Target Iran
Scott Ritter
Avalon Publishing, 316pp, £16.99
Scott Ritter, the former UN weapons inspector who performed a volte-face to denounce the Iraq war, has set his sights in his latest books on Iran. His basic thesis is that the absence of a smoking gun in terms of Iran’s nuclear programme highlights the true aim of American policy – regime change, not disarmament. He makes his case forcefully, but the circumlocutory narrative and the excessive detailing of the chronological minutiae of the diplomatic manoeuvrings may well deter the casual reader.
Ritter begins and ends his story with Israel. He starts with Israel’s belief that Iran is their number one security threat (which is based on ‘konseptsia’ – a Hebrew word meaning false conception), and ends with the conflict in Lebanon, and the danger of it being seen as a US-Iranian proxy war. Despite the book’s convincing argument that ‘the world stands on the brink of the abyss of yet another tragic, avoidable conflict in the Middle East,’ the bulk of the content feels like it has been rushed to meet a publisher’s deadline.
Ritter spends too much time explaining the context of the build-up to the war in Iraq, without really exploring the fascinating links between the two countries. He also writes little about Iran itself, and the divisions inherent in that country. In fact, this book is really not about Iran at all – it’s about what America believes Iran to be. In that sense, he may well be vindicated in his belief that ‘the Iranian threat espoused by President Bush is fear-based, not fact-based.’