GARETH PORTER, porter.gareth50 at gmail.com, @GarethPorter
Porter is co-author of a book on the U.S.-Iran crisis — From CIA Coup to the Brink of War — due out Jan. 24. His past books include Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare.

He said today: “It is widely believed in the U.S. that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program, but if you follow the evidence that I documented in Manufactured Crisis, it is clear that Iran’s nuclear program was never designed to produce a nuclear weapon.”

The American Conservative is due to publish a piece by him shortly: “The Killing of Soleimani: Another Gulf of Tonkin Deception,” in which he reports that on Dec. 27 “a rocket attack on the K1 Iraqi base near Kirkuk killed an American contractor, as the ‘Operation Inherent Resolve’ command confirmed. The Trump administration immediately went into crisis mode, discussing both killing Soleimani and retaliatory strikes against Kataib Hezbollah. …

“If there was indeed an investigation that turned up information indicating that Kataib Hezbollah was responsible, it would certainly have been released publicly, but no further information on the incident has been forthcoming from either Iraqi or U.S. commands. The only specific information available was a Reuters report from ‘security sources’ who ‘said security forces found a launchpad for Katyusha rockets inside an abandoned vehicle near the base,’ which further deepened the mystery. But Pompeo was eager for the United States to provoke a military confrontation with Iran, just as Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara was eager to begin airstrikes against North Vietnamese targets in 1964.”