Analysts say the US administration is recycling the rhetoric of 2003 to justify a new escalation against Iran, but with a fractured team, isolated diplomacy, and a dangerous ‘information chaos’. In January 2003, President George W Bush stood before the United States Congress to warn of a “grave danger” from a “dictator”, a former US client in the Middle East, armed with weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Twenty-three years later, in the same chamber, President Donald Trump used his State of the Union address to paint a strikingly similar narrative: A rogue regime, a looming nuclear threat, and a ticking clock. In a dark twist of historical irony, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, who was armed to the teeth by the US in Iraq’s 1980-1988 war with the fledgling Islamic Republic of Iran, became Washin...