UPDATED Iran Analysis: When "War Chatter" Poses as Journalism (Step Up, Time Magazine)

UPDATE 1945 GMT: Gosh, couldn't have predicted this. With Western "analysts" playing up the it-could-be-war line, Iranian authorities are responding with we-will-repel-you. Revolutionary Guard Deputy Commander General Hossein Salami said, "The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps is ready to confront arrogance on both national and global levels....[Missiles] are being produced locally and without any limitations and are ready to strike regional targets with any quantity and quality."

I generally try these days to avoid slaps at US pundits because --- however ill-informed or ill-judged the commentary --- the effort is a diversion from the important issues.

Unfortunately, there are times when superficial, speculative ponderings are puffed-up as important revelations, and there are times when those supposed revelations can do political harm as well as causing unnecessary agitation. And on those occasions, a take-down is needed to get a bit of balance and to damp down the media hysteria.

Today Joe Klein of Time is pushing a piece, "An Attack on Iran: Back on the Table". The title says it all --- Reader, Reader, Come to Me, I Will Enlighten You on Dangerous Times! --- and unfortunately it has worked with even normally-shrewd outlets such as the influential Daily Dish blog.

Unfortunately because when you peel away the onion skins of Klein's claims posing as evidence, there is no onion, let alone a likely war, left.

Here are the sources for Klein's supposed discovery: "a recently retired U.S. official" offering his personal opinion ("I began to think...."), "an Israeli military source", and....that's it. There is not one US Government official at any level, let alone a level which would have access to such sensitive discussions.

Klein tries to cover this by stretching a quote from Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, "I don't think we're prepared to even talk about containing a nuclear Iran. We do not accept the idea of Iran having nuclear weapons". You'll note that this quote doesn't actually translate into "military action" and, if you check both the interview and the context, you'll find that Gates was pushing the US-led sanctions regime against Tehran.

Then there's this beauty of a piece of straw making a haystack: "Other intelligence sources say that the U.S. Army's Central Command, which is in charge of organizing military operations in the Middle East, has made some real progress in planning targeted air strikes — aided, in large part, by the vastly improved human-intelligence operations in the region."

Leave aside that "other intelligence sources" does not necessarily mean "US Government" --- Klein immediately skips to a quote from his Israeli official. Militaries make contingency plans all the time for operations. You see, that's what you do in the military: you don't sit without any provisions for land, naval, and air operations since, you know, there's something called "preparedness" if a conflict does arise.

Klein takes refuge in the one public event that has been unsettling in recent weeks,  when "United Arab Emirates Ambassador Yousef al-Otaiba said on July 6 that he favored a military strike against Iran despite the economic and military consequences to his country". There has been the question as to whether al-Otaiba realised he was "on the record"; more importantly, there's the larger question of whether al-Otaiba is speaking for his Government, let alone any other Arab state, let alone the United States.

So what's the big deal about one jacked-up, macho, doom-laden column? Why not let it fade into cyber-oblivion?

Well, the problem is that, in Washington circles, Joe Klein is a loud voice --- hey, did you know he was the Anonymous author of the novel Primary Colors about the Clintons? --- and others respond to the call even when the voice is saying very little that is productive. So this column might get played up as a smoke signal of what is really happening.

And even though this is not what is really happening, the beat-beat-beat of war talk will be picked up by Tehran, which will echo it as proof of Western perfidy in its attempt to maintain some vestige of internal legitimacy. If the Iranian people are scared of "them", the logic runs, then they may not interrogate why they are disillusioned with the Government.

So let's call this column now. It is not empty, even if it is near-empty of evidence. It is filled with political exaggeration which can cause nothing but trouble: Joe Klein's attention-seeking comes at the expense not of calm consideration. It also comes at the expense of recognition of the Iranian people and their concerns.