Last night on the BBC’s Question Time, panelist Simon Sebag Montefiore quite calmly lied through his teeth that Iran is an energy rich country that has no need for nuclear power. That would explain why Iran needs to import petrol from Russia to meet its needs.

Others blatantly lying in the last day or two were:

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who wrote an op-ed in yesterday’s Finanical Times, saying: “There are three key elements to a nuclear weapon - the fissile material, the missile itself, and the process of weaponising the fissile material for the missile. The U.S. National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear program published this week suggested that Iran has put on hold work on the last of these elements. If so, good. But Iran is still pursuing the other two elements, in particular, an enrichment program that has no apparent civilian application, but which could produce fissile material for a nuclear weapon, despite demands to stop from the United Nations Security Council and the International Atomic Energy Agency.”

American Israel Public Affairs Committee spokesman Josh Block told the Jewish Telegragh Agency that, if anything, the NIE showed that Iran had advanced further than was publicly known, claiming that “Iran has utilized and has at its disposal a hidden, second unacknowledged, unmonitored track for enriching bomb fuel; and has engaged in a nuclear weaponization program, an assessment never before made public by the American intelligence community.”

Also, on the 4th Dec., the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organisations held an emergency conference call to discuss the NIE and a strategy to get the next round of sanctions imposed on Iran, calling the NIE a “challenge.” They propose emphasizing that Iran still backs terrorism.

Gerald Steinberg of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs wrote that Israeli analysts have long warned their U.S. counterparts about the potential for a parallel “black” Iranian weapons program based on a small nuclear reactor producing plutonium, and following the North Korean model. “Indeed, Iran is known to be constructing just such a reactor at Arak, leaving room for another undetected facility.”

Former notorious U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton wrote an op-ed published Washington Post yesterday, accusing U.S. intelligence officials of “engaging in policy formulation rather than `intelligence’ analysis, and too many in Congress and the media are happy about it.” He lectures President Bush to “leave a lasting legacy by returning the intelligence world to its proper function.”

In the meantime, Dick Cheney admitted that the NIE was released because “it was not likely to stay classified for long anyway…. Everything leaks,” in an interview with Politico published yesterday.

Now that Dick Cheney has been hamstrung in his fairly overt plans to attack Iran, the risks of a Gulf of Tonkin type false flag operation must have increased significantly. I’m sure Cheney is spitting bricks today.

In a blog entry in September, Council of Foreign Relations member, and erstwhile US Senator, Gary Hart wrote some “Unsolicited Advice to the Government of Iran,” saying, “Presuming that you are not actually ignorant enough to desire war with the United States, you might be well advised to read the history of the sinking of the U.S.S. Maine in Havana harbor in 1898 and the history of the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964.

“Having done so, you will surely recognize that Americans are reluctant to go to war unless attacked. Until Pearl Harbor, we were even reluctant to get involved in World War II. For historians of American wars the question is whether we provoke provocations.”

And there lies the danger. 3 US carrier groups are currently stationed within anti-ship missile range of the Iranian coast. A single incident, appearing to have come from Iran, would be enough to scupper the good intentions of the US intelligence community, who, no doubt, are still smarting from the Senate Report of Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq.

As Gary Hart pointed out, the Gulf of Tonkin episode is only one example that demonstrates past US willingness to dupe its own people into an action they otherwise would not support.

Speaking to Jewish group in London on Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert revealed that at his meeting last week in Moscow with the Russian president, he learned that “Russia has decided not to supply nuclear fuel to Iran,” according to Haaretz yesterday.

Mr Putin seems to have forgotten that conversation already, though. According to the Itar-Tass news agency, “Russia has confirmed all commitments under the Bushehr nuclear power plant construction contract with Iran and is determined to comply with them, Russian presidential aide Sergei Prikhodko told Itar-Tass, when asked for a comment on the recent publication in Israel’s daily Haaretz.”

Must have been the vodka …