The IAEA drools on, announcing (surprise!) that Iran hasn’t really complied with the tough demands of the Great Powers. Nobel Prize Winner al Baradei, at long last headed for retirement, proclaims that the investigation is at a “dead end.” The Great Powers sternly demand that Iran be nice. The mullahs give them the finger, announcing ten more enrichment facilities and warning they mightwalk away from the negotiations on which President Obama had based his “new policy.”
And now what?
It’s all very confusing, isn’t it? Since I don’t know a living person capable of parsing it all, I turned to the dead for enlightenment. For once, the ouija board worked well, and within a few minutes I was talking to my favorite spirit, the ghost of James Jesus Angleton, once upon a time the head of CIA counterintelligence.
JJA: It just shows you how easy deception can be, whatever the facts are.
ML: How can you know it’s a deception if you don’t know the facts?
JJA: That’s the beauty of it. And sometimes they are so good at trickery, you lose even when you win. Take the story of the Qom reactor, for example. As usual, it was a secret project. We found out about it. Then–and this is rather alarming–they found out that we knew, and were about to go public. So they preempted us, they announced it first, and then ‘invited us’ to go look…after several weeks. During which time they carted off the damning evidence. So what we’re left with is a dismantled facility, and a mystery: how did they know we knew? Did they penetrate us? Or an ally? Or the IAEA?
ML: Don’t we know by now?
JJA: You’d hope so, but I tend to doubt it. Our counterintelligence isn’t very good. The FBI seems more interested in Israeli lobbyists than US Army jihadists, after all…
ML: Now the Iranians say they are going to build ten more reactors.
JJA: Yes, and for all we know, they have already started them. Or some of them. Or maybe none. Haha, they tell so many lies it’s impossible to know when they actually make a true statement.
ML: It might be like the usual magician’s patter, don’t you think? You know, when he says “I will now make the rabbit disappear from my hat…”
JJA: Exactly. When he says that, the rabbit is long gone. So when the mullahs roll up their sleeves, wave their wand, and say “we will now make ten reactors magically appear from nowhere,” they probably have some already.
ML: So what’s the solution? What should Obama do?
JJA: First of all, stop acting as if he believed that his election has changed the world. The Iranians really don’t care about the American president’s name, or his “special gifts,” or his rhetorical talents. They want to destroy America.
ML: And then there’s the history. Every American president from Jimmy Carter to the present has tried to make a deal with Iran, and failed.
JJA: Indeed. That’s a logical corollary to the first point. Add to that, the last 8 years or so, with the French, Brits and Germans trying to broker some deal. Another failure.
ML: And so? Is war inevitable?
JJA: It’s not only inevitable, it’s on. It’s been on for thirty years. But no president has been willing to say so. Somebody needs to shift the focus from the nukes–where they have great opportunities to deceive us–to the war, where we already know a lot and could know a lot more if opponents of the regime saw we were fighting back.
ML: How?
JJA: Most Iranians, including officials at very high levels of the regime itself, would believe that we cannot be defeated once we decide to fight back. They would try to help us…some already have.
ML: Those defectors that the regime wants back so badly.
JJA: Right, and you can be sure that there are others, in Iran, who are giving information to the Israelis, the French, the Brits…
ML: And to us. I met some of them back in 2001 and got some very valuable information about Iranian activities in Afghanistan.
JJA: But as I recall, the policy makers didn’t want to hear about it. Even Tenet was angry.
ML: Yes, but he invented all kinds of nonsense about it in his book.
JJA: Well (the ouija board started to spark, and Angleton’s voice was breaking up) if you don’t want to know the truth…
And he was gone. I never got the chance to ask him how he thought we should fight back. Next time…
ML:
Ok. Now we see the big problem Why not suggest what we should do? Easy enough to point to a problem. Imagine you are the chief adviser to the President.What would you tell him we ought to do?
You show me yours and I’ll show you mine (suggestions)
support the revolution. it works. ask gorbachev.
There are so many ways we can wreck Iran’s day without having to invade that country. But first, we have to simply take it for granted that, whatever we do, Iran will up the stakes by engaging in some asymmetrical warfare against us. That could be anything from sending troops into Iraq or Afghanistan to fight American forces, or to forcing their proxies in Hamas and Hezbollah to attack Israel. In an extreme case, they could also close the Straits of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, thereby restricting the flow of oil to the west. So, whatever we do, you know they will strike back militarily in some way, shape, or form. So we should make the most of whatever we do to prove a point. We could bomb their oil refineries or oil storage depots, thereby bringing their economy to a standstill. We could also mine their harbors or institute a total naval blockade, preventing anything from entering the country. We could also vastly increase covert operations inside the country, destabilizing the mullahs’ already tenuous hold on power. We could also destabilize their currency by flooding their markets with counterfeit money, a favorite tactic of the North Koreans. Of course, any of these measures would be seen as an act of war, but if we’re already at war with the Iranians, then this would simply be proving the point that we are willing to go all the way if we need to take the ultimate step, which would be to bomb their nuclear facilities (something I would NOT do unless every other option was exhausted). If the past is any indication of Iranian response, they will back down once they know we’re really serious about wrecking their day. And, with American military forces surrounding them in both Iraq and Afghanistan, they will know we have the capability to give them serious military problems even if we decide NOT to actually invade their country. Either we act with force, or give up the region to the Iranians once they actually have a nuclear bomb. Mr. President, you can’t vote “present” on this any longer. You have to actually do something that doesn’t involve healthcare for once.
Iran has nothing to do with Iran. China is dependent upon its oil. Several other countries are using it as a stick to poke into our eye (Russia actually matters on that score). If there were not going to be fairly awful consequences from China and Russia (and I am saying nothing about Venezuela and Syria), then a single b-52 raid would be far more effective than any sanctions –remember, Iran is highly flammable.
I note that the Obamites are spouting forth at the unprecedented consenus to tell off Iran. It is a pity this didn’t ocur in the Security Council accompanied by an embargo.
I would suggest that President Barack Hussien Obama meet with the Iranians without so much as a vague hint of preconditions. Every things on the table, the waste of Capitalism, the wickedness of Christianity and Judaism, the beauty and peace of Islam, the need for an occasional beheading, the nastiness of Rush Limbaugh and that bad Fox News, a commutation for Major Hasan, everything.
Then our President can bow and scape, and maybe get in a little boot licking. Only the haters and racists will say he’s good for nothing.
It’s hard to parse the signals sent by the masters of lying, but it’s less difficult to notice that the regime gets more bombastic as it situation gets more precarious. It’s reasonable to see the former as a measure of the latter.
It will take a second coming of Reagan to buck the conventional wisdom, call evil for what it is, and challenge plainly with credible resolve. Turning the tables is the only way to put the mullahs on the defensive. We are so lucky to have the Iranian street on our side. What are we waiting for? The cojones, I’m afraid.
Our president is doing exactly the opposite, trying to meet them halfway in some kind of “reasonable” engagement. Wrong tractor for this kind of farming!
I agree with Michael Ledeen; support the revolution of Iran by Iranians.
Remember the recent fraudulent ‘elections’ in Iran that put Ahmandinejad in continuous power, and the enormous demonstrations by Iranians against this fraud? What did Obama do? Did he come out in support of democracy, freedom of speech and open elections? Did he? No. He ignored the demonstrations and supported the corrupt regime.
Result? That regime is laughing at the world, is busy building its nuclear weapons base, and fomenting jihadism around the world. And, taunting, begging for the West to attack it…so that it can launch its ‘defensive’ war which would hide its real agenda: takeover of the Middle East.
Again, Obama ignored the democratic demonstrations of the people of Iraq. Incredible? Well Obama equally ignored the Honduran government following its constitution and rule of law and ousting Zelaya who tried to subvert both. Did Obama support the rule of law in Honduras? Nope; he supported Zelaya who was actively working against the constitution and rule of law.
Iran wants war; I think that’s obvious. Their aggressive acts against other nations, against foreign civilians and against the UN etc..are going to increase.
The Iranian people want freedom and democracy. They need help from the West to achieve it.
don’t be so sure that the mullahs want war; perhaps they think we are so finlandized they can humiliate us at will…
Michael, I still like the idea of an alternative government recognized by those who pay
more than lip service to the Borjomi Declaration, which is, as far as I can tell, the best expression of the Velvet Revolution, the Rose Revolution, the Orange Revolution, and the Cedar Revolution.
The current batch of deformed souls, zombies, scalawags, reprobates and other assorted ilk who are setting the pace inside the Beltway – the day they do a 180 is the day a leopard changes its spots.
Oh Michael,your ouija board is amazing.
I need one similar.
Please,write about the Ahmadinejad tour in Brazil and others latin american countries.
Liberty – we could also (wihtout having to invade them) target their leadership clique, as individuals, and destroy them utterly. With the Iranian nazi regime decapitated, the US would not need to worry about retaliation nearly as much.
It occured to me when the British sailing team was captured that Iran may be building a group of hostages to forstall an attack. First, the three American hikers and now these additional five.
ML: Something you said about Tenet being angry over fresh data… what was it, the wrong brand of data, i.e. not CIA sourced? The data itself, the wrong flavor – that he had constructed for himself a pet tautology, and this news showed the flaws in his product?
Anger points often to the professional hazard of the bureaucrat warrior more invested in ego than the grand objective.
I dunno. He was furious, tho. Maybe because his gang didn’t invent it and didn’t control it.
All together now. Raise and point your index finger in the direction of Iran and all say “Naughty, Naughty”. That should work.
The Iranian nazi ruling clique doesn’t know how NOT to take hostages. It is as natural to them as breathing in and out. One can only hope it will lead to their undoing, and soon.
Obama should know that if Israel attacks Iran, the mullah regime will automatically blame the US anyway, and will attack US forces and interests just as surely as if the attack had come from the US. If we are going to be blamed anyway, why should we not join the Israelis in striking at the nukes and–more crucially–at the regime itself?
Dr. Ledeen writes “don’t be so sure that the mullahs want war”.
They almost certainly do not want war, at least not before they have operational nukes. There is no way for them to benefit from it. The most they could do is offset some of the damage to themselves with damage to the US or Israel. Even Hitler said that starting a war was “like entering a dark room”, and he was stunned and shaken when Britain and France declared war after the German invasion of Poland.
The Iranians are playing it bold now because Obama’s weakness has created a vacuum to fill, a bit like Nasser in the three weeks that preceeded the Six Day War (which migh be a portend). When President Bush was in office they took the possibility of a US attack on their nuclear sites quite seriously and they were positively obsessed with their fear of war.
That said, the more lunatic among their leadership may want an accopalypse, the kind that can force the hand of the 12th Imam and all that. But for that to happen they have to cross the nuclear threshhold. God forbid.
Same comment, spelling corrected:
Dr. Ledeen writes “don’t be so sure that the mullahs want war”.
They almost certainly do not want war, at least not before they have operational nukes. There is no way for them to benefit from it. The most they could do is offset some of the damage to themselves with damage to the US or Israel. Even Hitler said that starting a war was “like entering a dark room”, and he was stunned and shaken when Britain and France declared war after the German invasion of Poland.
The Iranians are playing it bold now because Obama’s weakness has created a vacuum to fill, a bit like Nasser in the three weeks that preceeded the Six Day War (which might be a portend). When President Bush was in office they took the possibility of a US attack on their nuclear sites quite seriously and they were positively obsessed with their fear of war.
That said, the more lunatic among their leadership may want an apocalypse, the kind that can force the hand of the 12th Imam and all that. But for that to happen they have to cross the nuclear threshhold. God forbid.
Well, this is a serious problem. Obama seems to be totally helpless when it comes to influencing Iran in any useful way. Even more seriously, I am certain that he would be absolutely useless as a wartime leader and C-in-C. In that respect, I imagine he’ll be like Wilhelm II; bluster and bumbling before the war, indecision and confusion after it starts. In O’s case, maybe less bluster before, and more indecision after.
Too bad. Iran’s situation is not good. If we had a more practical and resolute president, it shouldn’t be all that hard to put some serious squeeze on. But we don’t, and the Mullahs know that as well as we do.
Given the decrepit and frankly flimsy display of “leadership” from inside the Beltway, it is high time for the reversal of who is the senior partner in the English speaking world, which took place after the 1956 Suez Crisis.
Until that time, Great Britain could claim leadership of the English speaking world. But, thanks to the dithering of then british Prime Minister Anthony Eden (as described in “Suez 1956: The Lion’s last roar” by Chester L. Cooper) Nasser’s regime survived, the Kremlin was provided with a wide open door to create mischief,
and the rest is history.
Therefore, taking a bit from the aspirations of David Lloyd-George,(who wanted a more efficiently run British Empire), plus what FDR was thinking about for Vietnam (as described in “The Last Crusade: America in Vietnam” by
Chester L. Cooper)which was echoed in the last pages of “The Case for Democracy” by Natan Sharansky, plus what Conrad Black wrote in “Royalty for a grown up nation” – we could see the most successful countries of the British Commonwealth have a united foreign and defense policy, and frankly do a more than capable job as understudy, because the US, under current management, is in no shape to do what needs to be done. Which is, enforce one standard for Jew & Arab, and those who do not want to play along, they wind up quickly dispatched to the other side of eternity, which was the way the Sinhalese dealt with the Tamils.