If Iran is peaceful and genuinely desirous of rapprochement with the West, according to Hersh, Washington is hell-bent on bombing it. Indeed, his article last June exculpating Tehran of utilizing nuclear technology for nefarious purposes was merely the culmination of a years-long series of stories claiming that President George W. Bush was preparing for war against Iran.
In no fewer than six feature-length New Yorker articles published during the Bush administration, Hersh claimed that the United States was going to launch a war against the Islamic Republic. The first such article appeared more than seven years ago. In “The Coming Wars,” published in January 2005, Hersh wrote: “In my interviews, I was repeatedly told that the next strategic target was Iran.” He quoted a “former high-level intelligence official” who said: “Next, we’re going to have the Iranian campaign.” In April 2006, Hersh alleged that the Bush administration “increased clandestine activities inside Iran and intensified planning for a possible major air attack.” That piece made the stunning charge that the U.S. was contemplating a tactical nuclear first strike against Iran. Three months later, in an article entitled “Last Stand,” Hersh relayed the tale of how “senior commanders” in the military were heroically challenging Bush’s order that they prepare for a “major bombing campaign in Iran.”
In November 2006, after the midterm elections restored Democratic control of Congress, Hersh reported that the administration had decided to refocus its plans for an attack on Iran by throwing support to a Kurdish terrorist organization rather than prepare for an extensive bombing run. In March 2007, the “realists” within the administration must have weakened, because Hersh wrote that Bush had ordered a list of Iranian targets to be bombed, a decision that “brought the United States closer to an open confrontation with Iran.” An attack could come as early as “this spring,” Hersh wrote, according to one of his innumerable “former senior intelligence officials.” When spring came and went, with no attack on Iran, Hersh returned with a piece in October, alleging now that “the emphasis is on ‘surgical’ strikes on Revolutionary Guard facilities in Tehran and elsewhere, which, the Administration claims, have been the source of attacks on Americans in Iraq.”
Needless to say, the United States never went to war against Iran during the Bush administration. And there is no evidence that the administration had ever prepared for a war—certainly less evidence than exists for the suspicion that Iran is working towards the ability to produce a nuclear weapon, which Hersh loudly warns anyone and everyone from concluding. Indeed, according to a 2009 report in the New York Times, President Bush rejected a request from Israel the previous year that it be allowed to attack Iran’s main nuclear facility, which would have required flying over Iraqi airspace. That Hersh’s reporting on Iran has repeatedly been exposed as inaccurate never once dissuaded him from repeating his same fantastical assertions over and over again.
