Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech to the UN (video or transcript) included a reference to a NY Times staff-ed about a previous “diplomatic breakthrough” on North Korea’s nuclear program.
Back in 2005, the Times wrote:
For years now, foreign policy insiders have pointed to North Korea as the ultimate nightmare, the ongoing worst-case scenario for an international crisis: a closed, hostile and paranoid dictatorship with an aggressive nuclear weapons program. Very few people could envision a successful outcome. And yet North Korea agreed in principle this week to dismantle its nuclear weapons program, return to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, abide by the treaty’s safeguards and admit international inspectors . . .
The agreement appears to vindicate those who argued all along that North Korea wanted to end its costly diplomatic isolation and ensure the survival of its current regime, and that it was using its nuclear weapons programs as a bargaining chip.
Here are five reasons Bibi’s speech called out the NY Times:
- The Prime Minister was subtly reminding the world that the media influences public opinion.
- Although other papers misjudged North Korea too, the Gray Lady’s the paper of record.
- Big Media’s rose-colored coverage of Hassan Rouhani shows it hasn’t learned anything from 2005. The papers that blew North Korea are just as capable of botching Iran.
- There’s no love lost between the Prime Minister’s office and the NY Times.
- Everyone knew the Times would give Bibi’s speech a thumbs down in today’s staff-ed, which wrote:
But it could be disastrous if Mr. Netanyahu and his supporters in Congress were so blinded by distrust of Iran that they exaggerate the threat, block President Obama from taking advantage of new diplomatic openings and sabotage the best chance to establish a new relationship since the 1979 Iranian revolution sent American-Iranian relations into the deep freeze.
