‘Why must we hate Iran?’ Rick Sanchez questions MSM mantra as Trump & US intel disagree

Twisted headlines and nuclear accusations against Iran all serve the same purpose: beating the drums of war and fanning public hatred: Rick Sanchez takes on how the White House and the MSM are trying to ram their message home.

President Donald Trump administration’s animosity with Iran has ratcheted up since Trump withdrew the US from the 2015 Iran Deal – a multilateral agreement that offered the Islamic Republic some sanctions relief in exchange for a scaledown of its nuclear program, which Tehran has staunchly denied to have any military vector. The return of US sanctions was followed by threats of “swift, severe punishment” and ominous warnings of “other things to put pressure on Iran” from self-described hawks like Mike Pompeo and John Bolton.

On the PR front, the media, particularly in the US and Israel, has played a key role in portraying Iran as backwards and barbaric. “Iran publicly hangs man on homosexuality charges” read a Tuesday headline in the Jerusalem Post.

“It makes you ask ‘Is Iran really that barbaric?’’ Sanchez said. “It certainly got my attention, until I kept reading, and then I found out that the man was accused of kidnapping and possibly raping two 15-year-old boys!”

Homosexuality is indeed illegal in Iran, as it is in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and much of the Middle East. But the point of such articles, Sanchez continued, is to convince readers that Iran is the enemy.

“Iran may or may not be as bad as we say that they are, or as good as they say that they are,” Sanchez said. “But remember, it’s very important that we as Americans, right now, hate Iran,” he added. “If we don’t hate Iran, seems like our whole foreign policy is going to fall flat.”

By far the most serious charge leveled at Iran is its supposed violation of the nuclear deal. This violation gave Trump pretext to pull out of the deal, and US rhetoric on Iran since has repeated the same themes. Trump warned of the “very real threat of Iran’s nuclear breakout” in 2017 and accused Tehran of “chaos, death, and destruction” across the Middle East in a speech to the UN last September.

However, the US intelligence community disagrees. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday that even after the US pullout, “We do not believe Iran is currently undertaking the key activities we judge necessary to produce a nuclear device.”

All of Iran’s nuclear research since last year, Coats continued, has been carried out within the limits of the deal, despite the regime’s buildup of its conventional military capabilities.

“Perhaps Dan Coats forgot to read his marching orders,” Sanchez speculated. “Remember, the fact that our government says Iran is in absolute violation of the treaty is both the reason we canceled the treaty and the reason we’re sanctioning them.”

“Mixed signals, right? The facts seem to be at odds with the threats and the accusations,” Sanchez concluded. “What gives?”

Trump on Wednesday disagreed with Coats’ assessment, calling the intelligence community “passive and naive,” and telling them to “go back to school” on the Iranian threat.

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