Spinning us to war in Iran

During former US President Bill Clinton’s recent trip to Australia, he said the two greatest threats facing the 21st Century were terrorism and global warming. The Age welcomed Clinton’s presence in Melbourne as the coming of an almost god-like figure. “While much of the world’s population struggles simply to survive”, it breathlessly offered, “Large numbers of the rest of us are searching for heroes”. The fact that Clinton oversaw the bulk of sanctions against Iraq, and the death of over 500,000 men, women and children, was airbrushed out of existence. For The Age, Clinton wasn’t Bush or a Republican, and therefore was a person worthy of respect.

Clinton was right on one issue, however. Global warming is a major problem and still largely side-lined by governments and mainstream media alike. Readers of the UK Guardian on February 8 were treated to this striking piece of news:

Sweden is to take the biggest energy step of any advanced western economy by trying to wean itself off oil completely within 15 years - without building a new generation of nuclear power stations. The attempt by the country of 9 million people to become the world's first practically oil-free economy is being planned by a committee of industrialists, academics, farmers, car makers, civil servants and others, who will report to parliament in several months.

Sweden is the first Western country to attempt such an endeavour and yet the news was ignored in Australia. Instead, our self-appointed “terrologists” prefer to focus the public’s attentions on the next target of liberation: Iran.

As the quagmire in Iraq deepens, and Islamophobia becomes both politically correct and encouraged, the same figures that led us into Saddam’s lair are now trying to achieve a similar result next-door. Perhaps somebody should inform John Howard. He told Southern Cross Radio on February 27 that Iraq was “inching towards a more stable future” and foreign troops were needed for the “stabilisation process”. In reality, the occupation is the main source of the ongoing insurgency.

We live in an environment where Muslims are portrayed as backward, looking for Western assistance and irrationally violent. Take this example from UK columnist Julie Burchill, writing in Haaretz on February 17:

Anyway, from now on I think I'll get just a few less accusations of racism when I point out that Muslims can be a bit, well, narrow-minded. Mind you, it's a long hard struggle trying to make bleeding-heart liberals see sense. Especially when you live in a country where a sizable part of the print and broadcasting media are such guilt-ridden cretins when it comes to Islam that if they saw Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein sexually sharing their own grandmother, they'd swear the poor old lady asked for it.

Perhaps Muslims need a good dose of Western invasion and occupation. And Iran is the next victim. A poll taken in the US in mid-February suggested that people believe Iran will develop nuclear weapons and use them against the United States. We are constantly told that Iran is a “threat”. Barry Cohen, federal Labor MP from 1969-1990 and a minister in the Hawke Government, informed readers in The Australian on February 17 that Iran was led by fanatics and desired to destroy Israel with nuclear weapons. “The fanatics don’t care if they die,” he wrote, “On the contrary, many will welcome it. At the risk of being repetitive - we have a problem.”

His solution wasn’t articulated.

Larry Derfner, a senior journalist and columnist at the Jerusalem Post, offered another perspective. He believes Iran is going to get nuclear weapons whether the West likes it or not. His answer, however, was for Israel to build “more and better nuclear weapons of its own”. This kind of “deterrence”, Derfner wrote, “works well”. He also encouraged the Jewish state to develop better chemical and biological weapons than Iran.

Republican Senator John McCain told US television recently the, “Iranian threat to the world is the biggest since the Cold War”.

The rise of a supposedly nuclear Iran is not to be tolerated but meanwhile India and Pakistan can build their arsenals. Israel’s “open secret” of between 200 and 500 nuclear warheads isn’t even susceptible to international inspections, while Iran has allowed UN inspectors to comb the country looking for weapon’s material.

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.