PENTAGON PROPAGANDA

So, we now know that Iranian boats were not threatening to attack the United States Navy in the Straits of Hormuz on January 6th and even the Pentagon’s propagandists have acknowledged that “the threat could have come from anyone on shore with a radio”. Perhaps, hilariously, the radio threat came from the so-called 'Filipino Monkey', who (I kid you not!) has a 25-year history of shouting anonymous threats and obscenities, over the airwaves, at US sailors.

Regardless, the most important and perhaps underreported aspect of this rather disturbing story is the role played by Bush administration officials in Washington D.C., in deliberately hyping the ‘Iranian threat’ and making (unfounded) accusations against Tehran. Gareth Porter, of IPS, concludes his detailed analysis of the Pentagon’s propaganda in recent days, with this insight:

“The decision to treat the Jan. 6 incident as evidence of an Iranian threat reveals a chasm between the interests of political officials in Washington and Navy officials in the Gulf. Asked whether the Navy's reporting of the episode was distorted by Pentagon officials, Cmdr. Robertson of 5th Fleet Public Affairs would not comment directly. But she said, "There is a different perspective over there."

As the Guardian’s Simon Jenkins points out today, in a typically cogent and well-argued column, the current US propaganda campaign against Iran serves only one purpose – to (counter-productively) strengthen the hand of America’s Persian ‘bogeyman’, President Ahmadinejad. Jenkins writes:

“Only one man can rescue the embattled Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, from his growing domestic unpopularity. That man is George Bush. Ahmadinejad faces elections in March and an increasingly disaffected clergy, but he feeds on Bush's antagonism. This week Bush has duly oliged. He has raced round the Middle East drumming up support for his Iranian foe.

“Bush has denounced Ahmadinejad at every turn. He has offered to sanction him, embargo him, isolate him, even bomb him. He has portrayed him as a monster of evil and "leading sponsor of terror". He has showered the Saudis and the Gulf states with $20bn of weapons to confront him "before it is too late". When Ahmadinejad thanked "divine intervention" for making him president in 2005, he should also have thanked God for having first selected Bush. To have Washington as your enemy in these parts is to have every man your friend.”