Media Fanning War Fever With Iran
By Larry Johnson on July 11, 2008 at 10:16 AM in Current Affairs
The images on TV and in newspapers of Iranian “missiles” soaring into the sky are being used to whip up public support for military action against Iran. My friend, W. Patrick Lang, writing on his blog, Sic Semper Tyrannis 2008, notes that the images of Iranian “missiles” the media are circulating like pictures of a naked woman in a middle school locker room do not show what they claim to show.
In the image on the left you can see a white vehicle in the foreground. It has three axles and is carrying what appears to be a missile. The press and media have been using this image to decry the Iranians launching a Shahab 3 missile.
What is a Shahab and why should we care?
According to the Federation of American Scientists:
The Iranian Shahab-3 is a single-stage, liquid-fueled, road-mobile, medium-range ballistic missile with a range of approximately 800 miles (1,280 km). A MRBM variant, sometimes called Shahab-4, has a range of more than 1,200 miles (1,930 km).
Shahab-3 is capable of carrying a 1,000-760 kilogram warhead. Fewer than 20 launchers were deployed as of March 2006, according to Air Force Intelligence. The variant was not deployed at the time.
That is a big rocket and, if used in an offensive operation, could do some damage. Here’s the problem. The image above is not a Shahad missile. Here’s a photo of a Shahab launcher:
You need a minimum of six axles for this bad boy. It is over 45 feet in length. The “missiles” launched above are a third that size.
So here is the first point–why is the media using misleading images and information to whip up public fears?
The current story line about Iran launching these missiles as preparation for an attack on Israel is utter nonsense. It was Israel, not Iran, that ran the first military exercise explicitly identified as preparation for an attack on Iran. The Christian Science Monitor reported:
A Pentagon official, speaking anonymously due to the sensitivity of the issue, told the Times that the high profile of the exercise was not an accident. Rather, it was one of Israel’s two intended goals for undergoing the rehearsal.
One Israeli goal, the Pentagon official said, was to practice flight tactics, aerial refueling and all other details of a possible strike against Iran’s nuclear installations and its long-range conventional missiles.
A second, the official said, was to send a clear message to the United States and other countries that Israel was prepared to act militarily if diplomatic efforts to stop Iran from producing bomb-grade uranium continued to falter.
“They wanted us to know, they wanted the Europeans to know, and they wanted the Iranians to know,” the Pentagon official said. “There’s a lot of signaling going on at different levels.”
Well what a surprise. Iran has signaled back that it is not going to be intimidated. Iran’s warning to the United States and Israel is quite clear–if you attack us expect retaliation.
What I find equally fascinating is the persistent delusion among many U.S. and Israeli analysts who insist that air strikes against Iranian military and industrial sites will somehow make us safe. This is the kind of batshit crazy thinking that sent an undersized U.S. force into Iraq in March 2003. Here’s why the proponents of air strikes are off base.
First, Iran has dispersed its military and production assets. Our very public saber rattling has not been ignored. Iran paid attention to what we said we were going to do in Iraq and what we did. They are not going to make the Saddam Hussein’s mistake. They believe we will attack them and are preparing for that eventuality. Dispersing targets that we would like to destroy makes it more difficult to achieve the mission and imposes greater risks on our forces and aircraft.
Second, air power has limited utility, especially in mountainous terrain. Has anyone looked at a goddamned map of Iran. It is not a flat plain like much of Iraq. Significant mountains and valleys. So the chance of a successful strike goes down, not up. Moreover, the U.S. Air Force was unable to achieve basic missions of destroying ground missiles during military campaigns in both the former Yugoslavia and Iraq. Remember their failure to destroy a single-SCUD missile during the first Gulf War? Remember all of the bombs we dropped on Iraq during March of 2003 that failed to achieve the strategic defeat of Iraq (we needed boots on the ground to get that done)?
Third, they are ignoring the provocative actions by both the United States and Israel that have ratcheted up tensions with Iran. I harbor no illusions about Iran. I have been on the record for a long time noting that they have been the number one sponsor of terrorism against the United States for many years. But that does not mean that our best way to handle this threat is to launch a new military adventure. Pat Lang and I warned about the risks and difficulties confronting the United States if we attack Iran in an article we published in the National Interest two years ago. The article, Contemplating the Ifs, is still relevant and worth your time.
We are entering dangerous territory and the last thing our nation needs is the media acting like third grade spectators to an impending brawl who are trying to incite a fight because they enjoy the spectacle.
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