At Salon, Juan Cole writes that because the NIE has discredited reports of an Iranian nuclear weapons program, fear mongering over going to war with Iran will now disappear from the campaign trail.Americans are not now going to fall in love with Iran, and suspicions may linger about Tehran's civilian nuclear energy research program. But voters are unlikely to take very seriously the idea that a poor, weak country of 70 million -- one lacking much of an air force and with no weapons of mass destruction -- is the most important problem that the United States faces. And if Iran is not the most important problem, then surely healthcare, the economy and getting out of Iraq are.Let's slow things up. How many voters are even aware of the NIE story? Republican candidates aren't betting that voters have stopped fearing Iran -- rather, they're continuing to beat the war drums. Remember -- Americans have been scared of Iran since the "Axis of Evil" speech way back when. And hell, since the hostage crisis! Fred Thompson, while traveling in South Carolina, called the report politicized and suggested that American will "never" be able to trust Iran. Rudy Giuliani foreign policy advisor Daniel Pipes wrote that post-NIE, he actually believes war with Iran is more likely. Unbelievable, right? It isn't time to relax because -- phew!! -- Iran won't be an issue in Nov. 2008. Expanding the War on Terror is far too foundational a tenet to Republicans -- they'll continue to use Iran fear to score rhetorical (and electoral) points. The Democratic candidates should be talking about Iran, in order to fact-check neoconservative claims: The NIE shows Iran is subject to diplomatic pressures. The NIE shows the Bush administration misled the American people about WMDs in Iran. And the president has misled the public into believing that the majority of foreign insurgents in Iraq are Iranian. In fact, over half are Saudi and Libyan. --Dana Goldstein
