Bush's Agenda in Iran

By Reese Erlich, AlterNet. Posted October 3, 2007.

I went on Fox News' Hannity & Colmes recently. It was the usual food fight where right-wing zealot Sean Hannity interrupts and hogs the camera, not allowing much dissent. But I was even more interested in the introduction read by liberal Alan Colmes.

We were debating whether Iran's President Ahmadinejad should be allowed to speak at Columbia University. Colmes supported free speech. But the introduction to the segment repeated typical Bush falsehoods about Iran, including that Iran is killing American soldiers in Iraq and it is a grave danger to Israel. Colmes later contacted me to explain that he didn't agree with the introduction, although he didn't make that clear on air.

Unfortunately all too many mainstream Democratic Party and other "liberal" leaders do agree with those lies about Iran.

On Sept. 26, by a vote of 76-22, the Senate passed a "sense of the Senate" resolution calling on the United States to declare Iran's Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organization. The resolution, pushed by former vice presidential candidate Sen. Joe Lieberman, continues the drum beat for war against Iran. While some staunch liberals such as Ted Kennedy and Barbara Boxer voted nay, Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Hillary Clinton voted yes. (Click here for a full roll call vote.)

The Bush administration is preparing public opinion for a possible bombing attack on Iran. As with the months prior to the Iraq invasion, major Democratic Party leaders are climbing on board.

Half the warships in the U.S. Navy now sit within striking distance of Iran. Bush and Cheney have stepped up their rhetoric accusing Iran of threatening to start a "nuclear holocaust." The British press are predicting that the Bush administration will bomb Iran in the near future.

The White House is using the same propaganda techniques to whip up popular opinion against Iran that it used four years ago against Iraq. Here's the real story.

Iran has no nuclear weapons and couldn't have them for years. The International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. body that was right about WMDs in Iraq, says it has no proof of Iranian plans to build nuclear bombs. The IAEA recently reached a binding agreement for Iran to reveal its past nuclear activities and allow full inspection of nuclear power sites.

The sophisticated EFPs (explosively formed penetrators) supposedly supplied by Iran to militias in Iraq are easily made in Iraqi machine shops and can be purchased commercially for mining operations.

For years Iran has given political, economic and military support to Shia and Kurdish militias, but the administration has never proven that Iran is intentionally targeting U.S. soldiers.

Iran does not plan, nor does it have the capability of "wiping Israel off the map." If Iran is such an immediate threat to Israel, why hasn't it already launched a conventional missile attack? Such aggression would invite immediate destruction of Iran by both Israel and the United States. So if Iran hasn't started a conventional attack in 28 years, why would it possibly launch an atomic attack, even assuming it could develop a few such weapons years from now? The Iranian leaders are angry; they are not crazy.

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Reese Erlich is author of the new book The Iran Agenda: the Real Story of U.S. Policy and the Middle East Crisis.