I cancelled my subscription to the NY Times a couple of years ago after many years of being a loyal subscriber. The reason was my fatigue at reading the endless anti-Israel commentary and reporting in the vaunted paper. By the time they selected the amateurish and churlish Jody Rudoren to become their primary correspondent in Israel, I was already enjoying the Wall Street Journal. Maybe I don’t agree with some of the Journal’s views on US politics, but at least I can read reasonable analysis and news regarding Israel in this paper. I mean, give me Bret Stephens’ analysis over Tom Friedman’s any day of the week, any week of the year.

Today the NY Times came out with an editorial that truly showed how naive and foolish their editors are. In this editorial, the Times suggests that the recent failure of the Iran – P5+1 talks are a shame primarily because they open the door to “generate more hysterical opposition” to the deal. Who are the hysterical opponents? Netanyahu, Saudi Arabia and certain members of Congress.

How does the Times conclude?

The best way to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon is through a negotiated deal that limits uranium enrichment, curbs the plutonium program and allows for maximum international monitoring. Iran took a useful, if insufficient, step on Monday when it agreed to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency access to certain nuclear sites. The opponents of a deal are energized and determined. The United States and its allies have to be united and smart.

I’m not an expert here, so all I can say is that the Times’ wishful thinking might entice some to think resolution could be this simple, but in reality the Iranians and other countries (including Israel) have shown that it’s not difficult to delay or ignore UN agencies. The Iranians have been playing the IAEA like a fiddle for years now, to the point where some people wondered whether El Baradei who headed up the IAEA at one point several critical years ago, was an Iranian agent or plant. In addition, the “hysterical” Israelis seem to believe that as long as the uranium enrichment is permitted and the centrifuges aren’t removed, Iran remains a hop, skip and a jump away from a bomb. I trust the Israelis more on this subject than I trust the NY Times.

What really got to me at the end, however, was reading the NY Times sounding like, well, like Khameini’s personal assistant. I can see why someone such as Khameini might wish to play a divide and conquer strategy between Israel and the US, but why would the NY Times?

“The opponents of a deal are energized and determined. The United States and its allies have to be united and smart.”

Really? You mean that American congresspeople aren’t considered part of the United States and its allies? Israel isn’t an ally?

Dear NY Times, the enemy here is Iran, not Israel. Does the Times actually believe that the friend with whom the US should be working to outsmart allies is Iran?

This is an opportune moment to recall what the NY Times believed in 1981 when Israel destroyed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor. That’s right, the NY Times didn’t think that was a good move, though as an editorial in The Forward a couple of years ago noted, Iraq’s Scud attacks on Israel in the early 90’s proved the Israelis had been prescient.

Israel’s sneak attack on a French-built nuclear reactor near Baghdad was an act of inexcusable and short-sighted aggression.

Even assuming that Iraq was hellbent to divert enriched uranium for the manufacture of nuclear weapons, it would have been working toward a capacity that Israel itself acquired long ago. Contrary to its official assertion, therefore, Israel was not in ”mortal danger” of being outgunned. It faced a potential danger of losing its Middle East nuclear monopoly, of being deterred one day from the use of atomic weapons in war. And while that danger may now be delayed, it is also enhanced – by Iraq’s humiliation.

The NY Times: All the wrong editorials, fit to print all the time.

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themiddle

6 Comments

  • These so-called “talks” are not true negotiations, or at least not as far as Iran is concerned. It is just one more way for the Iranian regime to stall for time while they get closer and closer to a viable nuclear weapon.

    If Iran succeeds in developing its own nuclear arsenal, it will not only be the Iranian government that Israel and the rest of the world has to worry about, not by a long shot. Israel and the world will also have to worry about when (not if) the Iranian government will dole out nuclear material to the various terrorist organizations and cells that it supports and has contact with it, both directly and indirectly. If this scenario rears its ugly head, it will not only be Israel that will be under threat.

    I say ENOUGH TALK! There must be decisive and direct action, and it must be taken NOW!! To be more specific:

    a. DO NOT lift the international sanctions that are now in place against Iran.
    b. The nuclear facilities in Iran must be taken out via direct military action; if Israel has to go it alone in order to make this happen, then so be it! If the U.N. doesn’t like it and gets into a snit about it with the Israeli government, so be it.!

  • The NYT – always “right”…..RIGHT. See their lead to their editorial on the North Korean deal and how it was a panacea for the US and such a great diplomatic solution”:

    EDITORIAL
    Diplomacy at Work

    Published: September 20, 2005
    For years now, foreign policy insiders have pointed to North Korea as the ultimate nightmare, the ongoing worst-case scenario for an international crisis: a closed, hostile and paranoid dictatorship with an aggressive nuclear weapons program. Very few people could envision a successful outcome. And yet North Korea agreed in principle this week to dismantle its nuclear weapons program, return to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, abide by the treaty’s safeguards and admit international inspectors.

    Diplomacy, it seems, does work after all.

    The agreement signed yesterday, if all the details can be satisfactorily filled in and then carried out, is a huge win for the United States as well as a fair deal for North Korea. Its achievement became possible when Washington abandoned the confrontational tactics and name-calling associated with its former top antiproliferation official, John Bolton, and gave serious negotiation a chance. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice deserves most of the credit for that switch, which was made with exceptional skill by America’s top negotiator at the talks, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill……

    http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/20/opinion/20tue1.html

    • P.S. that is a 2005 editorial – 1 year later North Korea detonated a nuclear bomb!!!!!!!! gotta love the NYT. these obtuse mistakes from the past only make them double down on their current stupidity!!!

    • Yes, yes, yes! Diplomacy with North Korea worked really well when the name calling stopped. Let’s check to see if this is indeed true:

      On October 9, 2006, North Korea announced it had successfully conducted its first nuclear test. An underground explosion was detected, its yield was estimated as less than a kiloton, and some radioactive output was detected.[6][7][8]

      On January 6, 2007, the North Korean government further confirmed that it had nuclear weapons.[9]

      In April 2009, reports surfaced that North Korea has become a “fully fledged nuclear power”, an opinion shared by IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei.[10] On May 25, 2009, North Korea conducted second nuclear test, detected explosion yield was estimates vary between 2 and 7 kilotons.[11] The 2009 test, like the 2006 test, is believed to have occurred at Mantapsan, Kilju County, in the north-eastern part of North Korea.[12]

      On February 11, 2013, the USGS detected a magnitude 5.1 seismic disturbance,[13] reported to be a third underground nuclear test.[14] North Korea has officially reported it as a successful nuclear test with a lighter warhead that delivers more force than before, but has not revealed the exact yield. Multiple South Korean sources estimate the yield at 6-9 kilotons, while

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction

  • And so it is….the NYT got their way………………..and we will all pay the price…..