Iran Analysis: The Week in "Objective" US Journalism --- War, War, Secret War, Future War, War

We have been working on what we consider one of the most analyses that EA has posted in three years of Iran coverage: "Decoding Ahmadinejad --- Did He Just Declare the "Final Confrontation" Within the Establishment?"

This analysis is unlikely to be noticed by an international media which is captivated by the chatter about an Israeli attack on Tehran and about a supposedly doom-laden report on Iran's nuclear programme. Indeed, some in that media are on the point of irresponsibility stoking confrontation, even armed confrontation.

The number one culprit is David Sanger of The New York Times, who uses the exalted podium of a "Week in Review" piece to declare that War may be the only option, "The big hitch in...containment strategies is that they are completely useless if Iran ever slips a bomb, or even some of its newly minted uranium fuel, to a proxy — Hezbollah, Hamas or some other terrorist group — raising the problem of ascertaining a bomb’s return address."

Sanger has been the pet outlet of both George W. Bush and Obama Administrations to put out their tales of Iranian threat, especially with the nuclear programme, and he has no wish to reflect on his messenger status --- or the "information" he has been conveying. Instead, he just ramps up unsupported and unproven allegations as established evidence of Iran's guilt, to be punished by a miltary judge and jury, if necessary:

Now the element of surprise is gone. The Iranians are digging their plants deeper underground, and enriching uranium at purities that will make it easier to race for a bomb. When Barack Obama was sworn into office, they had enough fuel on hand to produce a single weapon; today, by the I.A.E.A.’s own inventory, they have enough for at least four. And as the Quds Force has shown, sabotage and assassination is a two-way game, which may ratchet up one confrontation just as Americans have been exhausted by two others.

And Sanger is far from alone. Tony Karon of Time may have offered a sober assessment of the spin, the hype, and the possbility that it is setting the scene for an attack, but his column is likely to be lost as other journalists embed the whispers of unnamed officials as unshakeable fact --- Joby Warrick of The Washington Post offers a prime example:

Intelligence provided to U.N. nuclear officials shows that Iran’s government has mastered the critical steps needed to build a nuclear weapon, receiving assistance from foreign scientists to overcome key technical hurdles, according to Western diplomats and nuclear experts briefed on the findings.

Documents and other records provide new details on the role played by a former Soviet weapons scientist who allegedly tutored Iranians over several years on building high-precision detonators of the kind used to trigger a nuclear chain reaction, the officials and experts said. Crucial technology linked to experts in Pakistan and North Korea also helped propel Iran to the threshold of nuclear capability, they added.

The established wisdom is unlikely to be shaken even if the International Atomic Energy Agency's report does not support the leaked claims --- past experience is that journalists who put out the words of officials do not necessarily go back and check them v. dozens of pages from the IAEA.

The only way out may be if the journalists themselves are prodded into self-correction. But this morning the same David Sanger who used his weekend platform to talk War, War, War tries to provide a cloak for any doubts over the International Atomic Energy Agency 's findings. Perhaps prodded by the same sources who fed him his "information", he worries that people will unnecessarily compare this to the build-up of false intelligence (and reporting) for the 2003 Iraq War.=

An imminent report by United Nations weapons inspectors includes the strongest evidence yet that Iran has worked in recent years on a kind of sophisticated explosives technology that is primarily used to trigger a nuclear weapon, according to Western officials who have been briefed on the intelligence.

But the case is hardly conclusive. Iran’s restrictions on inspectors have muddied the picture. And however suggestive the evidence about what the IAEA calls “possible military dimensions” of Iran’s program turns out to be, the only sure bet is that the mix of sleuthing, logic and intuition by nuclear investigators will be endlessly compared with the American intelligence agencies’ huge mistakes in Iraq in 2003.

And then Sanger --- the journalist who relies on unnamed officials for his exclusive --- offers us an assurance that we may later return to with a smile, provided sentences like these do not result in War, War, War:

For its part, the Obama administration, acutely aware of how what happened in Iraq undercut American credibility, is deliberately taking a back seat, eager to make the conclusions entirely the I.A.E.A.’s, even as it continues to press for more international sanctions against Iran.