The War Party always needs at least one scary enemy. From David Stockman at antiwar.com:
When the 77-Years War ended in 1991, the Shiite theocracy ensconced in Tehran was an unfortunate albatross on the Persian people. But it was no threat to America’s homeland safety and security, either.
The very idea that Tehran is an expansionist power bent on exporting terrorism to the rest of the world is a giant fiction and tissue of lies invented by the Washington War Party and its Bibi Netanyahu branch in order to win political support for their confrontationist policies.
Indeed, the three-decades-long demonization of Iran has served one overarching purpose. Namely, it has enabled both branches of the War Party to conjure up a fearsome enemy. In turn, this threat is used to justify aggressive policies that call for a constant state of military mobilization and maintenance of a vast armada of expeditionary forces – forces which bleed that nation’s fiscal resources but do nothing at all for the security and safety of the American homeland.
Indeed, Iran has not been demonized by happenstance. When the Cold War officially ended in 1991, the Cheney/neocon cabal then domiciled in the Pentagon deeply feared the kind of drastic demobilization of the U.S. military-industrial complex that was warranted by the suddenly more pacific strategic environment. That is to say, the kind of drastic reduction in military spending which occurred after both WWI and WWII, and appropriately so.
STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC 