Libya (and Beyond) Snapshot: Extra, Extra, It's All About Iran!

Given our critique of Iranian media for its selective treatment of events in North Africa and the Middle East, it's only right that we turn the spotlight on its American counterpart.

Today David Sanger of The New York Times claims, "The Larger Game in the Middle East: Iran". This in-depth analysis is based on exactly one source: a "senior aide", Benjamin Rhodes, who sat in on a meeting of President Obama and his security advisors on a Tuesday in "mid-March".

Sanger draws this picture in his opening paragraphs:

The mullahs in Tehran, noted Thomas E. Donilon, the national security adviser, were watching Mr. Obama’s every move in the Arab world. They would interpret a failure to back up his declaration that Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi had “lost the legitimacy to lead” as a sign of weakness — and perhaps as a signal that Mr. Obama was equally unwilling to back up his vow never to allow Iran to gain the ability to build a nuclear weapon.

“It shouldn’t be overstated that this was the deciding factor, or even a principal factor” in the decision to intervene in Libya, Benjamin J. Rhodes, a senior aide who joined in the meeting, said last week. But, he added, the effect on Iran was always included in the discussion. In this case, he said, “the ability to apply this kind of force in the region this quickly — even as we deal with other military deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan — combined with the nature of this broad coalition sends a very strong message to Iran about our capabilities, militarily and diplomatically.”

Even if the account of the meeting is accurate, notice Rhodes' caveat that there were more important factors in play in the decision to support the opposition in Libya. For Sanger, this is a nuisance to be swept aside, as he assures readers:

Libya is a sideshow. Containing Iran’s power remains their central goal in the Middle East. Every decision — from Libya to Yemen to Bahrain to Syria — is being examined under the prism of how it will affect what was, until mid-January, the dominating calculus in the Obama administration’s regional strategy: how to slow Iran’s nuclear progress, and speed the arrival of opportunities for a successful uprising there.

And from there it's just one Sanger leap to framing each and every move by Washington from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean:

Last week, the decisions being made at the White House were about how firmly to back the protesters being shot in the streets in Syria and Yemen, or being beaten in Bahrain. For each of those, White House aides were performing a mostly silent calculation about whether the Iranians would benefit, or at least feel more breathing room.

Readers may recall that up to now, the primary coverage of Iran by Sanger, based in Washington, is on Iran's nuclear programme, not its political and diplomatic moves. For months, indeed years, he has been used as a channel by Administration officials to put out their line on Tehran's nuclear ambitions. Indeed, he reminds us of this as he suddenly diverts into paragraphs about that challenge:

Only two and a half months ago, things seemed very different. In January, American officials were fairly confident that they had cornered Iran: new sanctions were biting, the Russians were cutting off sophisticated weaponry that Iran wanted to ward off any Israeli or American attack, and a deviously complex computer worm, called Stuxnet, was wreaking havoc with the Iranian effort to enrich uranium.

Now Sanger could be right, despite his lack of evidence: the Obama Administration may be putting every development in North Africa and Middle East into a blender marked "Tehran". He almost certainly is correct --- although he ruins this accomplishment with his one-dimensional approach --- that US officials, like their counterparts in Iran, are always considering a regional competition which includes Iran.

But this portrayal is not an analysis which offers reflection. It does not critique --- since Sanger believes this to be the case --- whether the US Government is accurate in its observation of a contest with Iran as the primary concern in the region or why Obama's officials may have reached this conclusion. It does not reflect on whether this is a new development or a sign of a decades-long phenomenon of American power. And Sanger never considers whether he is a sooth-sayer bringing us insight or a journalism being used by, let's say,a Tom Donilon.

No, this is scare journalism, mirroring that coming out of Iranian state media, and it should be set aside as such.