Manufacturing Consent_ The Political Economy of the Mass Media - Edward S. Herman [225]
As in the case of Iraq, any larger U.S. political motives are obscured by the demonization process and the necessity of contesting “evil” and its associated threats. Iran was named by George Bush in his January 2002 State of the Union message as one of the three charter members of the “axis of evil” (along with Iraq and North Korea), and Iran’s alleged misdeeds, threats, and “defiance” of the international community as regards its nuclear program have risen accordingly in media prominence. Thus in a large sample of sources drawn from U.S. print and wire service media, references to Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program rose by 382 percent from April to May 2003, and by a huge 1,164 percent from April to June 2003. Year-over-year (i.e., comparing the 12-month periods May 2002–April 2003, and May 2003–April 2004), such references rose by 367 percent.48 May and June 2003 was a critical period in the U.S. government’s thrusting of the specter of an Iranian nuclear weapons program onto the international stage. No sooner had Bush announced “mission accomplished” in Iraq on May 1, 2003, than U.S. allegations about an Iranian nuclear weapons program rose dramatically. On May 8–9, IAEA members met in Vienna to prepare for a meeting scheduled in June, at which the IAEA’s first report on its inspections work of Iran’s nuclear program would be discussed. Also on May 8, the New York Times published a major front-page article detailing allegations from anonymous U.S. officials that Iran’s nuclear facility at “Natanz is so obviously a weapons facility” that Iran stands in violation of the NPT and “could lead to punitive action by the United Nations, adding pressure on Iran, which is already nervous about American troops in Iraq.”49 The explosive growth in coverage of these allegations was accompanied by strongly expressed fears and proposed actions regarding Iran’s nuclear program. The words “defiant” and “defiance” to describe Iran’s nuclear policy actions were used 10 times by U.S. print and wire services in 2002, and still only 41 times in 2003; but “defiant” and “defiance” were used 1,596 times in 2006; these same words appeared in the New York Times a total of 104 times in the 80 months between January 1, 2002 and June 30, 2008.50 To be defiant in the sense evident here, a state needs to be weak enough to allow powerful states to declare it out-of-order and demand and enforce policy changes and even regime change. Needless to say, the torture regime of the Shah was never defiant, nor are the United States and Israel in their nuclear policies.
The demonization program was greatly aided by the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president of Iran in the summer of 2005, as Ahmadinejad is an aggressive official who enjoys the limelight and being provocative. The Western media latched onto him in part because he made it easier to cast Iran in a harsh light, and they regularly pretend that he exercises real power over the Iranian armed forces and foreign policy, which he does not—this power belongs to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Hoseini Khamenei. Most notable in the demonization of Ahmadinejad is the media’s attachment to a statement he allegedly made at the “World Without Zionism” conference in Tehran on October 26, 2005: “Israel must be wiped off the map of the world,” was how Ahmadinejad’s words were immediately translated. Cited by numerous same-day wire-service reports, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan provided official reaction to it by saying, “I think it reconfirms what we have been saying about the regime in Iran. It underscores the concerns we have about Iran’s nuclear intentions.”51 It was taken as accurate by the New York Times the