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July 8th, 2021 
Awake Goy 
Journalists are supposed to have subjects in their reports. You aren’t supposed to write, “It was said.” Instead: tell us who said it.
New York Times senior reporter David Sanger forgot that principle last week in his biased and inadequate account of the Biden administration’s Iran policy. Sanger suggests that Biden wants a broader “comprehensive” nuclear agreement, (although the Times article is vague about whether the U.S. wants to replace the 2015 deal or follow it with an additional pact).
Here’s how Sanger’s report failed Journalism 101:
“It is increasingly clear that any comprehensive agreement . . . must also cover a broad range of new weaponry that Iran’s forces were only tinkering with six years ago.”
And: “There is a growing recognition that [an updated agreement] will have to include many of those [new] weapons.”
His editors should have asked: Clear to whom? Who recognizes?
A big part of the answer, of course, is Israel and the pro-Israel lobby, who are once again trying to shape U.S. Mideast policy by promoting American conflict with Iran. Sanger’s report waits until paragraph 18 to even mention Israel in any detail, and says nothing about former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s vigorous decade-long campaign to provoke the U.S. into attacking Tehran.
Times columnist Thomas Friedman was less circumspect. In a June 15 column, he faithfully relayed the Israeli view of Iran: “its darkest impulses, to dominate its Sunni Arab neighbors and destroy the Jewish state, are too dangerous to ignore. . .” And: “. . .I support Israel’s covert efforts to sabotage Iran’s ability to ever build a nuclear weapon. . .”
(Why the euphemism? What Friedman really meant is: “I support Israel’s campaign of political assassination and sabotage inside Iran, which is a violation of international law.” )
Meanwhile, the Israeli daily Haaretz actually talked to Israeli officials about the U.S.-Iran negotiations instead of ignoring or hiding the Israel connection. It turns out that David Sanger and Thomas Friedman are still shilling for Israel without realizing that Tel Aviv has probably lost influence on the outcome of the talks in Vienna. Reporter Jonathan Lis states flatly that
Israel has no ability to influence the clauses of the nuclear agreement being discussed in Vienna, according to a senior [Israeli] official involved in the contact Israel is maintaining with the United States, Russia and the other partners to the deal.
Sanger’s suggestion that a more “comprehensive” deal is on the agenda right now is mistaken. Lis’s official Israeli source told him,
“Essentially, during the nuclear talks there are only two options. . . Either returning to the original nuclear agreement, or not returning to it. There is no other option.”
Lis reports that Israel continues to try instigate the U.S. into threatening Iran:
Israeli officials are trying to persuade the United States to float the option of a military attack on Iran if it continues with its nuclear initiatives, in the hope that the belligerent declarations will deter it.
But Lis predicts that the Biden administration will ignore Israel’s attempt to provoke.
Once again, the New York Times failed its readers on a vital issue of war and peace. Maybe the paper’s reporters and columnists should start cultivating the same kind of Israeli sources that Haaretz already seems to have.
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