Am I the only one getting a sense of deja vu? Grainy satellite images of weapon development sites, endless video footage of bearded men in lab coats and dubious terrorist links – this all feels rather 2003. Almost nine years have passed since the catastrophic invasion of Iraq and it appears we are none the wiser. After 100,000 civilian casualties, $750bn of expenditure and seven long years of war, Iraq is only marginally freer and considerably more unstable. Talks of air strikes against Iran shamelessly forget our recent history.
The conflict between Iran and the West is hardly new. Most recently, the assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist in early February had Mossad’s fingerprints all over it. Retaliatory attacks on Israeli diplomats earlier this month in India and Georgia were widely attributed to Iran. Threats by Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz were met by the US conducting its biggest ever amphibious military exercise. Just yesterday an Iranian battleship provocatively entered the Mediterranean Sea.
The development of nuclear weapons has been at the heart of tensions and provocative claims have been flying around in the last few weeks. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reported that Iran loaded its first domestically-made fuel rod into a nuclear reactor and Israel’s Defence Minister, Ehud Barak, claimed that Iran will soon be conducting its uranium enrichment activity in an underground facility making it invulnerable to attack. But for all these strong words, we have yet to be shown any convincing evidence that bomb-making is taking place. In fact, 16 U.S. intelligence agencies in 2007, reportedly repeated in 2011, said they don’t believe Iran has decided to become a nuclear-weapons state. Sensitive military intelligence of this nature is, of course, confidential and many sources can only be quoted anonymously, but are we really willing to trust anonymous intelligence reports after they disastrously failed us in 2003?
One thing we can ascertain is that the media on both sides of the Atlantic are working themselves into a frenzy. On Wednesday, Sky News claimed that Iran and Al Qaeda ‘have established an operational relationship amid fears the terror group is planning a spectacular attack against the West.’ The Daily Telegraph published a similar story attributing the link to what ‘officials believe.’ Coverage on the other side of the Atlantic is more extreme and even Foreign Affairs jumped on the bandwagon with a piece entitled ‘Al Qaeda in Iran: Why Tehran is Accommodating the Terrorist Group.’ Much like with Iraq in 2003, news reports shamelessly paint Iran as the root of all evil and a serious aggressive threat to Israel, Britain and the United States.
But there is a crucial difference between the coverage of Iran and Iraq: whereas in 2003 the media outlets followed the drumbeat set by the British and American governments, the media today seems to be set on war despite conciliatory views expressed by Washington and London. General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a television interview last weekend that it was ‘not prudent at this point’ to attack Iran. Similarly, the Foreign Secretary William Hague told Andrew Marr on the same day that any action against Iran ‘would not be a wise thing’.
So what is motivating such aggressive coverage? In part, the cultural shift towards the dramatization of American news reporting has increased the pressure on outlets to keep viewers’ attention and match the intensity of rival broadcasts. But more powerful is the influence of Israel and Israeli sympathisers in many of the agenda-setting American newspapers and television stations alongside an ever-present neo-conservative voice in US foreign policy circles. The Iranian conflict also fits nicely into an Islamophobic narrative that some have constructed to explain the threats to British and American security since 9/11.
The transatlantic media needs to reassess its position on the Iranian question. Above all, it has vastly overestimated the threat from Iran. In the past six months, a combination of stiff Western-backed economic sanctions, covert action by Israel and other nations’ intelligence agencies as well as the continuing Arab Spring have tested the regime’s ability to hold together the domestic constituencies that keep it in power. Furthermore, its pathetic attempts to assassinate Israeli and Saudi diplomats, continued defence and support of the bloodthirsty Syrian regime, a slew of incompetent economic policy moves and a dangerous bluff over closing the Strait of Hormuz all suggest Iran is not nearly as formidable an opponent as many believe.
News outlets have also overestimated the desirability of an airstrike. Iran is a major oil producer and rests right by the most important petroleum and gas supply lines in the world, from the Strait of Hormuz in the south to the Caspian Sea in the north. An oil price shock could destroy the delicate economic recovery in Europe and the United States. No one wants a land war, but once bombs and missiles start flying, it is hard to see where the conflict might end. An air assault is more likely to consolidate support for the current regime and invigorate the nuclear program.
I got off the train at Oxford on Thursday onto a platform crowded with British soldiers returning from Afghanistan. Their faces looked as drained as their helmets looked worn. Years after a glamorous intervention, the costs of modern warfare remain high. Let this not be forgotten too quickly.
