Legendary investigative journalist Seymour M. Hirsch— who recently spoke at UCLA— finally let loose with his highly anticipated New Yorker article on the Bush Administration and Iran. In a 5000-word piece called “Shifting Targets” he writes that things haven’t gone exactly according to the administration’s plan and so the approach to problem has shifted, basically from nukes to terror and proxy war. In sum, the war in Iraq is now being redefined— years too late and for ulterior motives— as in fact a strategic conflict with Iran. But blaming Iran for the humiliating U.S. failure in Iraq is merely the latest rhetorical approach to persuade Americans of the need to bomb Tehran, according to Hirsch.

The shift in targeting reflects three developments. First, the President and his senior advisers have concluded that their campaign to convince the American public that Iran poses an imminent nuclear threat has failed (unlike a similar campaign before the Iraq war), and that as a result there is not enough popular support for a major bombing campaign. The second development is that the White House has come to terms, in private, with the general consensus of the American intelligence community that Iran is at least five years away from obtaining a bomb. And, finally, there has been a growing recognition in Washington and throughout the Middle East that Iran is emerging as the geopolitical winner of the war in Iraq.

A string of crazy public appearances by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have lended support to the idea in America that anything on the part of Iran is possible, and recent legislation passed by the Senate officially labeling the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization raises the stakes. Far more than merely symbolic, the categorization allows the U.S. government to attack the “business operations and finances” of any such labeled organization, according to the Washington Post.

Of course that’s exactly the kind of wide avenue administrations dream of when looking to circumvent Congress and messy public debate and there’s still a lot of time left for Bush and Cheney to do as they please in our name.

History supposedly repeats itself, but doesn’t one event (Iraq war) have to at least be history before it is repeated (Iran war)?

Tags: new yorker, seymore hirsch, shifting targets