“While the [USS] Eisenhower is ostensibly assisting US operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is the looming threat of Iran that increasingly occupies its attention,” writes Damien McElroy for the UK Telegraph. “Recent tensions between America and Iran over Teheran’s attempts to develop a nuclear weapon have raised the prospect of its third regional war in a decade.”

Indeed, the key word here is “ostensibly,” because the Eisenhower, now teamed up with the Nimitz, is not primarily in the Arabian Sea to help out in Afghanistan, but rather to attack Iran. In order to make this coming mass murder more palatable, at least for the yahoos at home, the corporate media is obliged to tell the same lie over and over, sort of like a mantra or a broken record—Iran is developing a nuke, Iran is developing a nuke…

Excuse me, Iran is developing nuclear energy, not nuclear weapons, and has a right to do so under the NPT.

“The quiet-spoken Capt Cloyd [the Eisenhower’s commanding officer] embraced the suggestion that the dual deployment is at the forefront of efforts to stop Iran getting a nuclear bomb, pointing out that his maritime assets have been tasked to quash any challenge to global security.”

Does this remind you of the Iraq invasion? Remember those pesky weapons of mass destruction? Recall at least some of us insisting all those weapons—sold to Iraq by the United States and Europe—were destroyed soon after the “Gulf War,” otherwise known as Iraq Attack I, the Bush Senior version. It really is difficult to call it a “war” because, usually, in a war there are two sides roughly paired. Of course, there was no such thing as weapons of mass destruction in Iraq—same as there is no program to develop nukes in Iran—and the objective had and has nothing to do with disarming Iraqis or Iranians. It has to do with wrecking Iraq and Iran.

“The Eisenhower is not only the flagship of the carrier group that protects The Gulf through which one-fifth of the world’s oil is shipped. It has also helped overthrow a hard-line Islamic regime in Somalia during a stint off the Horn of Africa.”

In other words, the Eisenhower is a “flagship” of intervention, used to attack and kill people who do not pose a threat to the United States, although the Union of Islamic Courts, supported by most people in the war-torn country, by its mere existence threatened Conoco, Amoco, Chevron and Phillips, or rather their ability to “maximize profits.”

“In the carrier’s Combat Direction Centre, Warrant Officer Michael Myers can spot anything untoward in a 256 mile radius from his radar screen. He can identify objects as small as wooden boats on the open sea and small aircraft in a swathe of countries from the Arabian peninsula to the northern shore of the Sea of Arabia.”

Not that it particularly matters, as Iran has Russian 3M-82 Moskit cruise missiles, designed specifically for use against military vessels. Warrant Officer Michael Myers may spot these on his radar, streaking in a Mach 2.5, 30 feet above the water with a 750 pound bomb payload, but there is absolutely nothing he can do about it because the United States has no defense against the Moskit, or Sunburn.

“As it patrols the shipping lanes of the Strait of Hormuz, the Eisenhower ensures the safe passage of oil tankers. It also prevents the trading routes being used to transport materials that would help rogue nations build a nuclear weapon.”

As it now stands, the “rogue” nation of Israel has around 400 nuclear weapons, although they are not officially declared, or is Israel an NPT signatory, and Israel has something called the “Samson Option,” a variant on the policy of mutually assured destruction, a rather meaningless policy as none of Israel’s neighbors have nuclear weapons. Another “rogue” nation, the United States, actually used two nukes on a nation ready to surrender, killing well over 200,000 people, virtually all of them civilians.

“Iran’s belligerent posture has increased the challenges facing the Eisenhower since it deployed to the Middle East last October. Vice Admiral Patrick Walsh, the commander of the Fifth Fleet, issued a stark warning that Iran risks triggering an ‘accidental war’ during aggressive military maneuvers.”

It must be those warships Iran has parked in New York harbor that may trigger an “accidental war,” certainly not the U.S. armada in the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf. Last month, a U.S. Navy nuclear submarine “collided with a large Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha Ltd. tanker in the Persian Gulf, causing damage to the submarine’s bow and the tanker’s stern,” reported the Daily Yomiuri Online. “It was highly likely that the nuclear submarine hid itself in bubbles created by the commercial ship’s screws to sneak past surveillance by Iran,” Koh Young Choul, a former South Korean National Defense Ministry officer, told the newspaper. “That’s the best way for a submarine to slip through airplane patrol searches.”

“US commanders ascribe the increase in instability to increasingly aggressive actions by Teheran. For that reason the deployment of the carriers in the region is designed to intensify the pressure on Iran to step back from the brink.”

Meanwhile, the CIA long ago crossed the brink. As reported earlier today, the CIA is funding and supporting terrorist organizations inside Iran, as some of us have long suspected. “In the past year there has been a wave of unrest in ethnic minority border areas of Iran, with bombing and assassination campaigns against soldiers and government officials.”

“In the past year and a half it [Iran] has become much more strident, more vocal and in your face,” said Vice Admiral Patrick Walsh, commander of the Fifth Fleet. “What concerns me is miscalculation.”

It is, of course, a “miscalculation” the neocons hope for in order to kick off World War Four.

Short of that, no doubt they can engineer another Gulf Of Tonkin event or maybe even another September 11th attack.