Iran’s mutually assured destruction

Like a cheap war pamphlet prodding a very susceptible bully president, the weekly The Economist, had on its January 31 cover the question-headline “Has Iran won? ”The Economist has lost much of its respect and has ceased to be a sober reference (remember the cover just before the Iraqi invasion saying “Why war would be justified?”) but the magazine’s articles on Iran are important because they spill the beans on the reasons for an attack — a rationale that is as irrational as it can get. There are several fallacies in The Economist’s article, and I am using the piece precisely because it repeats the average, lowbrow arguments with which we have been swamped in the days leading to the IAEA report on Iran. Let us not belittle the importance of a biased press — while not giving us the truth, they dutifully authenticate and spell out the day’s agenda.