The chauvinistic American news media have focused on evil Iran's missile tests and the indignant Bush administration reaction, while missing some key causes of the event. As if the Iranians had started the entire dust up, the media reported Gordon Johndroe, the White House spokesman, barking, "The Iranian regime only furthers the isolation of the Iranian people from the international community when it engages in this sort of activity." The U.S. press then reported Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as bristling that the U.S. would defend its allies and protect its interests against attack.
The media could have given equal emphasis to the recent strident rhetoric and behavior of Israel and the Bush administration towards Iran, but didn't. Not only has the Bush administration pointedly declined to rule out military action against Iran, the United States was conducting provocative naval maneuvers in the Persian Gulf near Iran before the Iranian missile tests. In addition, last month, according to U.S. intelligence officials, Israel conducted an exercise that simulated a strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. In the American press, these provocations tend to get buried under sensational headlines implying Iranian aggressiveness in launching the missiles. For example, the headline for a New York Times article on the subject read, "Iran Launches 9 Missiles in War Games, One with Range Said to Include Israel."
Via the missile firings and by bluntly saying that if attacked, a counterattack on Israel and the U.S. fleet would ensue, Iran was merely trying to deter any potential Israeli or Bush administration attack before the U.S. elections. Iran – not Israel or the U.S. – has the fear of being attacked.
The American public assumes that the U.S. being a democracy automatically translates into being right in disputes overseas. But statistics show that democracies are no less aggressive overseas than non-democracies. In fact, by far the most aggressive country in the post-World War II world – if measured in the numbers of military and covert interventions – is the United States. Iran may be indirectly supporting militias in Iraq, Gaza, and Lebanon, but the United States, just since 2001, has invaded and occupied two countries and changed their governments using armed force.
Iran got permanently on the wrong side of U.S. policy after its fundamentalist Islamic revolution and the taking of U.S. diplomats hostage in 1979. However, the American people have always been oblivious to what caused that burst of anti-American venom. In 1953, the CIA ousted Mohammed Mossadeq, the elected leader of Iran, because he nationalized British oil interests. The U.S. government reinstated and supported the brutal Shah, who ruled until the revolution in 1978, and grabbed 40 percent of Iran's oil for American companies.
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