Spinning us to war in Iran

It should be noted that North Korea has undoubtedly learnt the best way to avoid US invasion. Build a bomb - maybe a few - and watch the world suddenly lower the rhetoric.

The inevitability of a Western offensive against Iran is gathering steam. Even ABC Radio’s PM is not immune. In mid-February, host Mark Colvin interviewed an English professor on international affairs and asked him how the West should deal with the “Iranian nuclear threat”. John Pilger recently explained in the New Statesman how we are being set up again:

Iran offers no "nuclear threat". There is not the slightest evidence that it has the centrifuges necessary to enrich uranium to weapons-grade material. The head of the IAEA, Mohamed El Baradei, has repeatedly said his inspectors have found nothing to support American and Israeli claims. Iran has done nothing illegal; it has demonstrated no territorial ambitions nor has it engaged in the occupation of a foreign country - unlike the United States, Britain and Israel. It has complied with its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to allow inspectors to "go anywhere and see anything" - unlike the US and Israel.

The deputy head of Russia’s foreign intelligence service told a Russian daily newspaper on February 22 that his country had no evidence that Iran had any nuclear warheads or a sufficient amount of plutonium for constructing them. Flynt Leverett, former senior director for Middle East affairs in the US National Security Council (NSC), revealed in late February the Bush administration deliberately sabotaged Iran’s assistance on Al-Qaida in the period after September 11, although the mullahs had many contacts in Afghanistan and were willing to share them with Washington. Furthermore, even though Iranian officials assisted the US in unseating the Taliban in Afghanistan, the neo-conservatives were determined to isolate Iran and include it in the “axis of evil”. It is therefore unsurprising that Iran would feel the need to at least explore its nuclear options in response to US aggression.

We live in an age of spin. The US Government Accountability Office released a report in mid-February that revealed the Bush administration spent at least US$1.6 billion on public relations and advertising campaigns over 30 months. It is a startling though unsurprising figure. The Bush regime recently asked congress for a further US$75 million to broadcast US radio and television into Iran, assist Iranians to study in America and support pro-democracy groups inside the Islamic state.

The situation in Iran remains uncertain. I am not suggesting Iran’s leadership hasn’t made inflammatory or outrageous comments, not least President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s suggestion that Israel should be “wiped off the map” and denial of the Jewish Holocaust. Such statements are both unacceptable and repulsive.

Sadly, Israel and its supporters are at the forefront of demonising Iran and advocating military action. Not unlike Iraq, Iran is a perceived threat to the Jewish state.

One of the great unspoken truths about the so-called “war on terror” has been the ascendency of Iran. Iranian influence now stretches throughout the region. The US is fearful that as their regional influence is waning, a religious doctrine is taking its place. What better way to distract public opinion than a scare campaign? The Financial Times reported last week that US marines are already launching probes into Iran’s ethnic minorities in an attempt to determine whether Iran “would be prone to a violent fragmentation along the same kind of fault lines that are splitting Iraq”. China is rushing to complete a deal worth as much as US$100 billion that would allow a Chinese state-owned energy firm to take a leading role in developing a massive oil field in Iran. Clearly, not everybody is worried about Tehran.

When Murdoch’s mouthpiece, The Australian, tells its readers “the media must not become the tool of propagandists”, we know that responsible commentary is dead. The paper’s editorial on February 16 concluded:

The distortion of accuracy and loss of trust among a wider public that looks at biased news coverage, smells a rat, and switches off is only part of the danger. The other, more sinister, side of the equation is that any old despot can ensure favourable coverage of his regime, so long as he presents a properly anti-Western front. Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, for one, is a master of this tactic. When news judgments are clouded by a warmed-over postmodernism that filters every conflict through a cloudy lens of class and power struggles, and where the US is the worst bad guy of all, totalitarians and terrorists turn the West's hard-won free press into their own ministry of propaganda.

The total failure of the Iraq project should not be taken as a comforting reason the US and its allies would not attack Iran. The storm clouds are nearly upon us. The US and Israel are gathering public opinion on board for yet another illegal and immoral intervention. It is the media’s duty to stop it. Unfortunately, the corporate media’s sole responsibility is to make money in the marketplace. Truth already comes a distant second to happy shareholders.