It never ceases to amaze me how credulous the mainstream media sources are when it comes to news reporting on Iran.
Here’s what the AFP has to say about Iran and Argentina making nice at the UN session this week, in the context of Argentina trying to get Iran to agree to extradite the murderers who blew up two Jewish community centers, killing 85 and wounding 300 in one attack, and murdering another 26 in the second:
Both sides agreed to continue their dialogue “until a solution is found,” Argentine Foreign Minister Hector Timerman said in a statement.
Timerman met with his Iranian counterpart, Ali Akbar Salehi, “and decided to continue negotiations” in Geneva in October, the statement read.
Argentina and Iran will keep talking until they resolve diplomatically sensitive issues stemming from two 1990s attacks on Jewish targets in Buenos Aires that were allegedly sponsored by Tehran, both countries said on Thursday.
Dialogue with Tehran is risky for Argentina, even if the focus is on Tehran’s possible culpability in a pair of bombings. The opening of a diplomatic channel with Tehran could anger the United States and Israel, which are seeking to isolate Iran as it appears to pursue nuclear weapons.
And now, an analysis of what the meetings really mean:
Yet there is a sense among opposition politicians in Argentina that the Fernandez government is eager to turn the page on the now 29-year-old investigation into the Argentine-Israeli Mutual Association bombing. In this regard, Iran’s fall 2011 overture to assist with the probe, although a patently empty promise, may have provided an excuse for Buenos Aires to begin a qualitative betterment of ties with Tehran.
A number of other factors also have contributed to Argentina’s recent flirtation with the Islamic Republic.
One is economics. Argentina is now weathering a significant financial downturn, one brought about by the global economic recession and by the Fernandez government’s own anti-free-market policies. All of this gives trade with Iran greater salience for Argentina than would otherwise be the case. Indeed, bilateral trade has grown to the point that Argentina now ranks as Iran’s biggest economic partner in Latin America.
Another is Argentina’s international outlook. Argentine officials make no secret of their government’s desire for an “independent” or “emancipated” foreign policy — a thinly veiled allusion to the need for political distance from the United States. This stance has predisposed the Fernandez government toward cooperation with Iran, as well as with other international actors such as China.
Quite a different take on the situation. But the news media will claim that their job is to report the facts objectively. Except, of course, where Israel is concerned. This Bloomberg analysis of Mad Mahmoud’s UN speech makes it seem like he was positively sunny about Israel.
Iran’s president made no overt calls for Israel’s destruction and omitted any mention of his nation’s disputed nuclear program during a United Nations speech that instead offered his vision of a spiritual world.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s address to the annual UN General Assembly yesterday was tame by comparison to his previous appearances before the world body and didn’t prompt walkouts by Western delegations as in the past. The U.S., Israel and Canada boycotted the speech to protest past offensive remarks.
What it does not do is mention that two days before his supposedly “softer” speech, he said that Israel has no roots in the Middle East.
“They have no roots there in history,” Mr. Ahmadinejad said of the Israelis. “They do not even enter the equation for Iran.”
A true news analysis would note that two days before his “tame” speech, he completely negated three millennia of Jewish history, delegitimizing a UN member state on the eve of his UN visit.
This is why blogs have become so important. Because the news media neglects to tell you the facts, preferring to spin the fantasy that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was not the virulently anti-Israel that he usually is. Believe me, he has not changed. Take away the spin, and he still called for the destruction of the world’s only Jewish state from the podium of the United Nations–whether or not he was physically on it when he said it.