Reading the WaPo on Iran

It’s the dog days of August and an article appears on top of Drudge: US to Designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as Terrorists by Robin Wright. Our government is planning to do this so that the notorious Revolutionary Guard (Pasdaran) who have been associated with just about every nefarious deed out of Khomeinist Iran since the 1979 revolution is cut off from some of their funding. Sounds good to me.

But I’m not so sure it sounds so good to Robin Wright of the Washington Post. Everyone knows now how the conventional “objective” news article is structured,with the supposedly neutral reporter revealing his/her tilt by the choice of closing material, so here it is:

The administration’s move could hurt diplomatic efforts, some analysts said. “It would greatly complicate our efforts to solve the nuclear issue,” said Joseph Cirincione, a nuclear proliferation expert at the Center for American Progress. “It would tie an end to Iran’s nuclear program to an end to its support of allies in Hezbollah and Hamas. The only way you could get a nuclear deal is as part of a grand bargain, which at this point is completely out of reach.”

Such sanctions can only work alongside diplomatic efforts, Cirincione added. “Sanctions can serve as a prod but they have very rarely forced a country to capitulate or collapse,” he said. “All of us want to back Iran into a corner but we want to give them a way out, too. [The designation] will convince many in Iran’s elite that there’s no point in talking with us and that the only thing that will satisfy us is regime change.”

Hmmm… in other words, no sanctions, or not these sanctions, saith the Post. Or Wright.

Let’s leave aside for the moment Cirincione’s peculiar logic since negotiations with Iran over nuclear issues have gone on literally for years to absolutely no avail. Why should they succeed now? Cirincione isn’t saying. (I’ll wager because he can’t.)

What interests me here is how the article came to be. The prose is sprinkled with the usual journo-blather: “according to US officials… sources said… analysts said,” etc. But which officials and which sources and which analysts, nadie sabe. Meaning, I write what I want to write. Or perhaps I should say I Wright what I Wright. That’s not to say this is wrong or it’s not happening but my best guess is that someone at the State Department leaked this to the reporter because he/she knew the reporter would be cooperative,be the right mouthpiece. And he/she was correct. That’s modern journalism. Or perhaps more accurately, “Scoop” lives.