have been pushing to overturn the conclusion of a joint assessment by American intelligence agencies in 2007 that any Iranian nuclear weapons program ended in 2003.

The Obama administration, like its predecessor, is well aware that it can count on a compliant, corrupt and uncritical media to sensationalise and inflate limited activities of nearly a decade ago into an imminent nuclear danger. The process is already underway, with a rash of unscrupulous articles in the international press exploiting the IAEA report to claim that Iran is on the verge of manufacturing a nuclear weapon.

As in the case of Iraq, the allegations about Iranian weapons of mass destruction are nothing but a threadbare pretext for aggression against Tehran, including further sanctions and ultimately military attack. The media commentators denouncing Iranas a threat to regional peace and calling for tough action ignore the fact that the only two countries to initiate wars of aggression in the Middle East in the past decade have been the US and Israel. Moreover, while condemning Iran for allegedly seeking nuclear weapons, there is an utterly hypocritical silence over the known nuclear arsenals of the regional allies of American imperialism—Pakistan, India and above all Israel.

The menacing US campaign against Iran is driven by Washington’s ambition for dominance in the key energy-rich regions of the Middle East and Central Asia. The Bush administration was compelled to give up its aim to move against Tehran after toppling the Baghdad regime, as the US military became embroiled in deepening quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, the