The Lies That Hawks Tell

Iran is not “relentlessly” advancing or inexorably marching toward a nuclear weapon.

Walter Russell Mead enjoys making things up:

As the aftershocks from the Afghan withdrawal continue to reverberate and as Iran advances relentlessly toward a nuclear weapon [bold mine-DL] with no visible response from the U.S., Plan B looks more realistic every day.

This is not the first time that Mead has made what he must know to be a false claim like this. A month ago, Mead referred to “Iran’s inexorable march toward nuclear weapons” as if this were a real thing. I commented on that lie at the time:

Iran isn’t marching toward nuclear weapons, inexorably or otherwise, but if people like Mead get their way that could change.

It is important to understand that the facts are not in dispute about this. To the best of our knowledge, Iran has no nuclear weapons program, and its government has made no decision to pursue the development of nuclear weapons. Iran is not “relentlessly” advancing or inexorably marching towards this goal. Like some other Iran hawks, Mead just invents things out of thin air, and he gets these fictions published as analysis in one of the more prominent newspapers in the country.