Kaveh Afrasiabi: In Washington, systematic effort at demonizing Iran

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Press TV has conducted an interview with Kaveh Afrasiabi, author and political scientist from Boston, about a new allegation by the US Justice Department against Iran.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Obviously, the proof is in the pudding. Why doesn’t the US come up with solid proof when it levels accusations against Iran?

Afrasiabi: I think it is a very good question and I’m personally skeptical about this information because knowing Iran, it is very difficult to believe that anyone in Iran would try to harm US citizens by threatening their water dams. And as your report just said, the US engaged in Stuxnet attack on Iran that was highly dangerous and it even permeated outside Iran to other computers and became a worldwide problem in fact.

And one wonders about the timing of this because we see a systematic effort at Iranophobia demonizing Iran and this is all very unfortunate given the fact that we had a breakthrough nuclear agreement raising the prospects for detente and meaning for dialogue and even rapprochement between the two countries. And now instead we see a giant leap backward in the form of these unsubstantiated accusations and allegations that require legal substantiation and so forth. And unfortunately this is the election year in the US and anything goes, sky’s the limit as far as Iran bashing goes.

Press TV: Let’s even go by the hypothetical assumption that this incident did occur, but just the mere fact that the hackers being Iranian doesn’t equate to the Iranian government endorsing their actions or supporting the acts, the mere fact that these hackers maybe Iranian. So the US is jumping the gun accusing the Iranian government of this particular act.

Afrasiabi: At least some institutions of the Iranian government that are already on the blacklist in the US despite the nuclear agreement. And again, I question the timing of it coinciding with the atrocities in Europe and the US continuing to shadowbox with the terrorist group Islamic State, Daesh. And the Obama administration has devoted token amount of simply seven billion dollars to fight against ISIS (Daesh), which simply doesn’t cut it. And instead of looking at Iran as a major bulwark against terrorism that requires enlisting Iran’s cooperation in the worldwide efforts against extremism and terrorism, the US is basically on the wrong track with Iran and is doing everything to alienate the Iranian authorities and this will over the long run backfire against the nuclear agreement as well.


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