There is a concept of “strategic messaging” used to let the public know how it is supposed to think about this or that policy or country. There are problems with such messaging. It often exaggerates or even invents “facts” and thereby turns into propaganda lies. It also creates an echo chamber where the strategic messengers over time comes to believe their own bullshitting.
When a senior aid to president Bush said:
”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.”
He was right in a specific way. The Bush administration, through its propaganda, created its “own reality” especially with regard to Iraq. But that reality was not the reality of other actors. Especially not the reality of Iraqi resistances. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” banner was his reality while the reality of the besieged U.S. occupation of Iraq looked much different. When more and more people became aware of that Bush political position sank to record lows. One can created one’s own reality but it is to one’s own peril.
Such “strategic messaging” disease has captured Washington with regards to Syria as well as to North Korea. Claims that Assad is about to fall or that Kim Jong Un is crazy does not turn such assertions into facts. But repeat them often enough and people, especially those doing the messaging, may come to believe them. These politicians then themselves react as if their propaganda assertions were true. The White House believed its own rhetoric that Assad would fall as soon as protests started and tried to plan for his immediate downfall. It took a quite for that view to change and even now there is only little of alternative planing. Empty but calculated threats from North Korea are seen as serious danger because “everyone knows” that North Korea is “crazy” and are therefor answered with risky military provocations.
A piece in today’s Wall Street Journal seems to confirm that a similar disease is growing with regards to Iran.
Iran converts its 20% Uranium to fuel plates for the Tehran Research Reactor. It does so because, as is well known, that reactor is indeed in dire need of fresh fuel and because many cancer patients’ lives depend on the medical output of that reactor.
The “strategic messaging” U.S. administrations have done with regard to Iran are full of lies. False claims are made that Iran would want to rush to a nuclear weapon. False claims are made about the 2009 election. False claims are made that Iran is concerned over the threat of an Israeli attack.
Thus we now get this piece which attributes Iran’s conversion of 20% enriched Uranium to all the false claims made about Iran but not to its indisputable real-live motivation:
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has decided to keep Iran’s nuclear program within limits demanded by Israel for now, according to senior U.S., European and Israeli officials, in a move they believe is designed to avert an international crisis during an Iranian election year.
…
Seeking to ward off international pressure, Iranian nuclear officials have kept the country’s stockpile of uranium enriched to 20% purity below 250 kilograms (550 pounds). Iran would need such an amount—if processed further into weapons-grade fuel—to produce one atomic bomb, experts believe. It is also the amount Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the United Nations in September that the world should prevent Iran from amassing, through a military strike if necessary.
Iran did convert the Uranium because it needed it. It didn’t convert it because of “international pressure”. It did not convert it because Netanyahoo made a cartoon performance at the UN. It didn’t convert it because Iran will soon have another election. There is no real data that would support any of the assertions made in the WSJ piece. There is real data that says Iran needs the fuel.
It is difficult to detect where the “strategic messaging” turns against its own creators. The point where people start to believe their own propaganda is not always clear. The WSJ journal piece has a tone to it that lets me fear those “senior U.S., European and Israeli officials” are near or already in a state where their self created “reality” makes the blind for the real one. If that is the case the danger for miscalculations and in the end war has increased.