On 22 May 2007, the Guardian’s front page announced: "Iran’s secret plan for summer offensive to force US out of Iraq." The writer, Simon Tisdall, claimed that Iran had secret plans to defeat American troops in Iraq, which included "forging ties with al-Qaeda elements." The coming "showdown" was an Iranian plot to influence a vote in the US Congress. Based entirely on briefings by anonymous US officials, Tisdall’s "exclusive" rippled with lurid tales of Iran’s "murder cells" and "daily acts of war against US and British forces." His 1,200 words included just 20 for Iran’s flat denial.
It was a load of rubbish: in effect a Pentagon press release presented as journalism and reminiscent of the notorious fiction that justified the bloody invasion of Iraq in 2003. Among Tisdall’s sources were "senior advisers" to General David Petraeus, the US military commander who in 2006 described his strategy of waging a "war of perceptions … conducted continuously through the news media."
The media war against Iran began in 1979 when the west’s placeman Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, a tyrant, was overthrown in a popular Islamic revolution. The "loss" of Iran, which under the shah was regarded as the "fourth pillar" of western control of the Middle East, has never been forgiven in Washington and London.
The role of respectable journalism in western state crimes — from Iraq to Iran, Afghanistan to Libya — remains taboo. It is currently deflected by the media theater of the Leveson enquiry into phone hacking, which Daily Telegraph’s Benedict Brogan describes as "a useful stress test." Blame Rupert Murdoch and the tabloids for everything and business can continue as usual. As disturbing as the stories are from Lord Leveson’s witness stand, they do not compare with the suffering of the countless victims of journalism’s warmongering.
