference.

Bush has effectively ruled out such an agreement with the insurgent groups by rejecting any negotiation on a withdrawal timetable. He again attacked the idea of "setting an artificial deadline" for withdrawal in his speech to Naval cadets on Nov. 29. (...)

- / Inter Press Service

Did the Media Get It Right in the Iraq Election?

Gareth Porter — 2005-10-21T03:10:00Z

The early vote totals from Nineveh province, which suggested an overwhelming majority in favour of Iraq's draft constitution that assured its passage by national referendum, now appear to have been highly misleading.

The final official figures for the province, obtained by IPS from a U.S. official in Mosul, actually have the constitution being rejected by a fairly wide margin, but less than the two-thirds majority required to defeat it outright.

Both the initial figures and the new vote totals raise serious questions about the credibility of the reported results in Nineveh. A leading Sunni political figure has already charged that the Nineveh vote totals have been altered. (...)

- / MediaChannel.org

Finding the Way Forward-A Negotiated Settlement in Iraq

Gareth Porter — 2005-03-12T02:03:00Z

It is now time for the United States to pursue the one policy option that has been missing from the national discussion of Iraq: the negotiation of a peace settlement with the insurgents that would involve the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops in return for the surrender of the insurgents and the reintegration of the Sunni region into the post-Saddam political system. (...)

- / Foreign Policy In Focus

The Real Story of the Iraqi Elections

Gareth Porter — 2005-02-09T05:16:00Z

The U.S. government and most pundits have painted Iraq's recent elections as a great victory over the Iraqi insurgents, who opposed them, and as a vindication of the Bush administration's policy of bringing democracy to the Middle East. Amid the orgy of self-congratulation over the bravery of Iraqi voters, officials and commentators have ignored the most important story of the election results: a Sunni electoral boycott that demonstrates a level of support for the insurgency in the Sunni triangle that is far greater than what the administration has admitted.

The image of millions of Iraqis dodging bombs and bullets to vote is highly misleading. In fact, given the geographic concentration of the insurgency in Sunni areas, there was never any possibility that the insurgents could prevent Shiites and Kurds from turning out in great numbers. There were 5,000 polling places in the country, but only 109-2% of the total-came under attack. (...)

- / Foreign Policy In Focus

Not even a shadow of Iraqi counterinsurgency

Gareth Porter — 2005-01-28T04:51:00Z

Even as the Bush administration tries to assure Americans that the war in Iraq can still be won, a question hovers in the air like a ghost, even if it is not being explicitly debated: Is Iraq another Vietnam — a war the U.S. is doomed to lose?

The occupation's defenders reject the parallel between Iraq and Vietnam. But as a historian of the Vietnam War, I find the comparison of the two occupations very revealing. Comparing the two situations leads me to the sobering conclusion that the chances of a foreign occupation succeeding in Iraq are much less than they were in South Vietnam. (...)

- / Institute for Policy Studies