Preparing the PR Battlefield

I’m neither in the US government nor a Baluchi tribesman so I have no way to confirm the claims in Seymour Hersh’s new article  about clandestine US operations inside Iran.  But I am fairly confident that there is a PR push going on to keep the storyline of possible attack on Iran in the headlines.

Exhibit A is a press conference call I was on last week sponsored by the Israel Project to discuss a new WINEP report called “The Last Resort: Consequences of Preventive Military Action against Iran.”  The people running the call stressed they were not advocating attack at this time, but urged the journalists on the call to consider (read: write stories about) what such an attack would look like and what its consequences would be.  WINEP, for their part, advertise the report on their site as “Thinking about Preventative Military Action against Iran.”  

The goals of this seem to be testing the waters, conditioning public opinion for a possible strike, and pressuring Iran on the diplomatic track.  This doesn’t tell us much about if a strike will happen or how close it might be, but it might help put the building media blitz after the Israeli exercises in the Mediterranean in better perspective.