By Jan Oberg

You’ve heard it for years: Iran is a military threat to Europe, to the world – because it wants to acquire nuclear weapons – to the US and its allies in the Middle East. It takes shrewd steps to become a hegemon through de-stabilising policies all around and by supporting terrorism everywhere.

If you have time to only read one article about this fantasy, published in a conservative magazine, Stephen M. Walt’s “The Islamic Republic of Hysteria” published in Foreign Policy on January 16, 2018 is the one you should choose.

Here is how Walt’s starts out – “In October, the White House announced that moving forward, the official U.S. policy is aimed at “neutralizing Iran’s destabilizing influence and constraining its aggression.” … “Yet this ongoing full-court press against Iran makes little sense because it is nowhere close to being a regional hegemon. If anything, the willingness of pundits and politicians to embrace this alarmist fantasy says more about the cavalier nature of U.S. strategic discourse than it does about the actual challenge Iran may pose.”

And here is Walt’s conclusion – “The bottom line is that an all-out campaign to counter an Iranian hegemon is unnecessary. Unfortunately, there is little reason to think the Trump administration will recognize this and adopt the sensible course outlined here. If it doesn’t, Trump’s Middle East policy will be about as successful as Bill Clinton’s, Bush’s, and Barack Obama’s. Which is to say that it will be another costly failure.”

It’s a delightful and very informative debunking of about everything you have heard and seen during the last many years and explains why you simply cannot trust American foreign policy because, simply, it’s based much more on fantasy and propaganda than on informed, rational analysis.

That is also why you can’t trust U.S. mainstream media concerning Iran – and you might benefit from going to The Transnational’s Link sections and gather relevant and balanced accounts of the issues, including the nuclear deal (JCPOA) between Iran and the 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council + Germany.

But we recommend that you start out with Walt’s analysis above and take it from there: to the Link sections and to the Themes M-Z where you find the Middle East with the sub-category Iran. Or use Search or Category search.

  Iran a hegemon?, Is Iran a threat?, JCPOA, nuclear deal with Iran, Stephen M. Walt, The Islamic Republic of Hysteria, US policy vis-a-vis Iran