A Moderate and Peace-Seeking Iran? The New York Times Willfully Deludes the Public

1) "Progress Lags in a Meeting Between Leaders in Israel," A11, by Isabel Kershner
2) "Our Friend in Tehran," A27 (Op-ed), by Ali Reza Eshragi
3) "What Iran's Jews Say," A27 (Op-ed), by Roger Cohen

Today's coverage is notable for it's two terribly unsatisfactory op-eds on Iran.

News
1) Progress Lags in a Meeting Between Leaders in Israel

Isabel Kershner's news article fairly discusses continuing discussions between Benjamin Netanyahu (leader of Likud) and Tzipi Livni (leader of Kadima) over the formation of a coalition government. She responsibly notes that despite receiving parliamentary support "from the religious parties and those on the far right," Netayahu has urged the formation of a "national unity [government], saying that the formidable challenges that Israel faces require everyone to 'join hands.'"

In her reportage, however, Kershner makes one noticeable misstep in this sentence: "Ms. Livni has already said she would rather go into the opposition than serve as a fig leaf for a right-wing government." This phrasing and terminology ("fig leaf") is derived from an earlier quote from Livni: "Politics are not only numbers, but a path. I will continue not only believing in our way, but also leading it, and I don't intend to become a fig-leaf for diplomatic paralysis." By failing to quote the phrase (and even take it out of its original context), Kershner makes it appear that Ms. Livin's opinion is actually fact. An unprofessional, and perhaps even irresponsible, error.

Op-eds
2) Our Friend in Tehran
3) What Iran's Jews Say

In these two ill-conceived op-eds seem, the two authors sloppily provide selective evidence to suit their own biased conclusions. In the process, they propagate what are essentially blatant falsehoods in order to support their endgame: the United States must unconditionally negotiate with a "pragmatic" Iran - even if the truth lays waste in its achievement.

In the first op-ed ("Our Friend in Tehran"), Ali Reza Eshraghi, a former newspaper editor in Iran and now visiting scholar at the University of California Berkeley, contends that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the right person for the U.S. to negotiate with and this opportunity must be moved upon swiftly.

Not only has Ahmadinejad reached out to the United States in an unprecedented fashion, Eshragi claims, but he also "may be the most capable of standing up to Tehran’s hard-liners." Such a statement is baffling given Ahmainejad's firm grounding in the hard-liner camp.

For all of Eshragi's terrifically overstated claims of Ahmadinejad's "bold moves" of rapprochement with the United States, there are much more powerful counter-claims. Does Iran's funding, arming, and training of Shiite militias in Iran and Taliban fighters in Afghanistan that have killed American troops somehow correspond with this so-called olive-branch?

As Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick smartly notes:

Indeed, since Obama came into office waving an enormous olive branch in Teheran's direction, the regime has become more outspoken in its hostility toward the US. It has humiliated Washington by refusing visas to America's women's badminton team to play their Iranian counterparts. It has announced it will only agree to direct talks with Washington if it pulls US forces out of the Middle East, abandons Israel and does nothing to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. It has rudely blackballed US representatives who are Jewish, like House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Howard Berman, at international conclaves. And it has announced that it will refuse to deal with Obama's suggested envoy to Iran, Dennis Ross, who is also a Jew. In all of its actions, Iran has gone out of its way to embarrass Obama and humiliate America. And Obama, for his part, has continued to embrace Teheran as his most sought-after negotiating partner.

Eshragi, however, decides to willfully ignore such evidence in order to support his ultimate conclusion:

Over the next few months he [Obama] should initiate negotiations without preconditions and establish formal diplomatic ties with Iran.... Mr. Obama must seize the opportunity to shake the Iranian president’s outstretched hand.

"Outstretched hand"?! Alright Eshragi, you've said enough.

*****

Unfortunately, Roger Cohen's picturesque op-ed offers no respite and is every bit as misdirected as Eshragi's. In this piece, Cohen describes the situation of the Iranian Jews in favorable terms, citing the positive comments of a few Jews in the country.

He somehow manages to explain away the fact that three-quarters of the Jewish population have left the country since 1948, citing the far more complete exodus from Arab countries. The fact that only a few thousand Jews remain in Arab countries, does not change the fact that the environment in Iran is deeply inhospitable to Jews. According to such logic, one could say that the Arab-Muslim world has been greatly accommodating of Jews since there was no Holocaust as occurred in the lands of Christian Europe. But this logic is clearly faulty.

Continuing further, Cohen offers this shockingly pretentious statement:

Perhaps I have a bias toward facts over words, but I say the reality of Iranian civility toward Jews tells us more about Iran — its sophistication and culture — than all the inflammatory rhetoric.

Cohen clearly needs to examine the facts more closely. As Richard Chesnoff notes in Jewish World Review:

The truth was very different — as it is in Iran where the Jewish community is under constant surveillance, where teaching Hebrew is prohibited, where Jewish women are forced to follow the same modesty laws their Muslim sisters do, where Jews are barred from certain jobs and some imprisoned or hung on trumped up charges of contact with "Zionists".

It's scandalous that Cohen would ignore these facts. But as Rafael Medoff discusses in the Jerusalem Post, Cohen doesn't seem to understand that Jews living under totalitarian states are not free to offer their honest opinion. Referring to previous historical cases, Medoff details how Russian Jews would praise the Soviet regime, despite their terrible treatment. As an abused and powerless minority under state surveillance, they had little other choice.

Facts withstanding, Cohen seems to care not as long as Iranian extremism somehow can be absolved. Cohen goes as far as to rationalize Iran's genocidal rhetoric against Israel as a means to focus more attention on Israel's occupation of the West Bank :

One way to look at Iran’s scurrilous anti-Israel tirades is as a provocation to focus people on Israel’s bomb, its 41-year occupation of the West Bank, its Hamas denial, its repetitive use of overwhelming force. Iranian language can be vile, but any Middle East peace — and engagement with Tehran — will have to take account of these points.

Shockingly anti-humanitarian. Cohen cannot truly claim to be a liberal humanitarian and come to such egregiously anti-humanitarian conclusion.

In the end, Medoff provides a proper conclusion:

The situation of Iranian Jewry must not be turned into a political football. The dangers and discrimination that Iran's Jews face should not be minimized to advance a particular policy agenda. Cohen urges the West to adopt an approach of "compromise" and "engagement" with Teheran, and it is possible the Obama administration will follow his advice. But if it does, one hopes that decision will not be influenced by misleading reports which see "civility" in Iran's uncivil treatment of its Jewish citizens.

I guess Cohen's a big football fan.