Hey! I believe you kabud! I had the same sort of thought myself – also the take-over of the Grand Mosque in Mecca was I bet a Soviet operation. This book The Siege of Mecca by Trofimov sounds suspicious since there was a Col. Trofimov FSB agent who spoke in the press sometime ago – you know how these things work. Plus all the State Department docs he provides on his website show all our guys just assumed it was a Russian operation.
So I guess the whole point was to launch the “Revolution” with leftist, then co-opt it with Islamists so that the West wouldn’t be able to unify behind the anti-Communism line? Plus to have it occur during Carter’s presidency was pretty great. And people would argue “well it put Reagan in the White House,” but probably just like the Cuban Missile Crisis the point was to get the Americans to recognize the legitimacy of the regime, not to actually launch wars…
The more I live and learn the more I think Anatoliy Golitsyn was right. Too bad his side lost the political battle in the 1970s – I don’t see what good reason there is to doubt the basic thrust of his arguments really, even if the details might have changed since his defection in 1961.
