Dan Darling does a superb job of explicating a fascinating “Special Report” from the current US News – “The Iran Connection” by Edward T. Pound. Both are eminently worth your time. The Pound article reveals a failed assassination attempt, allegedly with the help of Iranian intelligence, against Paul Bremer when he was the top US civilian administrator in Iraq.
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I keep thinking that the best historical analogy for the Iranian regime is Imperial Japan. Here are the similarities:
1) Origin. A highly civilized non-Western society is modernizing extremely rapidly. This creates culture shock leading to an ultra-nationalist backlash. The government becomes a theocracy that tries to remove all traces of western influence.
2) Structure. A bunch of rival mafias, each funded by their own business fiefdoms. Ruling by intimidation and assassination. Really a sort of neo-medievalism.
From what I know about the history of Japan, this kind of system is not good at developing a coherent strategy. Too many competing factions. They’re more unpredictable than a dictatorship ruled by a single man. Nazi Germany was as psychotic and aggressive as Hitler. The USSR under Stalin was as patient and paranoid and calculating as he was. But I don’t think that anyone is really in charge of Iran. Would someone who knows more about this care to comment on my thoughts?
PS: sorry about the sentence fragments. Too much work today for careful composition.
Hylas,
Dan Darling’s post at windsofchange.com, indicates that though Iranian power centers are several, not one; the worrying development is the ascendance of hard liners across the board in the government, the clergy, the military.
Although the U.S. is not well placed to take on Iran directly, the firm establishment of a (probably Allawi led) republic in Iraq is our best bet to encourage the internal opposition in Iran to destabilize and eventually overturn the theocratic State.
ricpic,
Thanks for the info. I’ll head over and take a look.
Hylas,
The Iranian regime is also analogous to the Medici and Borgia families with a foot in both the secular and clerical camps.
Oddly the Third Reich was also a series of fiefdoms with Hitler over all,but Hitler also practiced a form of political Darwinism insomuch as he let the fiefdoms compete,consequently the Third Reich could be as incredibly inefficient as it was efficient.
Needless to say,neither is a safe or stable model,Iran,fortunately has neither the Prussian or Samurai military tradition
ricpic: The problem is, our shot clock is running down as they get closer and closer to testing a nuke.