US saber-rattling and Iran

To hear some tell it, an US attack on Iran has been imminent, well, for a few years. After most of the US media exhibited a lack of skepticism in the runup to the war in Iraq, Adam Reilly this week looks at whether the Fourth Estate has done any better in assessing the conflict with Tehran:

This might seem like a bad time for the press to revisit Bush’s Iran policy, or parse Iran’s internal politics, implications of political flux inside Iran, or explore Iran’s internal politics, or parse hints of US bellicosity with renewed vigor. After all, there’s a presidential election to cover. And the proximity of that election makes it difficult to imagine that any attack against Iran could occur before 2009.

In reality, though, this might be the best possible moment for an uptick in Iran-focused press coverage. Crafting a coherent, tough Iran policy will be one of the great foreign-policy challenges that the next president faces. And Democratic nominee-in-waiting Barack Obama and his Republican counterpart, John McCain, have offered drastically different takes on how best to engage the Iranian regime. Given the stakes, voters should be capable of weighing this difference when they head to the ballot box in November — but if their knowledge of Iran isn’t augmented, and soon, how smart a choice are they going to be able to make?

What’s more, events of the past few days suggest that a Bush administration attack on Iran might not be as improbable as it currently seems. The aforementioned report by the IAEA, which voiced serious concern about Iran’s non-cooperation with international monitors, is a helpful addendum to the administration’s oft-stated case for military action. And as the just-published memoir by former White House press secretary Scott McClellan reminds us, once this president decided to invade Iraq, he wasn’t going to let anything stop him. If Bush has already made a similar decision about attacking Iran — and if, due to media complacency, this happens with a minimum of public debate — the press will have only itself to blame.