February 5, 2013 | New York Daily News

Iran’s Nuclear Lies

A recent trip to Europe by a high-ranking official from Tehran was an exercise in deception
February 5, 2013 | New York Daily News

Iran’s Nuclear Lies

A recent trip to Europe by a high-ranking official from Tehran was an exercise in deception

P.T. Barnum is widely attributed for having made the observation that “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.” This was a strange aphorism, however mangled, for Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi to cite yesterday during a visit to the German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin. For throughout his entire presentation, Salehi did little else than deceive his audience.

The Council’s mere invitation to Salehi was curious, given the international effort to sanction and isolate the Iranian regime for its illicit nuclear program. But those efforts did not stop German authorities from permitting Salehi — who, while serving as the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization not long ago, had been banned from visiting the European Union — from addressing the Munich Security Conference on Sunday, or the equally prestigious forum in the German capital the following day.

“Iran’s main political priority is to seek peace,” he told the assembled dignitaries, journalists, ambassadors and representatives of German officialdom, as a small group of Iranian exiles and other opponents of the regime protested outside.

Salehi must have thought his audience utterly ignorant, for while he proclaims a love of peace, the government he represents continues to supply Syrian President Bashar Assad with a steady stream of weapons and soldiers from its elite Revolutionary Guard Corps. Some 60,000 Syrians have died over the past two years as a result of Assad’s crushing what began as a peaceful protest against his dictatorial rule. Yet when asked if Iran was supporting Assad with arms and soldiers — something that the commander of the Revolutionary Guards himself admitted last year — Salehi denied the accusation completely.

“The army of Syria is big enough that they don’t need any fighters from outside,” Salehi claimed. Presumably the 48 Iranians released last month by Syrian rebels in exchange for 2,100 people imprisoned by the Syrian regime were really just “religious pilgrims” as Tehran claimed.

Onward the discussion moved to Iran’s nuclear program, a topic which Salehi (an American-educated nuclear physicist) said was “becoming boring.” It is entirely peaceful, he assured the audience, the reams of International Atomic Energy Agency reports claiming the contrary apparently just a pile of lies. Furthermore, even if Iran wanted nuclear weapons, he claimed, “the religious principles and tenets” of the country “do not allow” for them. As evidence, Salehi cited the existence of a fatwa, or religious edict, issued by Ayatollah Khamenei banning the production of nuclear weapons.

Even if such a fatwa had been promulgated, it would hardly serve as proof of the regime’s intentions; this would not be the first time that an Iranian Ayatollah played fast and loose with the truth. Yet according to the Middle East Media Research Institute, “No such fatwa ever existed or was ever published.” A search for such an edict on the website of the Ayatollah turns up nothing.

Then Salehi uttered what was perhaps the biggest whopper of the day, when he said that the “government of Iran has emanated from the will of its people.” This would be news to anyone who observed Iran’s 2009 presidential election, or to the countless, peaceful protestors the regime murdered in the streets or threw into its dungeons in the aftermath. If the government of Iran were truly “legitimate,” as a certain nominee to President Obama’s cabinet believes, it would not need to shut down independent newspapers and imprison journalists, or drive those who oppose it into exile.

So perhaps it was darkly fitting that Salehi would quote a circus producer’s attesting to the impossibility of deceiving “all of the people all of the time.” The question now, at this late stage in the development of Iran’s nuclear program, is how many people the regime will continue to fool.

Kirchick is a fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He tweets at @jkirchick.

Issues:

Iran Iran Sanctions Syria