It sure is hard to get away from the incessant ringing of alarm bells about the Iranian nuclear program, which receives attention as if it were the greatest threat to civilization as we know it. That certainly is true for any reader of my hometown newspaper, the Washington Post. This week's Sunday Opinion page is dominated by the subject, with a graphic at the top showing a stylized rocket with a radiation symbol taking off from Iranian territory. The page includes a piece by former Bush administration official Michael Makovsky and his associate Blaise Misztal that criticizes the Obama administration for not hewing rigorously to the line that an Iranian nuclear weapon would be the worst possible thing that could happen to the world and must be stopped at all costs. The article is remarkable for the circularity of its reasoning in trying to ascribe dangers to that eventuality. For example, Makovsky and Misztal say that U.S. credibility would be “drained if, after numerous warnings to the contrary, we permit Tehran to cross the nuclear threshold”—which would not be a problem if, per the very aspect of the Obama administration public posture that they are criticizing, the United States does not keep trumpeting how “unacceptable” an Iranian nuke would be. They also say Iran and Israel “would have incentives to initiate a nuclear first strike.” A first strike by Iran would be insane and suicidal and therefore not involve any incentive to do it. A first strike by Israel would be a problem with Israel, not a problem with Iran, and in any event an Israeli first strike even with conventional means is the very sort of danger that the constant drum-beating about the Iranian nuclear program only encourages. Some of the other consequences Makovsky and Misztal mention, such as driving up oil prices, would be far less likely a result of an Iranian nuclear weapon than of any use of military force to try to prevent one.

In the next column over is an op-ed by Ray Takeyh, under the title “Why Tehran seeks the bomb,” that speaks of a purported hope by Iranian leaders that a nuclear-weapons capability would insulate their regime against foreign efforts to undermine it, out of fear over what would happen to the nuclear weapons amid political instability. Takeyh does not make clear whether he believes this hope is well grounded, but he seems to believe it is. Some relevant history might suggest otherwise; this idea wasn't much of a factor in foreign perceptions of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the apartheid regime of South Africa or General Musharraf's rule in Pakistan.

With all the attention in the paper to the Iranian nuclear program, it should not be surprising that the weekly contribution at the bottom of the same page by the Post's ombudsman, Patrick Pexton, is about this subject as well. Specifically, it concerns some sloppy or tendentious writing of headlines, such as “Iran's quest to possess nuclear weapons.” Pexton correctly judges that this headline was misleading and did not belong atop a news story, given that Iran does not yet appear to have decided to build nuclear weapons.

By the way—and another reason Sunday breakfast had a robust Iranian (or anti-Iranian regime) flavor while having the newspaper open to this place—the facing page consists of a full-page advertisement placed by a front group for the Mujahedin-e Khalq, the Iranian terrorist organization whose apologists overlap with those beating the drums about the Iranian nuclear program. Presumably carrying the ad was a decision of the Post's business office, taken in pursuit of much-needed advertising revenue, and not of the news or editorial staffs.

Go back to the opinion pages of the Post just a couple of days earlier, and one gets more of the same. The lead editorial, criticizing administration officials such as Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta for spelling out the reasons a military attack on Iran would be a very bad idea, is mostly a replay of a piece written a few days earlier by Michael Singh of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, about which I had some observations at the time.  Then on the op-ed page is an item with the title “Iran's deadly ambitions” by former Bush-administration speechwriter Marc Thiessen. Thiessen portrays what is, if he were to be believed, a full-blown cooperative relationship between Iran and al-Qaeda, dedicated to using terrorism to kill Americans.

Ah, that brings back memories—some recent and highly instructive ones. A major part of the Bush administration's tremendous effort to sell the idea of launching an offensive war against Iraq was to promote the notion that Saddam Hussein's regime was acting in cahoots with the terrorist group that did 9/11. As preposterous as such a cooperative relationship would have been, it was a key part of the sales job because the American public's outrage over 9/11 provided the political fuel for making even something as extreme as a major war of aggression thinkable. So the administration, and the neocon promoters of the war outside it, took even the most casual contacts and squishiest reporting and spun out of them a tale of what the president came to describe as an “alliance” between Saddam's regime and al-Qaeda. It was a fantasy. Now Thiessen is doing the same thing with Iran.

A major prop for Thiessen's story is a formal designation of several al-Qaeda members by the Treasury Department in July, accompanied by a Treasury undersecretary's reference to a “secret deal” between Iran and al-Qaeda—apparently another of the Obama administration's attempts to sound conspicuously tough on Iran, no matter how much the tough words may be exploited by those who want to take confrontation with Iran to a far more destructive level than the administration itself wants to. Because nothing new about this story seems to have surfaced in the intervening five months, allow me to replay what I observed about it at the time:

It has been known for some time that al-Qaeda members have been inside Iran. It has been less clear just what the terms of their residence there have been. Most indications suggest that it has been something between imprisonment and house arrest. At least some of the al-Qaeda people in Iran have been able to conduct business of the group from there, but it is unclear again how much of this business is condoned or even known by the Iranian regime. Probably the most that can be said is that the regime, or elements within it, have reasons to have some dealings with the al-Qaeda members, notwithstanding the sharp differences in their objectives. Tehran wants to cement and sustain the rule of the Shia Islamic Republic; al-Qaeda wants to overthrow the established order in the Middle East and establish a Sunni Caliphate.

Despite the provocative phrase “secret deal,” Treasury's announcement says nothing else about any such agreement. The only dealings it describes all seem to have to do with the imprisonment of al-Qaeda members. Only one of the six designated individuals, named Ezedin Abdel Aziz Khalil, is described as “Iran-based”; the other five all live and operate somewhere else and are included in the announcement because they are part of the same network as Khalil. The one bit of business Khalil is said to have with Tehran is that he “works with the Iranian government to arrange releases of al-Qa'ida personnel from Iranian prisons.” One of the other five is said to have “petitioned Iranian officials on al-Qa'ida's behalf to release operatives detained in Iran”—with no indication whether he succeeded. Any connection between the Iranian regime and the group's other activities involving movement of money and operatives is all a matter of innuendo, at least as far as Treasury's announcement is concerned.

In his version of the story, Thiessen tries to connect the idea of dealings with Iran with another al-Qaeda member, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman (since deceased), whom he describes as having been al-Qaeda's operational commander. And so from a report about some other al-Qaeda members asking the Iranians to please let some of their guys out of prison, Thiessen makes the huge leap to saying that “Iran was working directly with al-Qa'ida's operational commander.” There is not a shred of evidence to support that statement. Thiessen goes on to raise the incredible specter of Iran giving al-Qaeda a nuclear weapon.

As the old saying goes: fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. The American public was so fooled by the phony conjured-up alliance that was part of Iraq War sales campaign that at one point a solid majority of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein not only was in league with al-Qaeda but was personally involved in the 9/11 attack. It would be shameful if the public, and the press and punditry that shape public views, were to be fooled again.