Neocons Hope Bluster Will Undercut Iran Talks

[laststeamtrain]

Analysis by Trita Parsi*

WASHINGTON, Jun 12 (IPS) - U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman's call for cross-border raids into Iran appears to be the culmination of a two-week long campaign by proponents of war to put the military option centre-stage in the U.S. debate over Iran once more.
The immediate effect of reigniting the let's-bomb-Iran discussions is the undercutting of the recently initiated U.S.-Iran talks over Iraq, which in turn will cause the military confrontation with Iran to be viewed in a new light.

Senator Lieberman out-hawked the George W. Bush administration on the television news show "Face the Nation" this past Sunday by calling for "aggressive military action against the Iranians," including "a strike over the border into Iran." Repeating by now all but abandoned accusations by the Bush administration of Iranian complicity in the killing of U.S. soldiers in Iraq, the Connecticut senator's comments caused a storm in the U.S. media Monday. Suddenly, the military option against Iran was once more at the centre of the U.S.'s Iran debate.

Earlier that week, Israel's hawkish trade minister and former defence minister, Shaul Mofaz, had visited Washington to hold strategic discussions regarding Iran's nuclear programme with Bush administration officials. According to press reports, Mofaz urged the United States to give diplomacy with Iran an expiration date of the end of the year, after which the military option would be exercised.

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A week prior to Mofaz' visit to Washington, Norman Podhoretz, the neoconservative editor-at-large of Commentary, published a lengthy op-ed in the Wall Street Journal titled "The Case for Bombing Iran." Comparing Iran's fire-brand president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to Adolf Hitler, Podhoretz accused Iran of seeking to "overturn the going international system and to replace it in the fullness of time with a new order dominated by Iran and ruled by the religio-political culture of Islamofascism."

Dismissing both diplomacy and the sanctions track, Podhoretz concluded that "the plain and brutal truth is that if Iran is to be prevented from developing a nuclear arsenal, there is no alternative to the actual use of military force -- any more than there was an alternative to force if Hitler was to be stopped in 1938."

Lieberman, Mofaz and Podhoretz's comments all share an air of frustration and desperation in light of the growing public opinion against any new military adventures in the Middle East, the loss of key hawks within the Bush administration, reports of the new head of the U.S. Central Command, Adm. William Fallon's, vehement opposition to war with Iran and the State Department's recent shift towards diplomacy.

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http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38133

[Demeter]

1. But They STILL Get More Air Time Than Impeachment and the Underlying Crimes!

This is the basic problem with MSM: too willing to shill for evil.