War With Iran Imminent?

Three ways you’re being misled

By Ken Klippenstein, KenKlippenstein.com

The media is in panic mode about the prospects of a war with Iran, as Tehran considers what kind of retaliation it should undertake in response to the July 31 assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. Israel’s reported assassination, even inside Iran, leading to the U.S. and Iran shooting at each other is more a figment of the news media’s hype machine than the reality on the ground.

Just one day after the assassination, New York Times’ columnist and elite media weathervane Thomas Friedman was already warning that “President Biden could face the most fateful decision of his presidency: whether to go to war with Iran.” Now, there are a slew of similarly portentous reports about U.S. military activity, all implying a looming confrontation between the U.S. and Iran.

“Secretary Austin actually saying the USS Georgia [a cruise missile submarine] is going to be in the area is extremely unusual,” a solemn looking retired Lt. General Mark Hertling, CNN’s national security and military analyst, said in a segment yesterday.

It seems like every major media outlet is writing some version of the same story — that ‘Iran may attack Israel or Israeli interests anytime in the coming days, according to high level administration sources as well as Israeli intelligence.’ The generic sentence (“may attack” can’t be proven wrong) is meant to convey danger but actually says nothing. We’ve been here before, and there’s plenty of reasons why escalation between the U.S. and Iran is not actually the likeliest scenario.