Next Stop: Tehran

The “leaked” report arrived exactly as ordered.

You have to admire their audacity. President Obama, in marked contrast to his predecessor, offered to negotiate with Iran a few months back. Now that’s out of the question. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that America’s “outstretched hand” has been rejected by Iran and it’s now time for stiffer sanctions.

But there is good reason to believe that the decision to mount a military attack on Iran has already been made.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has come out with a new report that won’t be officially released and taken up by the Board of Governors for discussion until the first of March. While not yet an official position paper, it has already fulfilled the purpose for which it was intended. The ten-page report — which appeared as if by special order — has already been leaked to the public and is thus usable for propaganda purposes. Strictly speaking, it contains absolutely no hard information but it is full of assumptions, conclusions and assertions. The official word is that it was put together from a number of coherent and plausible sources. Those sources, however, will certainly never be identified.

Above all, it’s being said that if Iran is to be believed that their objective for enriching uranium is for peaceful purposes, they need uranium enriched only to the 3.5 percent level and they already have uranium enriched to 20 percent. One can also refer to the brash statement made by Iranian President Ahmedinejad that Iran was already a “nuclear power.” That may have been unwise of him, but it’s not a reason to impose further sanctions and certainly not a reason for military attack.

But the machinery has been set in motion; Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu is now officially requesting “sanctions with teeth” from the United States and the entire American right-wing spectrum — Republicans, reactionary think-tanks, CPAC, Fox News Network and other pressure groups such as AIPIC (American-Israeli Political Action Committee) — have swung into action. This all combines with the already considerable pressure on Obama due to his failed policies.

Experts such as political adviser George Birnbaum (Netanyahu’s Chief of Staff during that administration) are meanwhile fully aware of the dangers of a military response that would cause the Iranian people to rally more closely around Ahmedinejad.

Obviously, the hope that Iran’s regime would go the way of the Eastern European bloc governments and change to a sort of “orange” revolution — something the U.S. has been hoping for since 1979 — hasn’t materialized this time, either. John Bolton, former ambassador to the U.N., still accuses Iran of sponsoring global terror, threatening Israel and abusing human rights — none of it, of course, backed up by any proof. He also made clear that it’s not a matter of Iran constituting a threat; if Iran manages to get the bomb, then other nations — he specifically mentioned Egypt and Saudi Arabia — would try to do likewise and we would end up with a multi-polar nuclear Middle East.

What is striking is the audacity with which the same old song is played over and over exactly as it was with Iraq and its supposed weapons of mass destruction that could have been deployed “within days.” Nothing was ever found. The only thing that has changed since 2003 is that the famous George W. Bush and his British poodle have been replaced by the supposedly smarter Barack Obama. There are more reasonable voices still out there, like former IAEA inspector Scott Ritter, who is convinced that the truth about Iran’s nuclear program will eventually prevail over all the western media hype.

So the “Moshtarak” offensive by the forces occupying Afghanistan takes on a fresh perspective. It is possible that the offensive has less to do with Afghanistan than it does with the liberation of the hinterlands in order to clear the way for an invasion of Iran. Reasons to hope for the contrary are pretty slim. It may be time to paraphrase the country singer Joe McDonald and sing: Next stop is Tehran.