Waging War In Iran
The Article: War By Other Means by Hamid Dabashi in Al-Jazeera.
The Text: Mr Nicholas D Kristof of the New York Times has gone to Iran and graced our city’s “Paper of Record” with a column: Pinched and Griping in Iran. Reading this column, one would have been reminded of Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad (1869), minus the splendid humour, were we to ignore the dire circumstances in which we live and the catastrophic implications of such shallow and irresponsible journalism.
This is journalism at the de facto service of a bewildered empire, a journalism that does not only fail to raise very basic and simple questions about dangerous policies of the journalist’s home country but that has in fact become the effective extension of imperial wars by other means.
Kristof’s visit coincides with the latest round of talks between Iran and the “5+1” group on the pending nuclear issue. As Al Jazeera reports, “in Moscow, the six powers – United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany – are again expected to push Tehran to address their most pressing concern, its enrichment of uranium to 20 per cent fissile purity … The consequences of failure could be devastating, amid fears that Israel could bomb Iran if no diplomatic solution is found, intensifying regional tensions and pushing oil prices higher”.
