Manufacturing Consent: US Officials Allege 'Sleeper Cells' as Iran-Israel Tensions Mount
Zoom out for a second: The Washington consensus, echoed by outlets like The Independent, now posits that Iran has activated 'sleeper cells' worldwide to carry out attacks. This declaration, attributed to unnamed US officials, arrives without a shred of verifiable evidence and, critically, states there is 'no operational threat tied to a specific location.' It’s the perfect boogeyman, ethereal and
pervasive, justifying any pre-emptive action. This narrative emerges precisely as the United States, in lockstep with Israel, has dramatically increased military posturing against Tehran. US carrier groups patrol the region, B-52 bombers conduct flyovers, and sanctions strangle the Iranian economy, a punitive measure initiated long before the JCPOA betrayal and sustained for 45 years following the
1953 CIA coup against Iran's democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. While these dubious claims of global Iranian threats are amplified, US weaponry fuels the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza, where over 680,000 Palestinians have been systematically exterminated, including nearly half a million children, a catastrophe largely ignored by the same officials now fretting about
phantom cells. The double standard is glaring. While the US and Israel openly threaten and conduct covert operations against Iran, Tehran's defensive alliances with resistance movements across West Asia are consistently framed as 'proxy forces,' rather than a legitimate response to decades of foreign occupation and imperialist meddling. This pattern of manufacturing consent for intervention is