Media leaks and military strikes against Iran

Governments have always realised the potential powers of the media but nowadays we see them taking advantage of it even more in their bid to implement policies or actions - both popular ones or otherwise.

In any given circumstances, the government will use the media to leak out bits and pieces of sensitive information about its proposed policy and then will sit back to see how the public are reacting to it.

What usually happens is this: a high placed source within the government will leak some sensitive material about the proposed policy which is still being debated in the public sphere. The leak will be given to an established journalist in an influential media.

There are two factors the government will consider in such leaks:

1. To gauge the public feedback on the proposed policy, and
2. To prepare the public for the definite implementation of the policy.

These two factors, though sound alike, have distinct characteristics. The first one involves a situation where the government is not sure about its proposed policy. Thus it wants to see how the public will react. The government will take in all criticisms and opinions and then will modify the proposed policy to that.

However the second factor is more serious. In this case, the government has decided to implement the proposed policy and will not buck away from it. It is not interested in listening to other suggestions or criticisms. All it wants to do by the media leak is to prepare the public for it and at the same time fine tuning the implementation of the policy. Policies which fall under this category are usually the unpopular ones.

Another important characteristic of this second factor is that the goverment will always deny the publised report first. After a couple of weeks, more leaks will be made to other media and finally the policy will be implemented and when that is done, the public will not be too shocked to hear about it.

It is under this category the weekend New Yorker magazine online report falls. The report, quoting high placed Pentagon, State Department and White House sources, said that the US is planning a military action against Iran as President George W Bush wants a regime change in Tehran before his term is up.

The Guardian today quotes part of the report as such:

The US is planning military action against Iran because George Bush is intent on regime change in Tehran - and not just as a contingency if diplomatic efforts fail to halt its suspected nuclear weapons programme, it was reported yesterday.

In the New Yorker magazine, Seymour Hersh, America's best known investigative journalist, concluded that the Bush administration is even considering the use of a tactical nuclear weapon against deep Iranian bunkers, but that top generals in the Pentagon are attempting to take that option off the table.

And not surprisingly, the rejections and dismissals of the report have come on fast.

Bush's adviser calls the report as 'ill-informed', saying that the US was committed to a diplomatic solution.

Like I mentioned above, this piece of media leak falls into the second category of just preparing the public for the ultimate military action against Iran.

The denials and counter accusations will now be preceded by more leaks in other media outlets, each drawing close to the final plan of the attack. Each new leaked report will have more material of how and what form of military action that will take place. Finally when such an attack takes place, no one will be taken by surprise.

Even in this first report, we see some details of the plans: that tactical nuclear weapons will be used to attack just the nucleal facilities.

This leaked report is just a follow up to a carefully laid spin doctoring. First we had some influential US senators not dismissing military actions, then we had the US' rep in the UN saying the same thing. Soon to follow was the defence secretary, then the vice president and finally even the president himself spoke about potential military strikes.

In the coming weeks or months the public will be prepared for potential human cost as well as the need for a democracy sweep in Iran.

So it is all following a well laid plan and we now await the proper first strike to happen.