This is an on-the-media podcast Extra. I'm Bob Garfield. And this is about deja vu. It starts with this

week's escalation of tensions between the United States and Iran. Breaking news just as we came

on the air tonight word. The U.S. is sending 1,000 additional troops to the Middle East amid these rising tensions with Iran.

This as we have new images just declassified tonight of what Team Trump says is an Iranian attack on two tankers last week.

Tonight the new threat from Iran.

That country is saying within 10 days it will exceed the limit of its uranium

stockpile violating the nuclear deal that deal the U.S. had already pulled out of.

President Trump says he doesn't want war and neither does President Hassan Rouhani.

But haven't we been here before? Attacks on Gulf shipping?

Uranium stockpiles to build WMD, and as tensions rise,

there are even echoes of Ahmed Chalaby. Remember him? Back in 2003, the businessman and politician became a prominent voice of Iraqi descent against the regime of Saddam Hussein

and eventually took on the role of de facto leader in exile of a dreamed of democratic post-Saddam Iraq.

A darling of Neo-Con Hawks, his so-called Iraqi National Congress was not only misrepresented as

a shadow government with broad popular support, but as a source of damning intelligence about

Saddam's supposed weapons of mass destruction. If Chalabee didn't exist, the Bush administration

would have had to invent him. So flash forward 16 years,

as Trump and his advisors rattle sabers at Iran, here comes Chalaby 2.0, Iranian commentator

Heshmat Olavi, a dependable denouncer of the Mullah's regime.

Olivy has been portrayed as a courageous dissident with a broad constituency and rare

insight into the inner workings of Iranian theocracy.

30,000 Twitter followers, op-eds in the Hill, Forbes, the Daily Caller, the Diplomat,

the Federalist, Voice of America,

...