Given the prospects of possible U.S. military action towards Iran, it is important to take a critical look at the major concerns the Bush administration and Congressional leaders of both parties have put forward regarding the Islamic Republic. Though there is much to say about the opportunism and double-standards in the Bush administration’s denunciations of the Iranian regime’s refusal to allow for a genuinely democratic opening (see my article “The United States and the Iranian Election,” CommonDreams, June 28), there is little debate regarding the repressive and anti-democratic nature of the Iranian regime. Americans are generally reluctant, however, to support U.S. military intervention on such grounds alone. As a result, the Bush administration has stressed the alleged threat that Iran poses to the United States as well as to its allies and security interests in the Middle East. How real is that threat? [CommonDreams.org, July 30, 2005; Download PDF]