In the Iran war, the truth was the first victim - Column by Henrique Silva

In the days immediately preceding the February 28 US-Israeli attack on Iran, the Trump administration justified the start of a dangerous and unpredictable war with the following three reasons, which were proven false after close scrutiny by prestigious newspapers like the New York Times and the Washington Post, as well as political analysts, experts and even conventional politicians:

1. Iran had restarted its nuclear program;

2. Iran had enough enriched uranium to build a nuclear bomb in a few days;

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3. Iran was developing long-range missiles that would soon be capable of hitting the United States.

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It is not difficult to refute, through careful analysis and the following counter-arguments, the imminence of these three risks presented as the reason for going to war:

1. Scientific processes as complex as the construction of nuclear weapons or long-range missiles (the only ones capable of reaching the United States from Iran) do not allow for such a precise calculation of execution time.

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2. If the US intelligence agencies had failed to detect in time such a spectacular advance in the construction of nuclear weapons and the development of long-range missiles by Iran, such a lapse would constitute perhaps the greatest failure in the history of the US intelligence services, and the leaders of these agencies should be promptly dismissed.

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3. Only a scientific miracle - and science hardly operates on the basis of miracles - could have allowed Iranian scientists to produce, in a matter of months, operational nuclear weapons after Iran's nuclear facilities were completely destroyed by the joint US-Israeli bombardment last June, as Trump publicly stated.

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Who knows, maybe the current US administration was counting on the overwhelming support of the American people for the war, on the level of the support initially registered for the 2003 Iraq War, which was then linked to the 9/11 terrorist attack two years earlier. If it was counting on that, it should have prepared public opinion and ensured national consensus before bombing Iran, as was done before the start of hostilities in 2003. Having failed to do so, as soon as the fighting began, Trump administration officials went into overdrive with a media campaign that resulted in a bewildering array of conflicting, contradictory and ever-changing statements about the reasons for the war, its objectives and its outcome. So far, four weeks into the conflict, there is still no clarity on these aspects of the Iran war.

One of the first reasons put forward to justify the war was particularly embarrassing for Trump's officials, after being disproved in the political debates that ended up with the questioning of National Security Director Tulsi Gabbard at a recent congressional hearing. She had omitted from her statement to Congress the conclusion by the very intelligence agencies she heads that Iran posed no imminent threat to the United States. However, when questioned by Senator Jon Ossoff about her administration's claim that Iran did constitute an imminent danger requiring military action, Gabbard made an astonishing statement: "Senator, the only person who can determine what is and is not an imminent threat is the President." Ossoff had directly asked whether the intelligence agencies had ascertained an "imminent nuclear threat" from Iran. Gabbard tried to explain herself with the strange argument that the imminence of a national security threat is a presidential determination based on a "broad body of information" - including public opinion polls? - and not a determination made by intelligence agencies. As the New York Times pointed out, she thereby delegated to the president the responsibility for evaluating information on nuclear and long-range missile programs. However, the president is not necessarily qualified to make such a professionally specialized assessment.

It could be argued, however, that Gabbard did worse than delegate her professional responsibility to the President, whom she is obligated to advise on matters of national security. She has basically - and perhaps for the first time in the history of the US government - suspended the strict requirement of objectivity in evaluating information critical to national security. And this is a serious professional error, the knowledge of which could put serious American officials to sleep. It's the kind of behavior similar to that of a patient who abdicates his responsibility to objectively provide symptoms to the doctor in charge of treating a deadly disease.

What Tulsi Gabbard has done - if we really believe that she has left the determination of the imminent threat to the President - is to allow a media-savvy President, with aspirations typical of traditional emperors, the free space within public opinion to foment support for a war that may not serve the nation's interests in the slightest and may well endanger the safety of American citizens, both abroad and at home. This is definitely not what the nation expects from a Director of National Security.

The logical implication of giving the President responsibility for assessing imminent threats to national security is that it allows him to decide what intelligence information becomes fact. As Commander-in-Chief, he is then authorized to establish his own sets of "facts" concerning national security, thus establishing the primacy of authority over objectivity.

The primacy of authority over objectivity - as explained above - when national security is at stake, creates the potential for the subversion of democracy, by denying the nation the right to know the truth and to use that knowledge to exercise firm control over its own destiny. Knowledge of the truth in relation to national security, by guaranteeing the nation's informed and rigorous opinion on decisions concerning its own destiny, ultimately functions as a guarantor of the effective exercise of sovereignty.

The exchange of words in the parliamentary hearing between Jon Ossoff and Tulsi Gabbard reminds us of Kellyanne Conway's famous moment in 2017, in which she coined the expression "alternative facts" to describe the use of disinformation in the construction of an alleged truth. She is sometimes credited with inaugurating the post-truth political environment that is gaining ground in the US political landscape. Apparently, Tulsi Gabbard feels fully comfortable in that environment.

Henrique Silva