Do you remember when we were young, and our mothers would tell us stories, not just to get us to sleep but also to keep us indoors, especially during the summer afternoons? These stories often featured scary characters, carefully crafted to make us stay inside. By the time we realised that they were simply stories meant to guide our behaviour, we had already grown into our teenage years.

Now, let’s go back to the time of the Bush presidencies, both the father and the son. In many ways, they played a similar role, using carefully constructed stories to achieve political goals and ensure the world followed their version of events. We all remember the phrase “weapons of mass destruction,” which was repeated so often that it became permanently lodged in the public’s mind. It was followed by the term “axis of evil,” which George W. Bush used in his January 2002 State of the Union address, naming Iran, Iraq, and North Korea as countries seeking weapons of mass destruction and threatening global peace.

These words became powerful. They painted Iran, in particular, as not just a regional rival, but as the very embodiment of evil. The more these terms were repeated, the more the public was conditioned to believe that Iran had both the intention and the capability to threaten the world with its nuclear and missile programs. But the facts weren’t as simple as those slogans made them........

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