The Daily Caller editor in chief Tucker Carlson faced an onslaught of criticism yesterday for telling Fox News “Red Eye” viewers that “Iran deserves to be annihilated.” Carlson’s comments, first reported on ThinkProgress, led The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg to observe, “This is the sort of rhetoric that leads to war. I have no doubt this clip will be played over and over again in Tehran by a regime eager to prove that America wants to — to borrow a phrase — wipe Iran off the map.” In emails to Glenn Greenwald, Carlson largely walked back his statement, saying, “I think attacking could be a disaster for the US and am worried that Obama will do it, for fear of seeming weak before an election.”

Appearing on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal this morning, Carlson tried to walk back his comments:

I was actually trying to make the opposite point but I was doing it in a very inarticulate way. [...] I was actually urging caution. I’m not particularly hawkish to be totally honest with you.

Later in the show, facing a question from a call-in guest about his statement calling for the annihilation of Iran, Carlson responded, “I misrepresented my own views,” and attempted to clarify his position:

The point I was actually making on that show on Tuesday night was, which I’m sure you didn’t see, while Iran’s government clearly is evil and I would like to see Iran’s government crushed, I think there probably are consequences to bombing Iran and going to war with Iran that might hurt us. Specifically, what would it do to the cost of energy?

The two C-Span segments in which Carlson addresses his “Red Eye” comments are combined below:

Indeed, gas prices would, no doubt, skyrocket if the U.S. began another war in the Middle East. But that’s just one of many consequences. The U.S. Navy’s fifth fleet based in Bahrain, U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and Iraq’s stability could all be put in danger and Hezbollah could stage terrorist attacks on Israeli and/or U.S. targets. All of that aside, the large number of U.S. and Iranian casualties that would result from any attempt to “annihilate” Iran or overthrow the government with outside military force is well worth considering before casually discussing launching a third U.S. war in the Middle East.

While the IAEA has said it has concerns about military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program and U.S. officials have said that its unclear whether the Islamic Republic has decided on building a bomb, an attack would give reason for Iran to weaponize its program.

Tucker Carlson’s efforts to walk back his incendiary statements are appreciated but there are other reasons, apart from rising gas prices, to be reticent to “annihilate” a country of 74 million people.

The once shoe-in favorite for the GOP presidential nomination Mitt Romney has been taking a beating lately — from his own supporters and advisers. Much of the criticism centers on Romney’s policies in various parts of Asia. Just this week, Romney supporter Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) parted ways with his candidate of choice on whether to enter into talks with the Taliban, with McCain supporting the Obama administration’s position. But a much more significant gulf may be opening up between Romney and his camp on China, particularly about his strident criticisms of Obama’s “pivot.”

Last week, Romney wrote a Wall Street Journal opinion piece blasting Obama’s Asia policy, particularly on China (albeit while misrepresenting said Obama policy). That afternoon on MSNBC, former Utah governor Jon Huntsman, who endorsed Romney after dropping his own presidential bid, said Romney’s China policies were “wrongheaded” and that he “would disagree with what some of what Governor Romney said.”

Now, a top Romney foreign policy adviser — not merely a supporter — has come out and praised Obama’s Asia policy, particularly his work on China. Appearing on the Colbert Report to promote his book, neoconservative Brookings scholar Robert Kagan, an Iraq hawk who advises the Romney campaign, said Obama “has a good policy in Asia, particularly in dealing with China”:

COLBERT: How can you advise Romney and like anything the President does?

KAGAN: I think that when the president does the right thing, it doesn’t matter what party you’re in, you should be supportive.

COLBERT: Killing bin laden doesn’t count. Killing Awlaki doesn’t count. Killing Qaddafi doesn’t count. Supporting the Arab Spring doesn’t count. So what else has he done?

KAGAN: Well, I think he’s done some things wrong. I think he has a good policy in Asia, particularly in dealing with China. I think he’s strengthened our position in Asia with our allies. On some issues I think he’s been a lot weaker.

Watch the video, starting at the four-minute mark:

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Kagan’s assessment that Obama has “strengthened our position in Asia with our allies” flies in the face of what Romney said in his Wall Street Journal piece. The GOP candidate wrote:

[Obama] has only encouraged Chinese assertiveness and made our allies question our staying power in East Asia… The supposed pivot has been oversold and carries with it an unintended consequence: It has left our allies with the worrying impression that we left the region and might do so again.

But maybe no one should be surprised that Kagan is a fan of some Obama policies. After all, the feeling seems to be mutual. Last month, Foreign Policy’s Josh Rogin and the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein wrote that Obama spoke effusively about Kagan’s essay in the New Republic (also here) about “the myth of American decline.”

A U.N. body that regulates telecommunications ruled that Iran, among other nations, must stop jamming and interfering with international broadcasts. At the World Radiocommunications Conference, members of the U.N.’s International Telecommunications Union (ITU) voted overwhelmingly to mandate that authorities take “necessary action” to end jamming in their jurisdictions. “Jamming is a fundamental violation, not only of international regulations and norms, but of the right of people everywhere to receive and impart information,” said Richard Lobo, the director of the U.S. International Broadcasting Bureau, which beams U.S. government-sponsored channels like Voice of America’s Persian service into Iran.

Rights groups lauded the decision. Aliakbar Mousavi, a former member of Iranian parliament, praised the move in a statement released by the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran (ICHRI):

This is the first meaningful action taken by the ITU and the UN to make legal provisions to counter censorship of satellite programs within various countries. The Iranian regime will have no more excuses to breach these regulations.

But Iran does not appear ready to give up. RFE/RL reporter Golnaz Esfandiari tweeted an article from an semi-official Iranian news agency showing Iranian authorities leaping from rooftop to rooftop in East Tehran in order to confiscate illegal satellite dishes in the name of “social security” — that is, securing “social” values. Here’s a picture of police standing over dismantled dishes:

The ITU ruling comes after Human Rights Watch and the Committee to Protect Journalists raised alarms about intimidation of family to employees of Britain’s state-sponsored Farsi-language news service, BBC Persian, which is also beamed into Iran against the wishes of the regime.

But the vote itself is only the start of enforcing the decision, ICHRI notes. In a December Wall Street Journal opinion piece, ICHRI spokesman Hadi Ghaemi and Shirin Ebadi, a Nobel Laureate and Iranian human rights lawyer, laid out how companies like the European group Eutelsat allow Iran to block signals for channels like BBC Persian but at the same time allow Iranian state-owned operators to use their satellites unencumbered. They wrote:

The European Union and U.S. should take immediate and decisive action requiring that these satellite companies end their cooperation with Iranian censors. … Without pressure on these companies from both sides of Atlantic, the people of Iran will remain cut off from the outside world.

In today’s ICHRI statement, Ghaemi said: “The ITU has now made Iran’s legal obligations perfectly clear. But the international community, including telecommunications corporations like Eutelsat, needs to sustain its efforts to make sure Iran stops jamming satellite broadcasts.”

Jamming satellites, though, are by no means the only way Iran controls the flow of information. This month, journalists and others reported that Iran increasingly curtailed internet access ahead of next month’s parliamentary elections — in addition to cracking down on journalists themselves.

As the “drumbeat to war” with Iran, as Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) warns of, grows louder, a number of journalists have begun to compare the hawkish rhetoric from pundits with the calls for military action against Iraq in 2002. Scott Shane, writing on the frontpage of today’s New York Times, observed, “Echoes of the period leading up to the Iraq war in 2003 are unmistakable, igniting a familiar debate over whether journalists are overstating Iran’s progress toward a bomb.” Indeed, the ombudsman of The Washington Post and the public editor of The New York Times criticized their own journalists for overstating the evidence of Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program.

Over the past week, journalists have raised the alarm about the increasing carelessness of the mainstream media in hyping the calls for war with Iran. But Fox News commentator and The Daily Caller editor-in-chief Tucker Carlson openly called for war against Iran and argued for the full-scale annihilation of the Islamic Republic during an appearance on Fox News’s late-night show Red Eye. Carlson responded to a question about U.S. military action:

CARLSON: I think we are the only country with the moral authority [...] sufficient to do that. [The U.S. is] the only country that doesn’t seek hegemony in the world. I do think, I’m sure I’m the lone voice in saying this, that Iran deserves to be annihilated. I think they’re lunatics. I think they’re evil.

Carlson, having called for the annihilation of Iran — a country with a population of over 74 million people — went on to acknowledge that “we should assess what will happen to the price of energy were we to do that.” Watch the clip:

Carlson doesn’t bother to make a case for why the U.S. should destroy Iran. But presumably he’s referring to the crisis over Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program. However, neither the IAEA nor U.S. intelligence reports conclude that Iran has restarted its nuclear weapons program. The IAEA and U.S. intelligence have expressed concerns about possible military aspects to Iran’s nuclear program and suspicions about Iran’s program intensified after Tehran refused IAEA inspectors access to facilities thought to be used for tests on how to produce nuclear weapons. Tehran also refused to agree to a process by which it would address IAEA concerns about “possible military dimensions” to its nuclear program.

But, much as in the case of the lead up to the invasion of Iraq, many journalists and politicians are ignoring the facts on the ground and pushing forward with calls for increasingly aggressive actions. Carlson, however, may stand alone in publicly calling for Iran’s outright annihilation.

Republicans often criticize President Obama for not hewing exactly to advice from top military leaders (a criticism those military leaders find “offensive“). But when it has suited their agendas, those very same Republicans have themselves not shied away from publicly disagreeing with top uniformed military officials.

In September, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) joined colleagues to criticize Obama for failing to offer a plan for Iraq that “reflects the best military advice of U.S. commanders.”

But Graham isn’t always so willing to listen to top American military officials. Last week the South Carolina Republican disagreed publicly with Director of National Intelligence James Clapper’s assessment that Iran hasn’t decided on whether it will build a nuclear bomb.

This weekend on CNN, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey spoke out against an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities in the immediate future and added that the pressure and diplomacy tracks should be pursued because the Joint Chiefs “are of the opinion that the Iranian regime is a rational actor.” Once again, Graham shot back, saying yesterday on CNN that he disagreed with the top U.S. military officer:

GRAHAM: But you know, General Dempsey is a fine man. But when he said that he thought the Iranians were rational actors, I just want to go on record. I don’t think it’s rational for a country to try to kill the Saudi Arabian ambassador in a restaurant in Washington.

I don’t see what Iran is doing is being rational. I see it as being dangerous and so that’s why we need to make sure Syria ends well.

Watch the video:

The alleged Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador to Washington indeed represents a threat — one Clapper outlined. But Graham is missing the larger picture. Last month, Clapper said in his congressional testimony that Iran’s decision — yet unmade, according to reliable media organizations, U.N. agencies and reported U.S. intelligence estimates — to build a nuclear weapon or not “would be based on a cost-benefit analysis.” Clapper went on to give several examples of factors that could influence this cost-benefit analysis, such as economic and diplomatic pressure.

While Republican politicians should be free to criticize opinions expressed by military officers, they ought to cut out the hypocrisy of insisting on Obama’s fealty to military advice when jettisoning the officers’ opinions on topics where they disagree with the brass.

Over the past week, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria that the Iranians have “not decided that they will embark on the [...] effort to weaponize their nuclear capability.” Both Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee that Iran had not yet decided to develop a nuclear weapon.

But the analysis of America’s top military officer, the Secretary of Defense and the Director of National Intelligence just isn’t good enough for Christian Whiton, the Deputy Director of National Security Staff at the Newt Gingrich presidential campaign. Appearing on Fox News yesterday, Whiton falsely claimed that an International Atomic Energy Agency report from last November “says Iran is working on a nuclear weapons program,” adding that the administration “need[s] to start telling the truth about the threat [from Iran]“:

WHITON: The most important thing we need to do is start telling the truth about the threat. For Leon Panetta, the defense secretary, to go up to Congress last week and say that we know they’re working on an energy program and a uranium program but not necessarily a nuclear weapons program, that’s just wrong. The IAEA has said that is wrong. The 2007 National Intelligence Estimate that said Iran had halted its program was wrong, has been disproved. It is now viewed as misleading and politicized. So step one is telling the truth.”

Watch it:

But Whiton never got to “step one” himself. In fact, while the November IAEA report did express concerns about possible military dimensions to Iran’s program, it did not assert that Iran “is working on a nuclear weapons program.” Indeed, no further reports from U.S. intelligence services or the IAEA have asserted that Iran has restarted its nuclear weapons program.

The development of dual-military-civilian use technologies raises serious questions about Iran’s nuclear program, but no verifiable evidence has yet been produced to show that the Islamic Republic is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon. While Clapper said Iranians are “keeping themselves in a position to make that decision,” he also said that Iran is susceptible to sanctions and diplomacy. “We judge Iran’s nuclear decisionmaking is guided by a cost-benefit approach, which offers the international community opportunities to influence Tehran,” he said last week

Whiton, who last made headlines after the July, 2011 terrorist attack in Norway by claiming that European countries are susceptible to terrorism because they’re “neutral on the war on terror,” might want to check his facts before accusing the Secretary of Defense of lying to Congress.

Womens’ veterans groups and media figures widely criticized Fox News pundit Liz Trotta last week for claiming that women service members should “expect” sexual assault and complaining about levels of bureaucracy that support women who have been “raped too much.” Trotta was reacting to and complaining about a recent Pentagon decision to relax rules on women serving in combat roles.

This weekend on Fox News, Trotta tried clarify what she meant, saying that she’s concerned about “the hardline feminists” trying “to force the Pentagon to lift the ban on women in combat.” She added that, “Accordingly, the political correctness infecting the Pentagon has resulted in silly and dishonest fairy tales about female heroism.”

But instead of offering any regret for saying women in the military should expect sexual assault, she dug in a bit further, seeming to agree with the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer that women should not serve in combat at all because they’re, well, women:

TROTTA: The military is not a social services operation, or a testing ground for gender wars. It is a fighting machine. Women are not as strong as men. Their instincts and reactions in crises are markedly different. There’s a reality the left will not face: biology is not destiny.

Mediaite has the video:

Raw Story points out that President Obama recently nominated the second female ever to serve as a four star general and that according to a Congressional Research Service report last year, the military has recognized women service members for heroism in combat. “In 10 years of combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, thousands of female members have been deployed, and hundreds wounded and/or killed,” the report says. “On numerous occasions women have been recognized for their heroism, two earning Silver Star medals.”

GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s press secretary Alice Stewart came under fire yesterday for her comments accusing President Barack Obama of having “radical Islamic policies.” Stewart said Santorum was referring to these policies when he said the president’s environmental agenda was driven by “phony ideology.” Stewart told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell:

STEWART: There is a type of theological secularism when it comes to the global warmists in this country. That’s what [Santorum] was referring to. He was referring to the president’s policies in terms of the radical Islamic policies the president has, specifically in terms of the energy exploration.

Watch it:

Mitchell later reported that Stewart had phoned MSNBC to correct her statement. “I was referring to Obama’s radical environmental policies and on one reference, I accidentally said radical ‘Islamic’ policies,” Stewart wrote in an email to Fox News. “I misspoke and I regret it.”

While Stewart’s comments may have, as she suggests, been an unfortunate slip up, the Santorum campaign is developing a track-record of suggesting that Obama’s policies are driven by nefarious motives. Earlier this month, Santorum accused Obama of “throwing Israel under the bus” and allowing Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon in exchange for access to their oil.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey urged against an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear program, telling CNN’s Fareed Zakaria this morning that “It’s not prudent at this point to decide to attack Iran,” and such a strike would be “destabilizing and wouldn’t achieve [Israel's] long-term objectives.”

Dempsey, the highest ranking military officer in the U.S., went on to emphasize that while all options remain on the table, U.S. intelligence indicates that Iran has not yet decided to pursue a nuclear weapon:

MARTIN DEMPSEY: We also know, or believe we know, that the Iranian regime has not decided that they will embark on the [...] effort to weaponize their nuclear capability.

FAREED ZAKARIA: You think that is still unclear? [...]

DEMPSEY: It is. I believe it is unclear and on that basis I think it would be premature to exclusively decide that the time for a military option was upon us.

Watch the interview:

Dempsey’s conclusion that Iran has not yet decided to pursue a nuclear weapon reflects the consensus view of the U.S. intelligence community and the IAEA. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the Senate Armed Service Committee on Thursday that Iran’s leadership had not yet decided to develop a nuclear weapon but were “keeping themselves in a position to make that decision.”

The November IAEA report on Iran’s nuclear program found that while there were possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program, the nuclear watchdog agency couldn’t confirm that Tehran was pursuing a nuclear weapon. The IAEA’s findings were upheld by CIA Director David Petraeus last month. Petraeus told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the IAEA report is “the authoritative document” on Iran’s nuclear program.

Indeed, a nuclear weapons possessing Iran would be destabilizing but while hawks on Capitol Hill are eager to portray Iran as a “martyr state” hellbent on acquiring nuclear weapons, senior intelligence and military officials take a very different view. “We are of the opinion that the Iranian regime is a rational actor,” said Dempsey. “And it’s for that reason that we think the current path we’re on is the most prudent path at this point.”

Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai confirmed this week that his government is now engaging in trilateral peace talks with the Taliban and the United States to end the 10-year war. GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, however, opposes any talks with the insurgent group. “The right course for America is not to negotiate with the Taliban while the Taliban are killing our soldiers,” Romney said during a debate last month.

Not only does Romney’s own foreign policy adviser disagree with Romney on this issue, but also, one of Romney’s top supporters with national security and foreign policy credentials, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), takes issue with that position. Today on ABC’s This Week, McCain said “it’s important” to talk to the Taliban. When host Jake Tapper asked McCain to square that with Romney’s view, McCain dodged, saying he hasn’t talked with the former Massachusetts governor on the issue:

TAPPER: Are those talks a mistake?

MCCAIN: No I think it’s important to have talks wherever you can. But I also think that it’s important to remember that we have to have an outcome on the battlefield that would motivate a successful conclusion to those talks. …

TAPPER: The reason I ask sir is that Mitt Romney says that there should be no negotiation with the Taliban whereas I’ve heard you say in the past, you make peace with your enemies and that’s who you need to negotiate with so on this issue…you and Mitt Romney disagree.

MCCAIN: Well I haven’t had a conversation with him but I’m sure that Mitt Romney would like to have a peaceful solution.

Watch it:

McCain isn’t the only Romney surrogate to take issue with Romney’s policies this week. Former GOP presidential candidate and U.S. ambassador to China Jon Huntsman last week criticized Romney’s China policy, calling it “wrongheaded” and suggested that Romney, and other presidential candidates, engage in “less pandering” when talking about China.

A powerful member of the House Armed Services Committee spread false accusations against President Obama’s nuclear weapons reduction policy, claiming on a conservative radio show yesterday that no other countries in the world would join the United States in reducing their nuclear arsenal.

Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH) made the allegation while appearing on Secure Freedom Radio hosted by Frank Gaffney, one of the nation’s leading Islamophobes profiled in the Center for American Progress report Fear Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America.

Gaffney asked Turner if the real reason President Obama wanted to reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the world is because “this is a radical ideologue at work?” Turner agreed, going on to declare that during Obama’s tenure, the United States would be the “only country” that would reduce its nuclear arsenal. He concluded by dissembling about the New START treaty, an agreement between the U.S. and Russia to reduce the number of deployed nuclear weapons, by claiming that Russia would “not [be] required to lower their number at all”:

GAFFNEY: We have a president who is genuinely a radical ideologue when it comes to these things. [...] Is it not a better explanation that in fact it is the same thing we see so dramatically at work with the idea that we might reduce our nuclear arsenal to the level of Pakistan’s that really this is a radical ideologue at work?

TURNER: Right. And this is not about the budget. We’re not going to see significant savings from this. [...] It’s interesting, the president in Prague made a speech that was supposed to be a cornerstone of his presidency, where he called for a world without nuclear weapons and the road to zero. In his presidency, he will only have achieved eliminating our nuclear weapons. If you put a scoreboard on the wall, and you put the countries that have nuclear weapons or are pursuing nuclear weapons, and you start with the Obama presidency and the numbers of inventory they had, and then you get to his reelection campaign and put the numbers they have at the end, the only country on that board that’s going to have a lower number is the United States. In START, Russia was not required to lower their number at all.

Listen to it:

During the New START ratification debate back in 2010, Republicans regularly tried to float this false claim that the treaty wouldn’t force Russia to reduce its nuclear weapons. As the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation wrote, “The treaty enhances U.S. security by verifiably reducing U.S. and Russian nuclear stockpiles.” And the State Department fact sheet on the treaty notes that the limit for deployed warheads for both countries “is 74 percent lower than the limit of the 1991 START Treaty and 30 percent lower than the upper deployed strategic warhead limit of the 2002 Moscow Treaty.”

One expert called claims that Russia won’t have to limit its nukes “ridiculous.” “That’s the whole purpose of the treaty, to reduce the number of warheads,” said Robert Norris of the National Resources Defense Council.

The Obama administration is now reportedly considering reducing the U.S. nuclear arsenal further and Republicans, like Turner, are doing anything they can to prevent it, even if it includes making claims about America’s treaty obligations and nuclear security that have no basis in reality. But as CAP’s Lawrence Korb and Alex Rothman noted this week, “the Pentagon’s own strategic thinkers have noted that the strategic landscape has changed and that the U.S.’s Cold War-sized arsenal may exceed the country’s current needs.”