The Iran Nuclear Deal, AIPAC Losses & the Charade Around Iran Being ‘Looming Threat’
An intensive effort by Israel and its backers has been underway to scuttle an international deal over Iran’s nuclear program. Yet, Israel and its major lobby in the United States, American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), has been suffering defeats as it tries to fight a deal, which it does not want because, if the issues over Iran’s nuclear program are resolved, focus will inevitably shift to the country’s treatment of Palestinians.
According to Nima Shirazi, an analyst of US foreign policy toward the Middle East who blogs at “Wide Asleep in America,” what the world has seen for the past thirty years of US and Israeli policy is what could be called a charade. They’ve pretended there is a “looming threat” and “that Iran is just around the corner from either having the capability to build a nuclear bomb, if not having a deliverable nuclear bomb.”
Shirazi writes about this topic all the time and joins Rania Khalek and I for this week’s podcast. He highlights AIPAC’s struggle to scuttle this Iran deal. He briefly highlights some of the history of myths around the country’s nuclear program that has served both the interests of the US and Israel. He also addresses the effects of sanctions on the people of Iran.
During the discussion portion of the show, Khalek and I discuss the abduction of drone victim, journalist and activist Kareem Khan in Pakistan, Joint Special Operations Command’s use of NSA metadata for drone killings and a Malaysian doctoral student’s placement on the no-fly list and how the Obama administration abused state secrets and secrecy to get away with violating her rights for about a decade.
This week’s podcast is about an hour long. I also can announce that the podcast finally has a name. We explain what we came up with at the beginning of discussion portion of the show.
Listen to the weekly podcast (or download it directly from here):
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http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2014/02/16/podcast/