Our lethally uninformed civilization

By Mladen Andrijasevic

On November 17, at the National Press Club, there was a symposium on Iran organized by Freedom Watch, at which several distinguished speakers including former director of CIA James Woolsey, former CIA spy Reza Kahlili and former UN Ambassador Alan Keyes among others gave speeches on "National security, freedom, and Iran-is it time for U.S. and Western intervention?"

A topic that certainly warrants our attention and discussed by people who have all the credentials to discuss it. And yet when I clicked on the link of Video No1 I saw that since the video was posted on Nov 21 it had been viewed by 236 people. I was shocked. Why only 236 people? Has the counter been reset or is this real data? Am I missing something? I did not have a logical explanation.

I still do not have one. But yesterday there appeared an article in Ha'aretz by Reza Kahlili which may give some indication as to what might be going on. Ha'aretz journalist Yossi Melman first quotes Kahlili and then gives his assessment:

"I strongly believe that it's 1938 all over again," he says in a telephone interview from California, when the world groveled before Germany, hoping to appease the looming Nazi monster. "The difference is that this time the consequences would be much worse than World War II. The West had the opportunity to overthrow this regime in Tehran without firing a single bullet last year when the mass uprising happened, but now I truly believe it will be war whether we want it or not, and for that reason I think we should determine the terms of it. The question to ask ourselves is: Do we want to confront them now or when they have the nukes? That's going to make a big difference to the millions who will lose their lives once they get the nukes."

We can, of course, make light of these words when they are spoken by Kahlili, an outspoken opponent of the ayatollahs who identifies with conservative right-wing circles in the United States, and see them as nothing more than warmongering, personal paranoia or dangerous delusions. And yet they are worth hearing because they come from a CIA agent who carried out espionage missions within the Revolutionary Guards, the very backbone of the regime.

So here we have it. Kahlili is, according to Yossi Melman, associated with "conservative right-wing circles in the United States" which would, in normal circumstance, Melman implies, render his opinion irrelevant. His words would to the readers of Ha'aretz sound like "nothing more than warmongering, personal paranoia or dangerous delusions". But why would to Ha'aretz readers Reza Kahlili's warning sound like "personal paranoia or dangerous delusion"? Simply because almost nobody in the Western media, including Israeli, has up to today ever discussed the ineffectiveness of the doctrine of mutual assured destruction MAD vis-à-vis Iran. The gap between the reality of Iran's Shia eschatology and the uninformed Ha'aretz readership is just too wide. I am almost sure that 90 percent of the readers of Ha'aretz did not understand what "Imam Mahdi" in the article is referring to.

Could it be that, finally and paradoxically, a left-wing Israeli paper, with all its (as a left-wing paper) necessary qualifications and apologies like 'right-wing circles', has started a debate on the taboo topic of MAD and Iran? Let's hope that is the case. But it will take several iterations to narrow the gap between the reality of Iran and Western ignorance, the gap created in the first place by western media failing to do its job in the last several decades.