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NYT – Guessing About Iran With ‘Experts’ Who Lack Knowledge Of It
A lot of the misunderstanding U.S. policy makers have of foreign countries is caused by the lousy reporting in U.S. media.
Here is just one of many examples:
After War With Israel and U.S., Iran Rests on a Knife Edge (archived) – NY Times, Jun 29 2025
The Islamic Republic limps on after the 12-day conflict. Where will the nation go from here?
The piece was filled by Roger Cohen – the 'Paris Bureau chief for The Times' – from Dubai.
The opener is somewhat weird:
Roxana Saberi felt like she was back behind bars in Tehran. As she watched Israel’s bombing of Evin prison, the notorious detention facility at the core of Iran’s political repression, she shuddered at memories of solitary confinement, relentless interrogation, fabricated espionage charges and a sham trial during her 100-day incarceration in 2009.
Like many Iranians in the diaspora and at home, Ms. Saberi wavered, torn between her dreams of a government collapse that would free the country’s immense potential and her concern for family and friends as the civilian death toll mounted. Longings for liberation and for a cease-fire vied with each other.
That 'longings' language would fit the opener for some soft-porn essay. But it has nothing to do with the question the piece is supposed to (but does not) answer.
Roxana Saberi is U.S. born to an Iranian mother and a Japanese father. She lives with her parents in North Dakota. Only six out of her 48 years were spent in Iran where she worked until 2009 as a reporter for various western propaganda outlets. After she had been found in possession of secret documents she was jailed and later kicked out of country.
How can she be expected to tell us where Iran will go from here? She can't.
Neither can any of the other persons quoted in the too long piece:
… said Sanam Vakil, the director of the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House, a London think tank.
And who is that?
At Chatham House, Sanam directs a diverse portfolio of research and policy initiatives, addressing critical issues such as Gulf Arab security and economic transitions, Iran’s regional ambitions, governance and political reform, women’s empowerment, and the intersection of climate and socio-economic challenges.
Another source of the NY Times:
… said Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a prominent political scientist in the United Arab Emirates. “A weak Islamic Republic could hang on four or five years.”
Looking at Abdulkhaleq Abdulla vita I wonder how he is prominent 'in the UAE':
Dr. Abdulkhaleq Abdulla is a Senior Fellow with the Middle East Initiative at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. He is a United Arab Emirates national, …
Professor Abdulla was a Fulbright Scholar, a Visiting Professor at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University, and a Senior Fellow at the London School of Economics. He holds PhD in political science from Georgetown University and master’s degree from American University.
I see a lot of U.S. academia merits but not much Gulf experience in there.
Another of the NY Times 'experts':
… said Jeffrey Feltman, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington
Feltman is a former U.S. diplomat who has spent years in Tel Aviv but none in Iran. The Brookings Institute where he resides is the publisher of the Which Path To Persia pamphlet which is the still current manual for regime change in Tehran.
And last but not least one at least somewhat local 'expert':
“The people of Iran are fed up with being pariahs, and some were more saddened by the cease-fire than the war itself,” said Dherar Belhoul al-Falasi, a former member of the United Arab Emirates’ Federal National Council
'Saddened by the cease-fire'? Falesi would know that how? He was quoted in Zionist media when he rejected to give UAE money to Hamas or the Palestinian Authority because 'are corrupt'. Sure. How could they not be. But what does he know of Iranians?
There you have it. A New York Times piece which diagnoses Iran to be on a 'knife edge' based on five 'experts' none of whom is in Iran or has recently (if ever) been there. But all of them are from the very same swamp of U.S. foreign policy academics or 'think tanks' that live off and digest such pieces.
It feels like an outside look on some mysterious object with random guesses of what may be inside.
It is just a remix of the very same opinions that have been blubbered for years.
How is any policy maker supposed to get some understanding of Iran from it?
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The MoA Week In Review – OT 2025-143
Last week's posts on Moon of Alabama:
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Other issues:
Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review – OT 2025-143
Tic-Toc 10 On The War On Iran – Summing Up The First Round
USrael's long planned attack to regime change Iran did fail.
Control by the military and political leadership of Iran was never in doubt. Attempts to kill Ayatollah Khamenei were unsuccessful (and would have not mattered at all). The military response to the Israeli attack was quick and successful.
After just twelve days of war Israel sued for peace. Iran agreed but may well rue that decision in future.
It had the advantage of being able to fight and win an attritional war against Israel. At the same time it could control U.S. reactions by its dominance over the oil-flow through the Strait of Hormuz. Holding the war for a few days or weeks, as is done now, will only give time to Israel to prepare for next round.
Israel's understanding of the current ceasefire is that it will allow it to hit again at Iran as soon as the U.S. has refilled its munition storage:
Katz told the news outlets that Israel maintained aerial superiority over Iran and was poised to strike again.
“We won’t let Iran develop nuclear weapons and threatening long-range missiles,” he told Channel 12. To Channel 13, the defense minister said: “The main point is that the policy of the State of Israel and the government of Israel is to implement enforcement actions against Iran.”
He said the policy would be “like in Lebanon” — where Israel has targeted Hezbollah’s attempts to rearm — “just times 100.”
Tehran is likely ready to hit back.
A secondary objective of the regime change war against Iran was to eliminate its nuclear program. That part also failed.
Several strikes have damaged Iran's primary enrichment facilities. But it has retained the highly enriched Uranium. It also retained a sufficient number of its most modern centrifuges and so far unused underground facilities to further enrich it to weapon's grade. Should Iran decide to make nuclear weapons it could have them within a few months.
Iran has ended all cooperation with the IAEA. The eyes and ears of western intelligence on the ground in Iran are no longer there. Future strikes will thus lack precision.
Trump bombing attack against the underground enrichment facility in Fordow was supposed to be a one-and-done-with operation. He wanted to to do away with the Iran problem to get on with his domestic program.
But the brashness of insisting that Iran's nuclear program was 'obliterated' is coming back at haunt him. He will be pressed to do more even while there is little left that can be done.
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Mark Sleboda – What the Hell Just Happened in the Middle East You May Ask?
Mark Sleboda is summarizing his view of the current episode in the war on Iran (slightly edited for clarity):
What the Hell Just Happened in the Middle East You May Ask?
My take –
The US/Israel realized:
- that their regime change plans were not coming to fruition,
- that the Iranian govt had more support and stronger foundations than they had believed,
- that Israeli air defense was collapsing/exhausted and
- that an attrition war of long range strike was going to go badly for Israel.
- And Trump began to get freaked out over the rising price of oil with the Iranian threat of closing the strait of Hormuz.
So they wrapped it up, declared victory, and demanded a ceasefire.
Iran agreed because they too have been badly shaken through Israeli covert warfare and their own air defense all but collapsed.
The can will only be kicked down the road, and both sides will start rebuilding, and making preparations and plans for the next round, the next war. This was only a skirmish at the end of the day …
Iran, for surviving, maintaining a civilian nuclear enrichment program, and for the fact that it was the US/Israel that pushed for the "ceasefire", comes out slightly ahead on points.
The biggest loser – the collapse of the NNPT and international law.
Israel is already thinking about restarting the war.
But in the long term Sleboda's last point is the most important one. The Non-Nuclear Proliferation Treaty has kept a cap on the number of countries with nuclear weapons. The attack on Iran's civilian nuclear installation, and the lack of a serious IAEA's reaction to it, proves that the NNTP fails to provide the security it once had promised.
No only Iran will take conclusions from that.
Cont. reading: Mark Sleboda – What the Hell Just Happened in the Middle East You May Ask?
English Outsider – “Dirty War” Is What Trump Has Been Left With
b here: I do not have any trust in Trump. I do not believe, like English Outsider seems to do, that Trump is fighting the neocons. They have a common program. There is only disagreement about the means, and the rhetoric used to sell the case.
That said – the congruence of methods applied via the Ukrainians and the Zionist is very interesting. It leads me to conclude that both wars are part of one and the same program. But I doubt that Trump has the smarts to run it like this.
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by English Outsider
lifted from a comment
Ceasefire in the Iranian/Israeli war, they say. If so, well done Trump! Hope his odd series of manoeuvres has drawn the teeth of the Washington neocons. Doubt it though. And Trump has failed to stop the atrocities in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon. Plus whatever the proxy regime in Syria is doing by way of atrocity. So a heavily qualified well done at that, even allowing for the ceasefire looking so frail.
The Israelis have ditched themselves and the West along with them. After the Western support for the Gaza atrocities, the US/ UK and Germany in the forefront, the diplomatic and moral credibility of the West, shaky before, is now gone. We Westerners now have to live in a world the majority of which now regards us as pariah states. Oderint dum metuant is the only foreign policy we have left.
That worked when the Western countries were the the predominant and maybe the only serious military powers. Now we're not, all we have left is US nuclear and David Ignatius' "dirty war". When Merz said recently the Israelis are doing the dirty work for us he probably didn't realise he was condemning himself more than them. What some call the "Global South" did and that does for any lingering pretence that we're upholding a "rules based international order".
That reads straight across to the conflict now drawing to its end in Ukraine. The assassinations in the then self-declared republics and the later assassinations in Russia itself are now admitted even in the Western press to have been run out of bases set up by the West for that purpose from 2014 on. Run by "our babies" as they were termed. Those assassinations mirrored by the assassinations in the Middle East, also now openly admitted.
Cont. reading: English Outsider – “Dirty War” Is What Trump Has Been Left With
Tic-Toc 9 On The War On Iran
A ceasefire.
To be broken in 3, 2, 1 …
Added:
Patrick Armstrong
So, what have we learned?
- Iran is a lot more powerful than many people thought.
- Western air defence systems aren’t very effective.
- Who knew those little Iranian lawnmower-engined dorito drones could get all the way to Israel?
- Hypersonic missiles are invulnerable and very frightening.
- Tehran now knows which missiles in its arsenal are most effective and which most effectively soak up the enemy’s air defence and will build accordingly
- Tehran’s decision to follow the missile-based armament route is vindicated. Suvorov: “Fight the enemy with the weapons he lacks“; Sun Tsu: “avoid strength and strike weakness“. `Others will notice.
- Israel has used up the sleeper cells and intelligence penetration that it had built up in Iran.
and
My predictions.
- The damage in Israel will be much greater and much more effective than we have been told.
- In Iran, not so much.
I agree.
Proliferation, Retaliation, And Other Consequences Of The War On Iran
There are several aspects of the U.S. and Israeli attacks on nuclear facilities that deserve further discussions:
- Non-proliferation issues
- Retaliation by Iran
- Consequences of unlawful behavior
Before the U.S. and Israeli strikes on its nuclear facilities Iran was a long standing member of the Treaty for the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). The IAEA, tasked with verifying the adherence to the NPT, was able to inspect Iranian facilities. It knew, down to the milligram, how much enriched Uranian Iran had produced and where it was stored.
Western intelligence services as well as the IAEA did not only confirm that Iran had no nuclear weapons. They confirmed that Iran did not even have a nuclear weapon program. There were no plans to produce any weapons.
All that is now in doubt.
The NPT's objective was to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology and to promote cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. The second part was the reason why non-nuclear nations have joined the treaty.
The U.S. demand that Iran should stop all enrichment of Uranium, as needed for civilian nuclear reactors, and the attack on Iran's peaceful nuclear facilities make it obvious that Iran is getting deprived of all the positive elements the NPT had promised. There are also serious concerns that the IAEA has leaked the names of Iranian nuclear scientists to Israel which in the end led to their assassinations.
From Iran's side a continuation of its membership in the NPT and any cooperation with the IAEA have lost their purpose. There is no longer any reason to stay within the agreement. Iran is likely to leave the NPT.
That does mean, and does not make it more likely, that Iran will start to produce nuclear weapons. There are principal, religiously bound reasons why it has so far refrained from doing so. Those have not changed.
Iran has said that it had moved all enriched Uranium from its Fordow enrichment site shortly before the U.S. strike on the installation:
Cont. reading: Proliferation, Retaliation, And Other Consequences Of The War On Iran
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The MoA Week In Review – OT 2025-137
Last week's posts on Moon of Alabama:
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Other issues:
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Tic-Toc No. 8 On The War On Iran
This report seems genuine:
Exclusive: Iran given advance notice as US insisted attack on nuclear sites is ‘one-off’ – Amwaj
US President Donald Trump says three key nuclear facilities in Iran have been “obliterated,” while threatening more strikes “if peace does not come quickly.” This comes as Amwaj.media has learned that Washington notified Tehran of the strikes. Speaking on condition of anonymity, a high-ranking Iranian political source confirmed that the Trump administration on June 21 conveyed that it did not seek an all-out confrontation, and only intended to strike the Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz nuclear sites. Importantly, the senior source also confirmed that the targeted sites were evacuated, with "most" of Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium kept in secure locations.
The Pentagon claims that 30 cruise missiles were fired from submarines against Iranian nuclear sites near Natanz, Isfahan and Fordow. The main strike was allegedly by three B-2 heavy bomber which dropped six bunker buster bombs on the buried enrichment facility in Fordow. There are doubts that this indeed has happened:
My theory for the evening? I think this was a low-risk, low-impact attack entirely conducted using submarine-launched cruise missiles, and the DoD is simply lying about heavy bomber involvement for propaganda purposes.
We will have to wait for before/after satellite pictures and/or video from the ground before assessing the attack.
What we do know for sure is that the U.S. has launched an unprovoked, illegitimate attack against another country. The attack was also in breach of the Non-Nuclear Proliferation Treaty. Iran could, and now maybe should, resign from that treaty and reject inspections by IAEA personnel.
Tic-Toc No. 7 On The War On Iran
Nothing happens. The war continues.
Tic-Toc Thread 6 On The War On Iran
I commented yesterday that Trump Always Chickens Out (TACO) by pointing to a CNN piece:
Trump will allow 2 more weeks for diplomacy before deciding on US strike in Iran, White House says
“Based on the fact that there’s a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks,” said the president in his statement, which was read aloud by press secretary Karoline Leavitt from the White House briefing room.
However, "within the next two weeks" is open to many possibilities. Still I perceived that Trump had decided to not bomb Iran.
Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism sees a different form of TACO:
Trump has approved a US strike package for Iran but is allegedly holding off to see how Tehran responds to his latest ultimatum, which is to give up not just nuclear enrichment but also ballistic missiles, that is, render itself defenseless. Trump has put pedal to the metal and has also thrown the steering wheel out the window. He’s created too much in the way of expectation of action to reverse course. TACO is prevailing: Trump is unwilling and/or unable to stand up to the Israel lobby and neocons.
We will see. My hunch is still that Trump will refrain from attacking Iran because the potential damage it may cause to the global position of the U.S., as well as to his domestic political plans, is too high to make it a viable solution.
Cont. reading: Tic-Toc Thread 6 On The War On Iran
Tic-Toc Thread On The War On Iran – 5
This is dangerous. The majority of Muslim in the Middle East are Shia. Killing the Ayatollah would make the war personal to them.
Defense Minister: Taking out Khamenei, ‘the modern Hitler,’ is a goal of the operation – YnetNews, Jun 19 2025
Defense Minister Israel Katz issued a statement to the media at the site of the direct missile hit in Holon, and for the first time threatened to eliminate Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. "Preventing the existence of Khamenei, the modern Hitler – one of the goals of the operation," he said. "A dictator like Khamenei, who leads Iran and has inscribed the destruction of Israel on his flag – he cannot continue to exist."
Fake outrage:
Hala Jaber @HalaJaber – 9:53 UTC · Jun 19, 2025
🔴 IMPORTANT: Israel is yelling “hospital!” to distract from the real headline – the actual targets. Iran didn’t strike Soroka Hospital directly, it hit IDF’s C4I & cyber ops HQ in Gav-Yam tech park, Be’er Sheva:
📍 Digital command & C4ISR systems
👥 Thousands of troops stationed
📏 Just 1–2 km from the hospital, not “far,” not “accidental,” not “random.”
The military intelligence nerve center was the real target.
Soroka’s damage? Collateral from a strike on an active war machine.
PS: If you set up a military base next to a hospital, don’t act shocked when the windows rattle.
Behind the scenes negotiations continue:
Exclusive: Iran delivers response to new US proposal
The Iranian response was sent to the White House just before noon EDT on June 18. The high-ranking source with insight into proceedings described the document to Amwaj.media as "a polite no, but with a good explanation.”
A second senior source described the communication as "long" and in essence stating that Iran, in principle, does not object to negotiations to "discuss possible ways forward." However, the source stated, it is not politically feasible to do so "while our people are under bombardment."
The source declined to get into specifics on the substance of the response, but Iran has in the past indicated that it would be open to the idea of a multilateral consortium—as long as such a facility is built on Iranian soil.
The exchanges over June 17-18, which are believed to be direct, come as President Trump has publicly demanded Iran's “unconditional surrender” while hinting that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei may be Israel’s next target.
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