Every few years American political elites revive the crisis culture that has afflicted the country for decades. They warn about the next impending threat, which will spell certain doom for Americans if the country is not bombed back to the stone age. Iran is likely to be the next country on the chopping block.
The American public harbors a range of ignorant opinions regarding the alleged Iranian threat, in addition to the potential for war with Iran. These opinions, however, are entirely predictable in light of mass media coverage, which falsely portrays Iran as developing nuclear weapons.
Americans long thought that Iran was secretly developing nuclear weapons. CNN polling from 2007 through 2009 found that the conclusion that Iran “is attempting to develop its own nuclear weapons” increased from 77 to 88 percent of the public.
How to deal with this alleged threat? Americans initially said in early 2010 by a ratio of three to one (according to CNN polling) that diplomacy and economic sanctions were the preferred approaches for dealing with Iran. This appears to have changed recently, however. According to Fox News polling from April 2010, 65 percent of Americans support “the United States taking military action to keep Iran from getting nuclear weapons.”
In light of Iran’s plans to bring its first civilian nuclear power plant online, 51 percent of American voters believe that the U.S. should “help Israel” if it decides to bomb Iran, according to a recent poll from Rasmussen. Just two percent of Americans support helping the Iranians in light of an Israeli attack. Support for the attack, again, is premised upon the assumption among 66 percent of Americans that Iran’s civilian nuclear program is secretly being used to develop nuclear weapons.
Of course, there is literally not a shred of evidence that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. Iran’s program has been inspected by the International Atomic Energy Agency for years, and the group has announced on numerous occasions that there is no hard evidence that Iran is constructing weapons of enriching uranium for such weapons. All of the nuclear fuel in Iran is of the low enriched variety, meaning that it is not of a high enough quality to manufacture nuclear weapons. Importantly, the highly enriched uranium needed to make nuclear weapons has never been found in the many inspections of Iran.
The U.S. CIA and National Intelligence Estimate (a composite of intelligence assessments from more than 12 national security organizations) estimate that Iran is not developing nuclear weapons, and that any work on a national nuclear program ended in 2003. None of this has stopped Americans from ignorantly assuming that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. This conclusion on the part of the public is not surprising, however, considering that the U.S. media and political officialdom routinely insist on a fictional U.S. threat. My own statistical studies of media coverage find that U.S. media are two to four times more likely to stress Iran’s alleged intent on developing nuclear weapons than the reality that there is no evidence of a nuclear program (see my recently released book: When Media Goes to War, Monthly Review Press, 2010).
Another disturbing trend in U.S. public opinion is the notion – held by 61 percent of American voters – that the U.S. “should help Israel if it attacks Iran.” What this position misses is the fact that the U.S. is already funding Israel to the tune of at least $3 billion in aid a year. This means that, if Israel attacks Iran, the U.S. will have already provided the material support and intelligence to help in such an attack. The U.S. retains bases in the countries immediately surrounding Iran. As a result, Israel will not be able to undertake an attack on Iran without the U.S. knowing about it, and without a U.S. green light. Furthermore, the vast majority of those throughout the Middle East don’t distinguish between “the U.S.” on the one hand, and “Israel” on the other. The actions and interests of the two countries in dominating the region through military power are understood to be one and the same. The M-16s, tanks, and F-16s used against the Palestinian people and Israel’s neighbors are made in the U.S., a fact that those living in the region are painfully aware of. In short, U.S. and Israeli actions are fundamentally tied, and any notion that the U.S. should “help” Israel are premised on an extraordinary media and political-induced ignorance and naiveté on the part of the American people.
The misinformation and fear mongering driving American public opinion regarding Iran should be seen as quite disturbing for those who pride themselves in studying the actual state of U.S. intelligence regarding the country’s civilian nuclear program. The U.S. appears to be reliving the public propaganda campaign that characterized the run up to the Iraq war, except this time the run up to a possible Iran war is playing out far more slowly in light of the Obama administration’s initial preference for sanctions. At some point, however, Obama and the military brass surrounding him will grow tired of this approach, and may begin to talk about a serious effort (on the part of the U.S. directly or indirectly through Israel) to bomb Iran. An attack on Iran will likely set off a powder keg throughout the region that will greatly increase hostility toward the U.S., and will further radicalize another generation of Middle Easterners see the United States (rightly so) as having destroyed (or helped destroy) a growing number of Muslims countries. The U.S. and Israel have declared wars (informally) in the last decade on many countries throughout the region, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, the Gaza Strip, Pakistan, and now possibly Iran. The people of the region have no doubt noticed the growing assault on the people of the region, and will react to an attack on Iran by blaming the U.S., as the world’s leading and most dangerous rogue state.
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