Half close one's eyes and we could have been back in Bush-time, amid the ripest hours of the propaganda barrage for the US-led onslaught on Iraq. The familiar backdrop: the UN General Assembly, in this instance migrating to the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh. The theme: disclosure of fresh, chilling evidence of the duplicity of a pariah nation and of the threat it poses to the civilised world.
Then it was GW Bush's Secretary of State, Colin Powell, enthusiastically relaying a string of lies and blatant forgeries. Last week it was President Barack Obama, flanked by his Euro-puppets, dispensing an equally mendacious press release that was swallowed without a hiccup by the Western press.

writes Sasha Cockburn in his brilliant First Post piece about the Iranian nuclear 'bombshell' that wasn't.

I don’t know about you, but what Obama, Brown and Sarkozy reminded me of last week when they made their ludicrous statements about Iran was the 1940s comedy trio The Three Stooges.

Three supposedly grown-up men, trying to convince us that Iran’s non-existent nuclear weapons programme poses a threat to the peace and security of the world. It would be quite hilarious- if the repercussions of their actions- the imposition of even more draconian sanctions on the Islamic Republic which will adversely affect the lives of millions of ordinary Iranians- were not so serious.

Make no mistake, the Iranian nuclear ‘crisis’ is as contrived as the Kosovo ‘crisis’ of 1999 and the Iraq WMD ‘crisis‘.

As I wrote in 2006:
'Leaders meet to discuss Iran crisis." It all sounds rather familiar. In 1999,"leaders" met to discuss the Kosovo "crisis"; we now know there was no genocide in Kosovo. In 2003, "leaders" met to discuss Iraq's weapons of mass destruction crisis; we now know there were no WMD in Iraq. Now it's Iran nuclear ambitions that represent the "crisis". If past form is anything to go by, we can be fairly sure that once again this is a crisis of the Western powers' making.

UPDATE: Mehdi Hasan has an excellent post on media propaganda on Iran.

As commenter ‘Just Observer’ says:

I can't believe this is turning into a repeat of what happened in Iraq and the world is again accepting it blindly. Why?.

FURTHER UPDATE: If, like me, you are opposed to both sanctions and military intervention against Iran, then please consider lending this excellent campaign your support.

FURTHER UPDATE:
From today's Guardian:

The UN's chief weapons inspector, Mohamed ElBaradei, said today he had seen "no credible evidence" that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, rejecting British intelligence allegations that a weapons programme has been going on for at least four years.

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