Why are they STILL lying about Iran?

Some lies never die.

You probably thought the disinformationists would stop peddling tales about Iran helping to arm the Iraq insurgency. When this story was first floated, mostly via MSNBC reports (see here ), a number of commentators pointed out its absurdity.

To state the matter in the simplest possible terms: The U.S.-installed government of Iyad Allawi is about as pro-Iran as the current Tehran government could possibly hope for. Iran has no motive to support any insurgent faction. The explosives which supposedly came from Iran probably were among the 250,000 tons of munitions that have gone missing in Iraq.

Incidentally, you don't need to be an ultra-paranoid conspiracy theorist to wonder how 250,000 TONS could go missing if someone on the American side didn't want it to go missing.

The only named source for the NBC report was none other than the Machiavellian Michael Ledeen, who has a long, long history of peddling disinformation. If Ledeen says it's a sunny day, bring your umbrella.

(Side note: I just re-found a copy of Herman and Brodhead's masterful The Rise and Fall of the Bulgarian Connection, which details Ledeen's participation in the plot to peddle a hoax about the shooting of John-Paul II. The book contains many details about Ledeen that you can't find on the net.)

Now Tony Blair has resurrected the claim that Iran is supplying bombs to the Iraq insurgents. Juan Cole has the response:

First the US Department of Defense floated an attempt to accuse Iran of supplying shaped charges to Sunni Arab guerrillas in northern Iraq. The idea of the ayatollahs helping radical Salafi Abu Musab Zarqawi to blow up fellow Shiites was so absurd that the US dropped the whole thing for a while. Now the Blair government has retooled the charges slightly more plausibly, claiming that the Iranians were sending shaped charges to radical Sadrist splinter groups in Basra for use against British troops. But Iran has long backed the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and its Badr Corps paramilitary, which was trained by Iran's Revolutionary Guards. The Sadrists have clashed several times with SCIRI, most recently in Najaf. And, Sadrists are ghetto Arab Shiites who openly distrust Persian influence in their affairs. So why would the Iranian government arm the enemies of its proteges, and persons who, moreover, routinely badmouth Iran and work against its influence in Iraq. The whole thing makes no sense.

On Thursday Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari, the elected head of the Iraqi executive who is the putative ally of Blair and Bush, strongly denied Blair's charges against the Iranians. He pointed out that the two countries were developing a very constructive relationship, in which Iran was proving most helpful. He said, according the BBC Persian site [courtesy a kind reader:] "some people want to harm the friendly relations between Iran and Iraq, but not only will Iraq not allow them to do so, but it will continue to expand its relations with Iran."

I'd say Blair has been cut off at the knees in this latest propaganda effort against Iran. My friends with military experience tell me that shaped charges are not so esoteric that Iraqis would have to get them from Lebanon's Hizbullah via Iran, and that, indeed, there were probably lots of shaped charges in Iraqi arms depots, which have been extensively looted.

And that should settle that.

Except it doesn't. We are still left confronting the big question: Why the lie?

When Ledeen helped cobble together that nonsense about the papal shooting, his motives were clear. He wanted to foment a war with the USSR. Today, his goal is just as clear: The conquest of Iran.

First comes the disinformation. Then comes the provocation. One way or another, the war-mongers will get their war.