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Iranian penetration of Latin America is a serious concern. Except, you know, when it doesn't exist:
MANAGUA, Nicaragua -- For months, the reports percolated in Washington and other capitals. Iran was constructing a major beachhead in Nicaragua as part of a diplomatic push into Latin America, featuring huge investment deals, new embassies and even TV programming from the Islamic republic.
"The Iranians are building a huge embassy in Managua," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned in May. "And you can only imagine what that's for."
But here in Nicaragua, no one can find any super-embassy.
Nicaraguan reporters scoured the sprawling tropical city in search of the embassy construction site. Nothing. Nicaraguan Chamber of Commerce chief Ernesto Porta laughed and said: "It doesn't exist." Government officials say the U.S. Embassy complex is the only "mega-embassy" in Managua. A U.S. diplomat in Managua conceded: "There is no huge Iranian Embassy being built as far as we can tell."
The mysterious, unseen giant embassy underscores how Iran's expansion into Latin America may be less substantive than some in Washington fear.
Iran's proposed investments in Nicaragua -- for a deep-water port, hydroelectric plants and a tractor factory -- have also failed to materialize, Nicaraguan officials say. At a time when Iran's oil revenue is falling, the same is true of many projects planned for Latin America, according to analysts.
U.S. officials emphasized that there is plenty of reason to be concerned about Iran, which they consider a state sponsor of terrorism. But the Iranian activity has revived Cold War-style rhetoric in Washington that at times doesn't match what is evident in places such as Managua.
Last month, Rep. Connie Mack (R-Fla.) even told reporters in a call organized by the Israel Project that "the growing influence of Iran in the Western Hemisphere reminds me of the relationship between Russia and Cuba when we dealt with the Cuban missile crisis."
It is not clear where the report of the embassy in Managua began. But in the past two years, it has made its way into congressional testimony, think tank reports, press accounts, and diplomatic events in the United States and elsewhere.
Hey, maybe we just haven't sent the right man to find this super-secret base. But seriously, this seems like a pretty ridiculous flashback to the days when we saw Soviet conspiracies behind everything. Iran is certainly no friend of the United States and not to be underestimated, but let's not blow it out of proportion. Iran is no Soviet Union. I doubt its capacity to build a mega-anything, let alone a mega-embassy on the other side of the world. And I find it hard to believe that Iranian TV would catch on in Nicaragua.
Repeat after me: There is no Israel lobby. There is no Israel lobby. All these planted stories are just coincidences. There is no Israel lobby.
Its quite funny to see the hasbara machine getting outdated. Reading Jerusalem Post these days is just weird. The Likudniks dont understand what has hit them after 8 years of owning Bush.
Michael Rubin explains that the issue was diplomatic presence, not the size of the buildings, and that the Post did a poor job of researching their story:
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Yzc3MWIzMDliZmJiZmEzOTdiNWI5NGV...
For example, the Miami Herald piece mentioned by Rubin made no mention of construction projects — just the rapid pace of Iranian diplomatic presence in Latin America and its goals.
Also, "Reporters often twist stories by playing with affiliations. O’Connor and Sheridan both do this. They describe Farideh Farhi as “an expert on Iran’s foreign policy at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.” The Iranian press, however, talks more often about Farhi’s tenure at the Islamic Republic’s foreign ministry, something Farhi now keeps off her c.v."
I would love to do a frequency analysis of fnord's posts, to see how often the phrase "hasbara machine" appears. ^^ needs a new hobby besides reading far-right american and israeli papers to reassure himself how right he is to disagree with them.
inasmuch as Hizballah has active cells in South America, it IS penetrated by Iran. and as it says in the same article,
**State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley said that Clinton heard about the embassy during a recent meeting in the region. "If it turns out this is not happening, that's good news," he said.
"It perhaps suggests the Iranians are talking about investments and influence that they don't yet have," he said. "But they are certainly feeling their oats, and they are certainly trying to exploit opportunities where they think they exist."**
and not to mention
**Since Ahmadinejad was elected in 2005, Iran has opened six new Latin American embassies -- in Colombia, Nicaragua, Chile, Ecuador, Uruguay and Bolivia -- adding to embassies in Cuba, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela.
Analysts say Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has encouraged Iran's Latin American expansion. Iran has signed scores of economic and political accords with Chávez's populist government, and the Islamic republic has invested in factories in Venezuela producing tractors, bicycles and "anti-imperialist" cars.**
no expansion of influence? no, none at all, if you only read the first page of the article. comparisons to the Soviet Union are stupid, but only because the scale makes no sense.
The WaPo article debunking the Iranian Mega-Embassy was written by Ann Marie O'Connor and Mary Beth Sheridan. Surely these women are not serious journalists. Hell, with those kind of surnames, they were probably deep into cups of Jameson while reporting the article.
What is needed is an expert on ME affairs, Jeffrey Goldberg. For he is the man that exposed to the world the close relationship between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein in his "New Yorker" article dated 3/25/02.
Goldberg is a truth seeker, with no allegiance to anything or anyone other than the truth (besides being an American patriot).
Goldberg will spin a tale that Iranian backed Hezbollah guerillas are planning an invasion of Texas. The Hezzies will then enslave white women and ship them to work in the brothels of Isfahan.
Please, someone call the Great Goldberg to find out the truth about Iranian influence in Central America.
They can finance their Central American adventures with the money from our concrete contracts for Baghdad. In particular since I suspect the new/old management will be blowing them up soon enough.
Fnord. Yes there is an Israeli lobby. And an English lobby. And a IRA lobby (well, used to be). And a Sri Lankan lobby. Used to be a Tamil lobby until LTTE designated a terrorist org.
There's also a very, very, very strong Saudi lobby with a trillion plus reserves sitting in our banks, and countless, countless think tanks, libraries, and research fellows have been the beneficiaries of Saudi "grants". Why the good Uber-Jew villian Dr Kissenger has them as a very valuable client. In terms of money alone, the Saudi, Gulf, UAE lobbies make AIPAC look like pikers. Even though they control everything.
There's a very strong body of various groups and lobbies around another famous Jew - George Soros. They just helped elect a few govts (like Bammy's) when they're not trying to overthrow them.
[Wow. This anti-semitism is seductive. A new trick for me, but why can't I join the fun? All the ills of the world can be isolated down to a tiny minority. I will have to explore this further.]
There's Norwegian lobbies on steel, oil, shipbuilding, whaling, salmon, etc. For and against. I can't spare the time to find the links, sorry (they always seem to find wiki, which....) but here's an index of US lobbies. You might be interested to know the animal rights groups have Norway in their sights over salmon farming.
No blood for Salmon!!
Lobbyists gone wild.
The actual term comes from the early days of the Republic, from the predictable skulkers hanging around the lobby of Congress, seeking justice, redress, and to get into the taxpayers pocket. You can also file it under the right to petition your government. It's what happens when you actually have input into how you are governed, instead of being handed down edicts from Brussels.
My God in heaven. I found a pro-whaling lobby...located....yes you guessed it....
Save the Baby Whales from Viking Beasts
Elf: Agreed on the Saudis. However, the Israelis seem to have a lot more pundits than us poor whalekillers and others. Krauthammer &v friends are really working overtime these days. (The norwegian COIN lobby is much underestimated, btw. NUPI, FOS, etc.) And thats no fckin anti-semitism speaking.
sorry...
"The term “lobbyist” owes its origin to President Ulysses S. Grant. During Grant’s first term as President, his wife disapproved of his drinking, so Grant would regularly slip out of the White House and visit the lounge at the nearby Willard Hotel in downtown Washington, D.C. Grant’s visits to the Willard Hotel soon became common knowledge. Those wishing to catch a minute or two with the President to petition their causes would collect in the hotel lobby to corner Grant as he went to and from the lounge. Frustrated by the ever-growing crowd of petitioners, Grant frequently complained of the “lobbyists” who would get in his way. Ron Smith, “Compelled Cost Disclosure of Grassroots Lobbying Expenses,” 6 Kansas Journal of Law and Public Policy (1997) at 115."
fnord.
Technically, the giant-base-in-the-jungle fabulation isn't "hasbara". It's a symptom of ZDS.
No, of course the lobbies aren't a problem - unless you need to get paid for your work, some place to live or health care. The US must fight in Afghanistan, bomb Iran and construct settlements in Israel - those are the more important goals, especially since some one else seems to have gotten the oil contracts in Iraq. (Allies? What allies? They got OUR oil.)
The Islamic Republic and the Israel Lobby in a shadowy war, of which we know little and from which we gain even less, while the body count of US soldiers grows daily? Stranger things have been known to happen. Remember Iran-Contra?
oh, i get it now, mom! (amazing how similar this is to conversation with my real-life family, sometimes). Because there was an Iran-Contra affair, anything is possible! It follows, then, that the New World Order, controlled by Illuminati, Freemasons, The Anti-Defamation League and of course the Rothschild banking family, has engineered a Middle Eastern conflict to profit their bloodsucking international corporations!
or, you know, a dumb president made dumb decisions, most likely based on dumb intelligence (though i guess i can't rule out more sinister perceived national interests somehow involving oil) and a general air of paranoia and a manichaean "us vs. them" spirit that followed in the wake of 9/11, even when "them" was just a blurry "axis of evil" that wasn't always coherent.
but why believe the latter? then i might have to concede that people make mistakes, or that the US government isn't actually capable enough, or that the executive branch lacks the intelligence, to engineer worldwide conspiracies of that magnitude. and that's just sceeery. you know, i heard they even engineered the death of pat tillman cause he was onto them. oh, and 9/11, obviously.
as for the Israel Lobby, which as has been rightly pointed out, is unique neither in its ties to another country nor in its sway on foreign policy (cf Saudis), it's a mistake to align it with Likud settlement policies. maybe the largest organization, AIPAC, has attempted to prevent undue pressure on Israeli sovereignty by America, but Americans for Peace Now and J Street, no less parts of the US Jewish lobby with interests in Israel, very actively rally in support of increased pressure. And even AIPAC supports a two-state solution as the panacea-i-mean-resolution to the Arab-Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
since fnord seems a fan, i recommend he read Chomsky's essay at ZNet http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/4134 . amusingly, he takes my side here. so that's two things i can rightly agree with him on, along with linguistic innatism!
Who receives the most financial aid from the United States?
One would assume that an extremely poor country like Bangladesh or a poor nation in our own hemisphere like Haiti would receive the most money from our tax dollars. Both assumptions would be wrong.
The truth is that Israel, a wealthy country, receives the most foreign aid from America. This little snippet is enough proof that The Lobby is the biggest and baddest, far outpacing the Saudis.
While the al-Sauds are no doubt vile and hideous, the country has the oil. Israel has no oil, but continually wages a war of espionage against America and sells our secrets to China.
Walt and Mearsheimer sold alot of books and became wealthy men by revealing the truth.
Regarding Iranian influence in the Bananistans of Central America, Americans have become wiser about alarm bells sounded by Israel friendly media.
Ken Pollack and his "Threatening Storm" and Judith Miller with her Scooter Libby inside information, have not been a postitive for our country. These lies helped lead us into a needless war against Iraq.
Trillions of dollars spent and thousands of soldiers dead, we are no closer to defeating AQ, but we did knock off Saddam, who funded suicide bombers in Israel.
Now Israel friendly media are once again ringing alarm bells about scary muslims, this time Iran and it's threats to America. Well, many American no longer listen to these people. We are tired of ME wars for the sake of Israel.
Repeat after me................... there is no Islamic lobby, they own a lot of America ................ there is no Islamic lobby............ They are the last word on human rights in the UN there is no Islamic lobby.................. Dream on ............
I don't really see why the U.S would be so worried about Iran and Nicaragua anyway. Between the political problems of this month, the exceptionally shoddy economy aside from oil, and the revelation (which anyone who remembers the past recessions should have predicted) that Iran's economy relied too much on exporting oil I don't think that Iran would be able to benefit much from any 'mega-embassy' and I'm not even sure that they would be able to create one without paying twice as much as they should for it. As was pointed out above Iran is not the Soviet Union, Iran isn't even the People's Republic of China.
@ gp
Isreal doesn't receive the most US aid anymore. Now that title goes to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Substantive or not, Iran has been making plays in Latin America for some time. It's true we shouldn't over hype anything but we should at least be trying harder to maintain our lead role in the region.
gringo lost: Fair point on the amounts of US aid. Still, its funny to watch Nethanyahu dancing the dance between extremism and pragmatism. Do you see my point on pointing out that Israel under Bush got a ideological free ride?
gp, you see what a convincing narrative you can spin simply by pointing at motives and ends? i read a similar one in David Icke's "Children of the Matrix" (rational readers, don't judge me. i was eating at a vegan restaurant in South Jersey, and there it was).
see, the rothschild/ADL/Council on Foreign Relations/Zionist Lobby/Freemason/Illuminati/Alien Reptilians wanted to create the state of Israel. so, they engineered the Holocaust (much of it myth, btw. cf Norman Finkelstein, scholar-in-residence at Kingsboro Kommunity Kollege before they denied him tenure for a dearth of actual scholarship) to garner international sympathy for the creation of a Jewish state. then they blew up some Jewish stuff in various Arab countries to scare Middle-Eastern Jews into thinking people actually didnt' want them around, so they'd flee to Israel and populate it for them.
______ (this is the part where evidence would go if we were being scientific)
There was a Holocaust, Israel was created, and a few hundred thousand Jews fled Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Kurdistan, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon et al.
SEE I TOLD YOU.
now let us apply this rigorous method of research to Operation Iraqi Freedom (or should I call it Operation ZOG Machine). See, the ADL/CFR/AIPAC/Feith-Wolfowitz-Libby-Perle-Krauthammer-Pollak-Cheney (or should I say, Cheinowitz) all like Israel, and Saddam didn't (a mutual feeling, to be sure), so naturally they'd be willing to expend blood and treasure on his removal.
[There was no air of post-9/11 panic, no association in the American mind between Iraq and Al Qaeda (for whatever ridiculous reason), no WMD panic, no interest in installing an America-friendly democracy in the oiliest oilfields this side of the Gulf. Nope. All that belongs in the now defunct "evidence" section] __________________
We went to war in Iraq and Saddam is dead.
You must be right!!!!!!!
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