It has been one year since we wrote of the threat posed by a nuclear Iran. And Yogi Berra is still right: It is "déjà vu all over again."
President Bush, Vice President Cheney and key members of the National Security Council are unflagging in their declared intent to confront and derail Iran's quest to join the Middle Eastern-Asian nuclear club. The U.S. government, with the help of public policy advocates like the American Enterprise Institute, is propagandizing the American public with a focused public relations and information operation clearly designed to build political support for possible military action.
Iran, under the madcap leadership of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, provides sufficient menace and craziness to persuade many Americans that military action, if it comes, will be justified. For example, Ahmadinejad's recent hosting of a conference denying the Holocaust did not build confidence or reassure nervous neighbors that the Iranians are playing with a "full deck" or are likely to be responsible citizens of the international community.
One thing that has changed since we wrote last year is that Iran, which already saw the United States as a hostile power intent on using military force, is more convinced now that it is targeted by the United States. Iran has paid close attention to the Bush Administration's saber-rattling. The Iranian leaders do not seem to inhabit the same fantasy world that comforted Saddam as the United States prepared to invade Iraq. Saddam, contrary to all the evidence presented, persisted to the end in the belief that the United States would not actually invade Iraq. The Iranians are not so foolish.
