 the Iranian government. The IAEA was upbeat and positive in its report on Iranian cooperation, confirming "the exclusive peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear activities".
These conclusions were greeted with a stupendous lack of interest from the Western media. Despite the WMD lies and cooked intelligence that made the Iraq war appear legitimate at the time, the media appears to be playing the same deferential role again.
Politicians and diplomats are drifting into the same slipstream. Nicolas Sarkozy has added his voice to the anti-Iranian chorus. The Brown government has distanced itself from military action, but the faithful lieutenant will almost certainly fall into line if a war unfolds.
The countdown may already have begun. Last week Barnett Rubin, an Afghan expert at New York University, was told by one insider that the administration plans to unroll a coordinated PR campaign this month to prepare public opinion for war with Iran.
Expect dehumanising rhetoric about nuclear-armed 'mad Mullahs', attacks on US troops by 'Iranian-backed' insurgents, talk |
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Ahmadinejad
has convinced international observers that Iran’s nuclear plans are peaceful
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of 'Islamo-fascism' and women's rights, of clashing civilisations and the need to act sooner not later. There will, too, be endless replays of Ahmadinejad's mis-translated quote about 'wiping Israel off the map'.
We should be absolutely clear: these are pretexts for a war of aggression aimed at eliminating a regional rival to US and Israeli interests. It is not necessary to like the Iranian regime to recognise that this is a long-term objective of the Republican/neo-con hard right which has nothing to do with human rights or democracy.
Such an attack would not only devastate Iran, it would lead to renewed conflict in Lebanon, to intensified attacks on British and American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to more atrocities carried out against British and American civilians.
To avoid this outcome, the Western world needs to wake up from its torpor. Otherwise the Bush administration may yet deliver one final act of high-tech slaughter and propel what passes for international order into a new dark age of lawless gangsterism. 
FIRST POSTED SEPTEMBER 4, 2007
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Iran: round up the usual hawks
Bush: it's a dog's life at the White House
The war of misdirection
