Wendy Sherman, the Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs and the State Department’s third-ranking official, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on October 3: “The fundamental large sanctions that we have in place should not disappear anytime soon, unless all of our concerns are addressed by the Iranians. . . . We know that deception is part of the DNA.”
In an attempt to clarify the comments attributed to Sherman, the US State Department’s deputy spokeswoman, Marie Harf, said: “I think first that doubtless each side has said things that have offended the other side over the last, what, thirty years now, and each side has commented publicly on its inability to trust the other side.”
“This mistrust has deep roots, and we don’t think it can be overcome overnight, but we made some progress last week in Geneva, and we hope to continue making progress, including with additional bilateral meetings going forward,” Harf added.
Finally, Harf tried to justify Wendy Sherman’s statement about Iranians’ DNA, saying that Sherman did not actually mention individual Iranians per se. It is a bit hard to accept her justification when we examine the statement in context.
As we know, Satan is the great deceiver, whose deception of Adam and Eve marked the beginning of human history as we know it. After the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini named America “the Great Satan.”
Now, 35 years later, when Wendy Sherman says deception is part of Iranian DNA, this is really a tit-for-tat reaction. Iran’s nuclear program is still at the forefront of of all the issues and problems between America and Iran, and it is the most sensitive issue for the Israelis. There is a deep and complicated psychological and propaganda war between America and Israel on one side and the Iran on the other.
The US Congress is the strongest supporter of Israel, and most of the Congressmen and Congresswomen are pro-Israel. Who can forget Netanyahu’s speech to Congress on May 24, 2011, at a time when Obama was outside America? Netanyahu could only dream of such a reception in Israel. Even his wife, Sarah, received a standing ovation when she entered the hall. The prime minister was applauded some 30 times, many of them standing ovations. An important question arises: Why is the US Congress the strongest supporter of Israel? The answer is clear: Most of the Congressmen and Congresswomen are backed by the pro-Israel lobby in America. For instance, there is a very famous figure who plays a notable role in all elections in America.
Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire who extensively funded numerous Republican campaigns in the 2012 election, said at a forum at the Yeshiva University that President Obama should fire an atomic weapon into the middle of the desert to send a message to Iran.
“What are we going to negotiate about? What I would say is, ‘Listen, you see that desert out there? I want to show you something,'” Adelson said. “You pick up your cellphone, and you call somewhere in Nebraska, and you say, ‘Okay, let it go.’ So there’s an atomic weapon goes over—ballistic missiles—in the middle of the desert that doesn’t hurt a soul.”
“Yeshiva” means an institute of learning where students study sacred texts, primarily the Talmud. In other words, Yeshiva University is more Jewish than Christian, and more Israeli than American. Adelson is the king of casinos in the US and around the world. And he continued to suggest that the US attack Tehran with an atomic bomb: “Then you say, ‘See? The next one is in the middle of Tehran.’ So, we mean business. You want to be wiped out? Go ahead and take a tough position and continue with your nuclear development. . . . You want to be peaceful? Just reverse it all, and we will guarantee you that you can have a nuclear power plant for electricity purposes, energy purposes.”
Adelson spent at least USD 98 million on the American election in 2012. He was a remarkable supporter of Bush and Gingrich.
I also want to focus next on a major deception in current history: the case of the American approach toward the Palestine and Palestinians.
Unfortunately, Iran’s nuclear program has been occupying the entire global political sphere for a while now, and consequently the issue of Palestine has been pushed aside, so Israel continues to promote its policy of building new Jewish settlements in Jerusalem and in the West Bank.
Gingrich, who was supported by the neoconservatives, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and many other pro-Israel lobby groups in America, very frankly rejected the rights of Palestinians as a nation: “Remember, there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire,” the former House speaker told the Jewish Channel. “And I think that we’ve invented the Palestinian people, who are in fact Arabs and are historically part of the Arab community, and they had the chance to go many places,” Gingrich said in December 2011.
It is a great deceit to deny an entire nation’s right to exist. Let me narrate a strange story of American deceit. When Henry Kissinger met Sadat and introduced his six-point plan as a ‘Kissinger plan,’ Sadat told him: “Never forget, Dr. Kissinger, I am making this agreement with the United States, not with Israel.”
However, the six-point plan was an Israeli plan, which is why Kissinger wrote in his book, Years of Upheaval, that “there was not a . . . smile on my face, but in my heart I laughed and laughed, because the manuscript of the plan was written by [Israeli prime minister] Menachim Begin.”
Now let me go back to Wendy Sherman’s statement about DNA. It is not difficult to find other, similar examples, where America and Israel deceived Palestinians and other Muslim countries. Look at all of the negotiations between Israel and Palestine—look at the Annapolis Conference in May 2007. The conference was merely a big show. What was the result? And who is the great deceiver after all? It seems to me that Wendy Sherman needs to read Rashid Khalidi’s book, Brokers of Deceit: How the US Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East, to find the real face of the great deceiver.