Is David Sanger Judy Miller deja vu, without the neocon fixins?

David Sanger had a piece in the Times yesterday that was more Iran-fear-mongering.

Iran test-fired a sophisticated missile on Wednesday that was capable of striking Israel and parts of Western Europe, adding to concerns that Iran’s weapons-development program is fast outpacing the American-led diplomacy that President Obama has said he will let play out through the end of the year.

The piece included the highly-dubious statement that "enriching uranium to weapons grade [is] now under way at the large nuclear complex at Natanz."

Wait; as this other piece in the Times states, Iran is producing Low Enriched Uranium at Natanz.

"Theoretically, LEU can be transformed into bomb-grade highly enriched uranium with the same centrifuge technology…"

Theory isn’t fact. Sanger shouldn’t be throwing this sort of statement around, not when Israel lobbyists are pushing for a military confrontation. Just yesterday David Bromwich nailed Sanger, on Huffpo, for a similar agenda in his (mis)reporting of the Obama-Netanyahu showdown:

Is the Times trying once again to commandeer public opinion for U.S. or Israeli military action against a large country in the Middle East? Improbable as it may sound, it is becoming hard to escape that conclusion…[Sanger writes,] "Mr. Obama’s strategy is based on a giant gamble: That after the Iranian elections on June 12, the way will be clear to convince the Iranians that it is in their long-term interest to strike a deal." How gigantic is the gamble, in fact? That depends on whether you set greater store by the Israeli or the American estimate of Iran’s progress toward a weapon. It is a gigantic gamble only on the Israeli view. Evidently, Sanger takes on trust the accuracy of that view.

[Sanger] says that Iran is the major business between the U.S. and Israel in the coming year. The story is false, as an impartial viewer or reader of Monday’s news conference will recognize. The giant gamble of the Times is that by repeating the story they can shape events and help to make it true.

I’m getting the feeling that Sanger is to Iran what Judy Miller was to Iraq–the dogged New York Times reporter who fetched dubious reports to serve a belligerent agenda. Though apparently Sanger hasn’t got Miller’s neocon ideology. I think that’s a distinction without a difference…

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