A mini-study in propaganda. First, obliquely stoke Islamophobia by referring to "Iran’s mullah-led government" and its efforts "to keep stoking tensions with the United States and the rest of the world." Second, ignore what the rest of the world thinks about Iranian nuclear weapons. Seriously. Pay no attention. "The rest of the world" is Israel and Tuvalu. Third, claim that it has "blocked serious talks on its nuclear program and other issues," which entails fourth, ignoring reality, which is that Iran wants serious talks and has pursued them for years, because the Mad Mullahs don't want to see Iran turned into a glassy slick.
Having accomplished this, rightly discuss the fate of three Americans hikers, from what I can tell good people who don't deserve to be imprisoned. Fifth, deplore their fate and abuse the rhetoric of human rights to position America as this amazing avatar of morality. Sixth, ignore the fact that America is not exactly the Virgin Mary when it comes to political prisoners. Seventh, refer in high fury to Iran's "fraudulent" elections when the reporting in your own newspaper speaks of "disputed" elections even in an article engaged in manic demonization.
And then you can still be utterly shocked when polls report that Americans prefer negotiations to military conflict with Iran, but doubt that negotiations will work. Americans aren't nuts, they prefer peace to war, but they doubt negotiations will work because they're told that the Mullahs are nuts. And so a "strong majority – 61% – says that it is more important to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, even if it means taking military action." That majority thinks it's more important to head off Iranian nuclear capacity than to avoid a massive war because they assume the Iranians are ruled by insane authoritarian Islamists. And they think that in part because that's what the NYT tells them.
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Great blog. Thanks.
oops, posted my response to this post down below in response to the J Street entry
this is a good post, but I am fearful that, as the situation in Afghanistan deteriorates, and the domestic economy fails to recover sufficiently to provide enough new jobs, there will be more and more pressure to attack Iran as a distraction from these other failures by creating a brief, nationalistic euphoria, which will, of course, pass quickly, but it will be too late for the Iranians and for us
Yes, it is possible. I really do believe that the powers-that-be don’t wish to attack Iran but do wish to control its nuclear production. It’s a difficult situation, in which as a distraction from domestic unrest it could serve. But most Iran experts–Parsi, Leverett, Gary Sick–do not think that the US wants to attack Iran. Perhaps they misunderstand the logic of escalation.