The Iran ‘bombshell’: Obama knew all along

Half close one's eyes and we could have been back in Bush-time, amid the ripest hours of the propaganda barrage for the US-led onslaught on Iraq. The familiar backdrop: the UN General Assembly, in this instance migrating to the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh. The theme: disclosure of fresh, chilling evidence of the duplicity of a pariah nation and of the threat it poses to the civilised world.

Then it was GW Bush's Secretary of State, Colin Powell, enthusiastically relaying a string of lies and blatant forgeries. Last week it was President Barack Obama, flanked by his Euro-puppets, dispensing an equally mendacious press release that was swallowed without a hiccup by the Western press.

There is no quarrel about the actual sequence of events, concerning the supposed bombshell disclosure of another Iranian nuclear facility near Qom.

US intelligence says there is no hard evidence Iran is seeking nukes

US intelligence knew about the site back in Bush time. Obama was briefed about it during the transition. Last spring US surveillance ­ from satellites and maybe from spies on the ground ­ concluded that a speed-up in the plant's construction was underway. US intelligence then supposedly learned that the Iranians knew the plant was under US observation.

After that it was all news management. The White House was readying Obama's dramatic disclosure. Maybe someone tipped off the Iranians, maybe not. In any event, Tehran sent a note about the facility to the International Atomic Energy Agency a week ago notifying it that the plant was under construction. (The Iranians insist they were under no obligation to do so earlier because the plant was only in preliminary stages of construction.)

On Thursday Obama seized the headlines with his threat that "Iran is on notice that when we meet with them on October 1 they are going to have to come clean and they will have to make a choice". The alternative to giving up their programme, he warned, was to "continue down a path that is going to lead to confrontation".

Obama duly got his reward: positive press for his "forceful" performance and instant support from President Medvedev of Russia, thus delivering a quid pro quo for Obama's cancellation of the missile bases in Poland and the Czech Republic. Indeed the timing of that cancellation suggests that the entire scenario had been tightly scripted well in advance. China was much more reserved.

In reality the public disclosure of something the US knew about years ago ­ knowledge it shared with its prime Nato allies and Israel ­ changes nothing. The consensus of US intelligence remains that there is no hard evidence that Iran is actively seeking to manufacture nuclear weapons. Iran has agreed to an inspection of the plant at some appropriate point.

The absurdity of Obama thundering against Iran, which has signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and has allowed inspections, while remaining entirely silent about Israel, is so blatant that here one can catch scattered references to it in news commentaries.

The disasters will assist in the destruction of Obama’s presidency

Remember: Israel has refused to sign the non-proliferation treaty and has adamantly refused all inspections. Yet it is known to have an arsenal of somewhere between 200 and 300 nuclear weapons about which ­ Prime Minister Gordon Brown might care to note - it has been serially deceptive for nearly half a century. They allegedly have a delivery range that can reach Kiev.

Obama's policy remains tightly in sync with that of his predecessor in the White House. Spasms of ferocious bluster towards Iran raise public anxiety. Stories about imminent Israeli raids on Iran are balanced by leaks to the effect that the White House is keeping Israel on a leash. Then sanctions are tightened on Iran. These have the effect of causing great misery to the general population, while strengthening the political hand of the theocracy, which can put extra muscle into its repression on the grounds that the country is under siege.

Meanwhile this supposedly rational president is already having to pay the political bills for the reckless espousal during his election campaign of a wider war in Afghanistan. Anyone wanting to understand how JFK plunged into the Vietnamese quagmire, and how LBJ got in even deeper, has only to follow the current fight over Afghan policy. Insanity effortlessly trumps commonsense.

It is generally agreed that the situation in Afghanistan from the US point of view is rapidly getting worse. In terms of military advantage the Taliban have been doing very well, helped by America¹s bizarre policy of trying to assassinate the Taliban¹s high command by drones, thus allowing vigorous young Taliban commanders to step into senor positions.

According to Ahmed Rashid, in a savage and well-informed piece in the New York Review: "For much of this year the Taliban have been on the offensive in Afghanistan. Their control of just 30 out of 364 districts in 2003 expanded to 164 districts at the end of 2008, according to the military expert Anthony Cordesman, who is advising General McChrystal. Taliban attacks increased by 60 per cent between October 2008 and April 2009.

"In August, moreover - as part of their well-planned anti-election campaign - the Taliban opened new fronts in the north and west of the country where they had little presence before."

To have even a remote chance of prospering, Obama's policy requires a very costly commitment of troops and civil advisers for well over two years. Democrats know perfectly well that if an Obama administration is at war in Afghanistan in the fall of 2010, it will cost them dearly in the mid-term elections. Liberals will stay home in droves, and the Republicans may well recapture at least one house of Congress.

After months of derision about Iran's "faked elections", Karzai's fakery in the recent Afghan election was too blatant to permit even pro forma denial. The oft-announced goal of training an Afghan army and police force is faring no better ­ in fact considerably worse ­ than the efforts at 'Vietnamisation' 40 years ago. Once furnished with a few square meals, some new clothes and a weapon, the recruits - some of them having been sent by the Taliban to get basic training - promptly desert.

The expedition to Afghanistan is not popular, either here or in Europe. But of course it has powerful sponsors, starting with Obama who made it a campaign plank. He may be having second thoughts now, but he is showered daily with demented counsels to "stay the course" by his Secretary of State and about 80 per cent of the permanent foreign policy establishment.

So the involvement will get deeper and the disasters will mount and powerfully assist in the destruction of Obama's presidency, as some of his erstwhile influential liberal fans, such as Frank Rich of the New York Times, are now conceding.

Alas, we have a president who turns out to have painfully few fixed principles but an enthusiasm for news management that gave him his moment of glory in Pittsburgh last week, but which leaves more and more sensible people wondering if he has any constructive long-term strategy to lower tensions and reduce the likely prospect of savage bloodletting across the Middle East. The passing months have been brutally unkind to such expectations.