SAN JOSé, COSTA RICA-Mark Berman left out a big disclosure: that he has represented the state of Israel as an attorney, according to his biography. It's a basic expectation of integrity when commenting on issues in a newspaper to disclose any conflicts of interest one might have. It's something that I as a professional journalist have always done.
Berman also gets a great deal of facts wrong. The seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was because the United States refused to hand over the Shah, who had run a vicious regime of torture that included mass torture of dissidents, with the torturers trained by the CIA.
The United States was far too obsessed with anti-communism to pay any attention to Iranian human rights, especially after overthrowing secular nationalist Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953, replacing him with autocratic rule by the Shah, who earlier was accountable to the country's parliament.
The Shah absolutely deserved to face justice for his torture regime. That he was coddled by the Carter administration is forever a stain on the U.S.
The Reagan campaign almost certainly made an arms-for-hostages deal at the U.S. embassy, delaying the release. The hostages were released the day he was inaugurated. Then the U.S. provoked Saddam Hussein into invading Iran and sold arms to both sides in a war that killed as many as one million people.
Describing Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis as a "network" would be a significant exaggeration. They all have different aims and different power bases. There is no evidence to suggest that they are "proxies" of Iran, especially Hamas, who historically opposed Hezbollah and Iran's interests in Syria, aligning it with Israel and the United States.
Hamas, for what it's worth, was also functionally a creation by Israel - a fact that nearly all advocates for Israel's interests in the Middle East conveniently choose to ignore.
In January 2020, Iran fired missiles at the U.S. in response to the assassination of one of its top generals. If a top general was assassinated by Iranians, the U.S. response would be overwhelming. The hawks would be demanding a nuclear response. All throughout this time the U.S. has had vicious sanctions on Iran that hurt ordinary Iranians far more than the IRGC.
That Berman complains about Iran allegedly attempting assassinations after the U.S. and Israel just decapitated the entire Iranian government is just laughable in the extreme.
The way to prevent foreign powers from influencing the U.S. is to stop having a deranged foreign policy driven by people who are so eager to send other people's children to war.
Matthew Cunningham-Cook
San José, Costa Rica
This letter to the editor was submitted to The Commons.
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