Ever hear the story about the cub reporter sent to cover a city council meeting who comes back empty-handed? “Nothing to report,” he tells his city editor. “City hall burned down.”
In that manner, major U.S. news media covered U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Martin Dempsey’s June trip to Israel. Dempsey made a headline-worthy prediction about Iran while visiting Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot and Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon on June 9, 2015, Dempsey’s comments about Iran using sanctions relief to fund its terrorist activities and imperial ambitions has gone unnoticed by The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other major media outlets.
Dempsey—the principal military adviser to President Obama, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter and National Security Adviser Susan Rice—said he expects sanctions relief following a nuclear agreement between Iran and the “P-5+1″ (the United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia, China and Germany) would allow the theocratic state to expand funding for its terrorist proxy groups increasingly active in the region. The [c]hairman observed, “I think they [the Iranians] will invest in their surrogates; I think they will invest in additional military capability.”
Dempsey remarked he “shared” Israeli concerns about funds going towards Iranian-supported Shiite terrorist groups like Hezbollah or to strengthen the Iranian military. And he expressed skepticism that relief from tight economic sanctions would go to improving the “lot of the average Iranian citizen.”
These conclusions differ dramatically from other Obama administration officials such as Secretary of the Treasury Jacob Lew, who claimed less than two months before that “most of the money Iran receives from sanctions relief will not [emphasis in original] be used to support those activities.”
The top military official of the United States went on record expressing that sanctions relief likely would benefit not only terrorist organizations, but also an Iranian military engaged in disruptive operations in Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria. Yet The Washington Post failed to provide any coverage of the chairman’s Israel visit. The New York Times, in its reporting (“Head of U.S. Joint Chiefs Seeks to Assure Israel on Security,” June 10), omitted Dempsey’s comments on sanctions relief going to fund terror and Iranian imperialism. Instead, it focused on his efforts to “reassure” Israel.
Reassurance is nice, but sometimes it is what’s disturbing that ranks as important and newsworthy.– Sean Durns
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