Larry Johnson: Quelling the Iran Bogeyman

If Martians landed on earth tomorrow and scanned the news for the last couple of weeks they would come to the quick conclusion that the biggest current threat to world peace is Iran. Iran, according to the Bush Administration, has its fingers in almost every national security pie in sight.

Consider the following news blips:

Iranian weapons have begun flowing into Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Monday, but he and Afghan President Hamid Karzai agreed involvement by Tehran cannot yet be proved.

How about Iraq? Yep!

(snip)
There is something not kosher about the anti-Iranian line being pushed by the Bush Administration. Hezbollah radicals and Hamas radicals are not interchangeable. They may be radicals but they are not on the same theological page. It is important that the politicians and the media take time to become informed before jumping on the "Let's Lynch Iran" bandwagon. It was ignorance of Iraq and the rifts separating Sunni and Shia that have helped fuel the debacle in Iraq. We do not need to recreate the same, stupid mistakes vis-a-vis Iran.

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UPDATE: There's an excellent background piece at op-ed news by Abbas Sadeghian.
http://noquarter.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/06/quelling_the_ir.html