Right Wing Nut House

In a move that is sure to cause a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth around the world - illegal though it was but OH MY GOD SO SATISFYING! - American forces raided the Iranian consulate in northern Iraq just hours after the President’s speech:

U.S. troops raided an Iranian consulate in northern Iraq late Wednesday night and detained several people, Iran’s main news agency reported today, prompting protests from Tehran just hours after President Bush pledged to crack down on the Islamic Republic’s role in Iraqi violence.

Iran released news of the raid through its Islamic Republic News Agency in a dispatch that was broadly critical of Bush’s plan to deploy about 21,500 additional troops to Iraq.

The IRNA report said that U.S. forces entered the Iranian consulate in Irbil, in Iraq’s Kurdish-dominated north, and seized computers, documents and other items. The report said five staff members were taken into custody.

Yes, I realize it is childish and churlish of me to feel this way about giving the Iranians a little payback for 1979. But there are times when indulging your natural inclinations is so right, so proper, that suppressing the higher brain functions that tell you to behave like an adult is the thing to do.

Besides, aren’t you dying to find out what’s on those computer hard drives and what was in those filing cabinets they carted away?

Although U.S. officials have not confirmed that an Iranian diplomatic building was involved in today’s raid, a man who lives next to the consulate, Sardar Hassan Mohammed, 34, said he saw what he believed to be U.S. forces surrounding the building with their vehicles before entering it. Mohammed said at least five people were taken.

An official with the Kurdish Democratic Party, who declined to give his name, said the U.S. troops confiscated belongings inside the consulate in addition to arresting people inside.

Without addressing the recent incident, top U.S. officials in Washington were pointed in remarks today about how they intend to follow up on Bush’s pledge to curb Syrian and Iranian influence in Iraq.

There are times when revelling in historical irony and glorying in a cold dish of revenge can’t be helped. The nature of the 1979 humiliation perpetrated by the Iranians was so profoundly disturbing to those of us who lived through it that this clearly illegal violation of the “sacred soil” of Iran just doesn’t matter very much - even in an intellectual context. We know it is wrong and yet the satisfaction is so complete that world opinion, international law, even the consequences of the raid to our diplomats just don’t balance the ledger against it.

And those consequences will be real. It is almost a certainty that the world just got a little more dangerous for our diplomats all over the world - which should sober all of us up right quick. And, of course, the precedent shattering nature of the raid could place our embassies and consulates in similar danger.

But please note the rather low key response (so far) from the Iranians. They can hardly make a big stink about this violation after what they pulled in 1979. And irony of ironies, we are using the exact same excuse in raiding their embassy 27 years later - that it contained a “nest of spies:”

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that the United States is systematically trying to identify networks of people who bring weapons and explosives into the country — a central allegation against Iran — and will move to shut them down.

Improvised explosives have been a key source of U.S. casualties and deaths since the war began.

“We will do what is necessary for force protection,” Rice said at a press conference. “Networks are identified. They are identified from intelligence and they are acted upon . . . whatever the nationality.”

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff , Gen. Peter Pace, referring to the earlier arrest of Iranians, said that Tehran’s involvement in Iraq “is destructive. . . . They are complicit . . . and we will do what is necessary.”

The Iranians won’t have to make a big to do about this clear violation of international norms - their allies on the left in this country will be more than happy to oblige, I’m sure. Perhaps if Jimmy Carter were to come out and dance a little jig…

Not likely.

UPDATE

Richard Fernandez and I are on exactly the same wavelength: “A Downpayment on 1979.”

Jules Crittenden says that this indicates that the gloves are off:

The Washington Post reports U.S. troops raided an Iranian consulate in Iraq and seized a number of Iranians suspected of aiding the insurgency. No doubt the Iranians will squawk about the violation of diplomatic immunity, incursion on sovereign Iranian territory, international law, blah blah blah. I encourage them then to raid our embassy and consulates in Iran. …oh yeah, we don’t have any. Remember why? This is an early indicator that the gloves are in fact off, which is the key component to success in this change of strategy.

Greg Tinti from Political Pit Bull has the predictable reaction from Lambchop:

The dumbest reaction I’ve seen to this on the left is from Glenn Greenwald, whom without apparently understanding the irony of his question, asks, “Isn’t it a definitive act of war for one country to storm the consulate of another, threaten to kill them if they do not surrender, and then detain six consulate officers?”

I don’t know about you, but it seems that Greenwald’s rather quick to side with Iran on this one. It is indisputable that Iran has been actively involved in supporting the insurgency in Iraq–especially by providing insurgents with IEDs and weaponry that have contributed directly to US casualties. Don’t those actions by Iran count as a definitive act of war? Doesn’t the US have a right to fight back against Iranian interference? In Greenwald’s mind apparently, the answer to those questions seems to be no.

Will Bunch also smells a war brewing with Iran.

As I’ve said many times, there is a huge downside to military action against Iran. Any possible benefits would be far outweighed by the almost certain attacks against our troops in Iraq as well as probable action taken against tankers in the Straits of Hormuz - a choke point for 20% of the west’s oil. We wouldn’t be able to get all the anti-ship missiles Iran posesses nor would we be able to destroy the Islamic Republic’s ability to create absolute havoc in Iraq; with attacks on our troops using their intermediate range missiles and the probable rising of the Shias who would take great offense at our hitting their co-religionists.

But interdiction and an intelligent use of our military to stifle the flow of supplies to the insurgents (who would never take any help from those dirty Shias in Iran now, would they?) while not violating Iranian air space or raiding their territory (beyond a consulate or two) may be almost as effective as a bombing campaign and have the extra added attraction of putting the onus of attack on the Iranians if they chose to make an issue of their meddling in Iraqi affairs.

There is hardly anyone at The Huffington Post who is more consistently idiotic in their commentary than Cenk Uygur - although noted political and foreign policy expert Deepak Chopra can be equally oblivious at times. The self loving self-help guru can usually be relied upon to supply equal dollops of idiocy and sanctimony while doing his best to obscure even the simplest moral questions with a heaping of platitudinous nonsense and New Age hooey.

But Uygur’s venomous rants are a cut above the normal lefty fare due to a curious lack of restraint in showing the world how ignorant he is. He revels in sophistry. He glories in irrationality. He bathes in puerility.

And the irony is, he believes he is either being clever or, in the case of this post on the startling news that Israel may use tactical nuclear weapons to destroy the Iranian nuclear program, ponderously portentous:

If Iran is at best two years away from developing a nuclear weapon and they say they have no intention of even building one, let alone using it against anybody and Israel says they are planning to use one against Iran, shouldn’t we be considering preemptive military action against Israel instead?

We claim that we care about non-proliferation. We claim that we care about the use of weapons of mass destruction. Then shouldn’t our top priority be to stop Israel?

Or could it be that we are wildly hypocritical and don’t give a damn about weapons of mass destruction as long as it is our friends who use them? Remember we didn’t mind at all when Saddam Hussein used WMD against Iran, because at the time he was on our side.

Absolutely, Cenk. I think we should believe everything the leaders of Iran say. So when they tell us they have no intention of building nukes, why not take the nutcases at their word?

And when Ahmadinejad says that he wants to “wipe Israel off the map” I’m sure he means that he only wants the cartographers of the world to use a little White-Out right where the Jewish state is penciled in. Maybe we’ll just leave that part of the map blank. We could fill it in later, perhaps after we find another democracy in the Middle East who has supported our interests and stood steadfastly by our side for 60 years. Shouldn’t be too difficult. Maybe we could get Deepak thinking about the problem.

Actually, Mr. Uygur makes a valid point about our support for Saddam in the 1980’s - if we lived in a vacuum or, like Mr. Uygur, ignored context and history for the sake of a little gratuitous American bashing. But then, the rest of us don’t live in a vacuum and recognize our tilt toward Saddam was “reality based” foreign policy - that a strong Sunni-led state in opposition to the Shia fanatics in Tehran (real gimlet eyed fanatics and not the laughable liberal definition of the weird but relatively harmless Christians who pop up now and again in the Bush Administration) was a strategic necessity.

No matter. It is Uygur’s eye popping notion that it is hypocritical to support your friends and oppose your enemies that has us scratching our heads in perplexity. Israel has been saying for nearly two years that Iran is close to building a nuclear weapon. Just a few weeks ago, Ahmadinejad proudly announced that the Iranians were going to start operating 3,000 centrifuges at their hardened site near Natanz in order to enrich uranium - progress towards construction of a nuclear weapon far in advance of our own CIA’s estimate that they mullahs were a decade away from building a bomb.

The practical result is mathematical; add Ahamdinejad’s flowery rhetoric about annihilating the Jewish state to nuclear technology and you get a threat unlike any that has confronted Israel in its history. And since the Iranians have buried their illegal program under a mountain of concrete and rock, it would appear that there is only one way for Israel to combat this threat; its own use of nuclear weapons.

Or, they could as most of the left would advocate, wait until they are hit with a nuclear weapon and then respond. Except in Israel’s case, there wouldn’t be much of a country left for anyone to worry about. Slightly larger than the state of New Jersey, one nuclear weapon detonated on their soil would, for all intents and purposes “wipe Israel off the map.” Perhaps Uygur thinks this would be an excellent jobs program. Think of all the out of work cartographers who would find employment rewriting the geography texts of the world.

What makes this screed by Uygur so ignorant is not his disapproval of Israel using nukes. It is his simple minded and naive posturing that actually places the Iranians in the morally ascendant position:

I don’t know why Israel is threatening to do this, whether it’s to get us to start a war with Iran instead (how does it make it better for us if we fight Israel’s irrational war for it) or to scare Iran into cooperating or because they’re actually going to do it. But it’s madness all the same.

Even threatening to use nuclear weapons against another sovereign country is a complete abdication of the moral high ground. Then you have absolutely no right to complain about the idea that Iran might use them at a later time. You are, in essence, saying it is perfectly acceptable to use them.

If Israel actually goes through with this, they will be an international pariah and they should no longer be considered an ally. There is no legitimate excuse to do a nuclear first strike.

This isn’t even about Israel’s concern that Iran would ever use their non-existent nuclear weapons. They know that even Iran isn’t crazy enough to risk the lives of every one of their citizens by dropping a nuclear bomb on Israel - and that would clearly be the retaliation they would face.

Instead, this is about Iran gaining bargaining leverage in the Middle East. If Israel is willing to nuke a country to make sure they don’t have slightly better leverage in the region, then their government is far more hideous than I think (I assume and hope that the government considering this barbaric idea doesn’t truly represent the will of the Israeli people).

It apparently hasn’t entered Uygur’s head that Israel would take this drastic action because it felt threatened. Instead, we are treated to the juvenile explanation that Ohlmert wants to goose the Americans into doing Israel’s dirty work for them - the Jewish conspiracy at work! And the idea that the mullahs would embrace a MAD (mutually assured destruction) doctrine has yet to be proved. In fact, given the mystical Mr. Ahmadinejad and his kooky belief in the imminent return of the 12th Imam, there is every reason to believe that if the Iranian President thought that nuking Israel would hasten the little guy’s comeback tour, he’d light the fuse himself.

And how about Uygur’s breathtaking naivete about Iran’s nuclear program? Even the simpering sot of a nuclear watchdog Muhammad ElBaradei believes Iran is close to producing a bomb. The only thing “non-existent” about the Iranian nuclear program is an ability by Uygur and the left to plug the holes in their heads where gray matter is leaking copiously. That’s the only explanation I can think of for why there is this childlike faith that when the theocrats tell us they only want to use their enrichment facilities for peaceful purposes that people like Uygur take them at their word.

Finally, I must commend Mr. Uygur for his perspicacity in gleaning the real meaning behind this Israeli threat. (Note: What Mr. Uygur makes of the Iranian threats to destroy the Jewish state, he doesn’t say. Perhaps, like Neville Chamberlain, Uygur thinks that Ahmadinejad’s shtick is for domestic consumption. Or, more likely, he doesn’t think about it at all.) To posit the notion that Israel will risk world war because they’re jealous of Iran’s “bargaining leverage, whatever that means, is daffy. Is Uygur saying that Iran’s “leverage” will improve if they get nukes? I’d say that’s a great big affirmative. And, of course, that leverage could end up levering the Israelis into the sea.

Uygur displays a towering ignorance and breathtaking myopia about Iran, about Israel, and about the existential threat that the mullahs pose to the Jewish state. This is not surprising, given he regularly displays those qualities when it comes to American security issues.

Word out of Israel this morning that Israel is denying that they are training to use tactical nukes against Iran. What else could they say? I wonder if Uygur believes them? After all, he accepts the word of the Iranians at face value that they’re not interested in building nukes. And they’re the enemy. What are the chances that Uygur would accept the word of an ally?

Pajamas Media is reporting that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is dead:

A source close to Pajamas Media has learned that Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has apparently succumbed to the cancer that hospitalized him last month, as exclusively reported by Pajamas Media, at age 67. He has been Iran’s most powerful figure since replacing Ayatollah Khomeini in the role of Supreme Leader in 1989.

The jostling for power will now begin openly. As Michael Ledeen has been reporting, the maneuvering that’s been going on behind the scenes since Khamenei’s hospitalization last month has been intense:

As it happens, this is a particularly good moment to go after the mullahs, because they are deeply engaged in a war of all against all within Iran. I wrote in NRO two weeks ago that the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had been carted off to the hospital–a major event, of which the Intelligence Community was totally unaware–and his prognosis is very poor. That information has now trickled out, and I found it today in the Italian press and on an Iranian web site. The mullahs are maneuvering for position, and Ahmadi-Nezhad’s ever more frantic rhetoric bespeaks the intensity of the power struggle, which includes former president Rafsanjani, Khamenei’s son, and Ahmadi-Nezhad’s favorite nut ayatollah. We should propose another option to the Iranian people: freedom.

The succession (if, in fact, Khamenei is gone) now rests in the hands of the Assembly of Experts. Fortuitously, the December 15 election was something of a setback for radical clerics who backed the current President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, although the winners are far from liberal reformers. Western media has sought to portray last month’s victors as “pragmatists” or, even more laughably, “moderate fundamentalists.” Let me assure you they are died in the wool America haters who will make sure that the new Supreme Leader they elect will continue most of the policies of his predecessor including the drive to build nuclear weapons and feed the violence in Iraq.

Who might that new Supreme Leader be? It will probably not be Ahmadinejad’s spiritual mentor Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi who finished far behind in the voting last month but still garnering enough support to squeak through. To put it clinically, this fellow is a nut case. He is a fanatical isolationist, eschewing all contact with the west. And he considers any non literal interpretation of the Koran heresy. He is known to many Iranians as “Professor Crocodile” because of a notorious cartoon that depicted him weeping false tears over the imprisoning of a reformist journalist. The combination of Yazdi and Ahmadinejad would have been a nightmare for the west to deal with.

What about former President Rafsanjani himself? This too is unlikely since he was just elected to the Assembly last month, although following the career of this guy, you come to realize that anything is possible.

Example: After his term of office for President ended in 1997, he ran for a seat in Parliament in the election of 2000. At that time, the Iranian people showed that they had tired of Rafsanjani’s massive corruption (Forbes Magazine named him one of the richest people in the world at one point) and he failed to get enough votes in the Tehran district to be seated.

Lo and behold, the powerful Guardian Council (who oversee all elections in Iran) ruled numerous ballots as “ruined” or “void” and guess who ended up being the beneficiary? It is unclear to this day whether he simply spread a little money around to get the Council to see its way clear to finding a way to seat him or, more ominously, whether he was able to threaten a sufficient number of Council members in order to get his way.

So it’s probably not wise to count him out of the contest to replace Khamenei despite his status as an Assembly newbie and the fact that one of the criteria for serving as Supreme Leader is to have an impeccable political and social record - something that everyone in the country knows Rafsanjani lacks. Still, his ambition knows no bounds and he is a very powerful, dangerous man.

But it is more likely that the Assembly will choose someone older and more religiously inclined. The best possible candidate from our point of view would be Grand Ayatollah Hussein Ali Montazeri. Perhaps the most respected Islamic scholar in Iran, he was at one time designated as Ayatollah Khomeini’s successor. But Montazeri denounced the Ayatollah publicly for being undemocratic and violating the Iranian Constitution. He also denounced Khamenei which led to his house arrest in 1997. He’s no liberal but he would almost certainly be someone that we could do business with. Alas, despite his standing as a scholar and a huge following among the people, his criticisms of the regime in the past will probably work against him.

If I were a betting man (and I am), I would place money on Ayatollah Mohammad Momen. He’s from the holy city of Qom, is considered a brilliant student of the Koran, and has some political clout in that he served on the Guardian Council. But he is still a longshot, although someone to watch in the future.

Khamenei’s legacy? It would have to be his shepherding the nuclear program to the brink of success. And for that, the world may have cause to curse his name in the coming years.

I have nothing but the greatest respect for Michael Ledeen. He has proven himself one of the most plugged in analysts in the commentariat when it comes to all things having to do with Iran. I would take anything he says about Iran much more seriously than anything I’d hear from Juan Cole who, although a noted scholar and someone whose articles on the historical background of the Middle East are nothing short of fascinating, suffers from a horrible case of Bush Derangement Syndrome which has clouded his analyses and at times, made him virtually unreadable.

That said, Ledeen is trying to take us over a cliff by advocating War against the Iranians.

It’s not that I disagree with his basic premise; that Iran has been at war with the west in general and the United States in particular since 1979. This fact should be self-evident given the number of attacks sponsored by the Iranians against Americans and American interests in the last quarter century. And I also have no disagreement with Ledeen regarding this latest evidence of Iranian aggression; the shocking assistance to both Shia and Sunni terrorists that has no doubt led to many American deaths in Iraq.

They are attacking our interests. They are killing our soldiers. They are threatening much worse. Why then should we not make the attempt to change the regime in Iran to one that would be freer, more peaceful, and less aggressive in its aspirations to dominate the region?

Ledeen believes that the amount of force needed to cause the Iranian regime to collapse is minimal and wouldn’t detract from our efforts in Iraq:

I have little sympathy for those who have avoided the obvious necessity of confronting Iran, however I do understand the concerns of military leaders, such as General Abizaid, who are doing everything in their considerable power to avoid a two-front war. But I do not think we need massive military power to bring down the mullahs, and in any event we now have a three-front war: within Iraq, and with both Iran and Syria. So General Abizaid’s objection is beside the point. We are in a big war, and we cannot fight it by playing defense in Iraq. That is a sucker’s game. And I hope the president realizes this at last, and that he finds himself some generals who also realize it, and finally demands a strategy for victory.

In passing, it follows from this that the entire debate over more or less troops in Iraq, surge or no surge, Baghdad or Anbar Province, all of it begs the central question. As long as Iran and their appendage in Damascus have a free shot at us, all these stratagems are doomed.

Alright. I’ll play. Suppose we apply whatever military power (short of “massive” - whatever that means) and the mullahs still rule? What’s next? We’ve just spent three years learning a valuable lesson (all over again) that American military power has its limits, that despite our troops best efforts and spectacular performance on the battlefield, it doesn’t matter a tinker’s damn if other factors not amendable to military force cannot be controlled or are not addressed.

In the case of Iran, it is answering the question who or what would take over once the government was overthrown? Are we once again going to indulge in the fantasy that a tyrannical government is teetering on the edge and all that is needed to send it crashing into the garbage heap of history is a little push? Ledeen thinks so:

As it happens, this is a particularly good moment to go after the mullahs, because they are deeply engaged in a war of all against all within Iran. I wrote in NRO two weeks ago that the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had been carted off to the hospital–a major event, of which the Intelligence Community was totally unaware–and his prognosis is very poor. That information has now trickled out, and I found it today in the Italian press and on an Iranian web site. The mullahs are maneuvering for position, and Ahmadi-Nezhad’s ever more frantic rhetoric bespeaks the intensity of the power struggle, which includes former president Rafsanjani, Khamenei’s son, and Ahmadi-Nezhad’s favorite nut ayatollah. We should propose another option to the Iranian people: freedom.

Freedom is what most Iranians want, and, unlike their neighbors in Iraq, they have considerable experience with self-government. The Iranian Constitution of 1906 is remarkably modern, and Iranian intellectuals have in fact been debating the best form of government for their country for many years. Iranian workers are in open revolt against the regime, along with such minority groups as the Kurds, the Balouchis, the Azeris, and the Ahwazi Arabs. In other words, most of the Iranian people. It is long past time for us to speak clearly to them and support their cause.

I have no doubt that the Iranians want freedom. Just as I am convinced that the people of Iraq want to be free. But Iranian intellectuals, enamored though they are with a 100 year old document that even the Shah honored in the breach, are not going to pick up guns and kill the mullahs. Nor are the 200,000 Revolutionary Guards going to suddenly become rabid democrats and lay down their arms to give democracy a chance. And Ledeen and the rest of the Iran hawks have yet to present any kind of a military option (short of “massive”) that wouldn’t necessarily involve hundreds of thousands of presumably American troops who would have to physically march to Tehran in order to overthrow the government. For Ledeen fails to answer who in Iran would finish the job that we would be starting?

As internally weak as the Iranians may be - and I’m not convinced of that by any means - they have done their job the last 25 years. Anyone who has expressed a desire for anything more than cosmetic reforms in the Islamic paradise has been ruthlessly suppressed. The restive minorities that Ledeen rightly points to as our natural allies are even more brutally oppressed. In short, any real opposition to not only Ahmadinejad but also the Rafsanjanis and Khatamis is small, frightened, disorganized, and incapable of taking advantage of any favorable military situation we may present them with. And it would take years to build up any kind of effective political opposition to the theocrats in Tehran, something one assumes Ledeen and the other Iran hawks would not be willing to wait on.

Ledeen cautions against a two front war but then virtually advocates taking Syria on too. This is madness. We have got to realize that the consequences of starting a war against Iran would not only fail to achieve the goal of overthrowing the mullahs (short of throwing everything we have against Iran’s 800,000 man military) but also lead to unforeseen problems that would only make matters worse in Iraq, in Lebanon, and could lead to a general Middle Eastern war in which hundreds of thousands of people would be killed.

There is another way. It won’t overthrow the mullahs right away nor will it stop their nuclear program - something that an attack as envisioned by Ledeen won’t guarantee anyway. This study done by the Army’s Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) recognizes the danger of Iranian nukes as well as the continued threat of aggression from the Iranian regime. They advocate a much broader approach to the problem:

* Engage in traditional deterrent strategies such as making it clear to Tehran that the use or threatening the use of nuclear weapons has reciprocal disadvantages to the regime.

* Allow the development of nuclear weapons by states threatened by Iran such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

* Employ a regional military strategy against the regime by building credible alliances.

* Work with dissident groups to create an armed, united opposition that could affect regime change.

Unsatisfying to be sure. But perhaps we should ask ourselves if it isn’t better than the alternative to an attack on Iran? Iraq in even greater chaos thanks to a general Shia uprising against our forces. No guarantee the mullahs would be ousted. Almost certainly the prospect of a spate of terrorist attacks carried out against our interests in the Middle East and perhaps even here in the United States. And the horrible prospect of a general war in the Middle East.

To my way of thinking, military action only makes sense if the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages War with Iran - as satisfying and enticing an option though it may be - isn’t even a close call. And advocating such a course of action is like shadowboxing with reality; you’re not dealing with the real problems in Iraq by going to war with Iran.

There may be security issues we can help the Iraqis with by sending another 30,000 troops into Baghdad and Anbar. But the insurgency and sectarian violence would continue with or without Iranian and Syrian assistance. Hence, only an Iraqi political settlement that all parties can sign off on has any chance at all of bringing a modicum of peace to that bloody land. And until the political will exists in Iraqi society for such a general settlement, any war we wage against those who assist the militias and the insurgents will be worse than futile and do more harm to our interests in the region than good.

UPDATE

A commenter points to this blurb on The Corner where Ledeen is saying he does not advocate going to war against Iran:

Rich: No, I don’t want to invade Iran, as I have said for many years. And I don’t follow your logic. I think — and, as recent news stories in the NY Sun and NY Times have made clear, the policymakers in the Bush administration now know—that much of the terror war in Iraq is the result of Iranian activities. I have written here for years that the Iranians were promoting both sides of a series of potential civil wars in Iraq, Sunni/Shiite, Kurd/Turkamen, Arab/non-Arab, etc.

The two policies you list (run away or invade Iran) are only two among many. In Tracinski’s article, he quotes Michael Rubin on behalf of what Tracinski calls “Cold War II.” That is, support democratic revolution in Iran. Again, I’ve been arguing in support of that since before we started Operation Iraqi Freedom. I think it’s the best option, I think it will succeed if it is well done, and I think this is an excellent moment for it, since Khamenei is dying (as I was the first to report; it is now all over the Iranian blogs) and there is an intense internal power struggle at work. You probably noticed that the justice minister was killed in an automobile crash the other day, and it is noteworthy that an amazingly high percentage of important Iranians die in car and air “accidents.”

“Tracinski” is Robert Tracinski who advocates attacking Iran now. On the other hand, Ledeen does not advocate a hands off policy regarding Iran either:

I have also argued for a long time that our troops in Iraq should defend themselves against Iran and Syria. I think we should attack terrorist training camps in both those countries, and I think we should also go after the facilities where the terribly lethal new generation of IEDs is produced and assembled.

As I have said, any military action taken against Iran will cause enormous problems for us in Iraq as well as set off some of the consequences I outline above.

Also, See-Dubya over at Hot Air accuses me of wanting a “political settlement” with Iran. This is incorrect. I linked to the SSI monograph largely because it gave some alternatives for going to war - none of which included negotiating with Iran BTW. Reading what Ledeen had to say on The Corner, I would guess that my thinking is much closer to his - support of democratic elements in Iran (or attempting to unite the opposition) while strengthening our friends and working to develop a coalition in the region to oppose Iranian aggression.

Hardly a “Bakerite” solution.

In June of 2005, the more radical conservative elements on Iran’s Guardian Council helped to engineer the election of President Ahmadinejad, hoping that his fervor would ignite a religious revival and take the country out of the hands of the “original” radicals who used their positions to personally enrich themselves at the expense of the Iranian people.

What Ahmadinejad referred to as the “petro-political mafia” dominated the permanent bureaucracy in Iran for a quarter of a century, lining their pockets with proceeds from oil revenues while using some of that money to grease the skids for their political masters. And the number one recipient of this bounty was former President Ayatollah Rafsanjani who is reported to be the richest man in Iran. Through a network of family and cronies, Rafsanjani concentrated economic power into his own hands during his two terms as President. He waged a war against the left wing Islamists who sought to oppose him by placing economic decisions into the hands of special committees and government bureaucracies.

What Rafsanjani did more than anything was fill the ministries with allies. But this cronyism had one redeeming benefit; they were relatively competent technocrats. In this way, they assisted him in his efforts to dip his beak into a variety of economic pies.

One of his biggest corruption efforts involved a convoluted kick back scheme with Norway’s state run oil company. It is said that Rafsanjani personally oversaw many of the foreign contracts signed by the Iranian oil ministry just to make sure he got his cut.

Enter President Ahmadinejad and his radical brethren who believed that religious fervor was a good enough substitute for competence in running a ministry. By November of last year, Ahmadinejad had sacked hundreds of competent officials in every ministry of government in an unprecedented “anti-corruption” purge:

The rise to power of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a former Revolutionary Guards commander, as Iran’s new president last year entailed a sweeping purge of hundreds of senior and mid-level officials in the country’s burgeoning bureaucracy. Supporters of Ahmadinejad’s two predecessors, Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami, have been fired from key positions in all the ministries, embassies, state banks, and other governmental institutions.

The purged officials include dozens of ambassadors and diplomats, all but one of the ministers, and more than three quarters of deputy ministers, department directors, and provincial governors, according to a confidential government report obtained by Iran Focus. Many of them have been replaced by several hundred officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) seconded to government positions.

Rafsanjani has publicly rebuked the massive purges, but sources inside the Iranian government say he and Khatami have no clout to withstand the onslaught by hard-liners under Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s leadership.

Hard-liners justified the first waves of the purges as the “need for fresh blood after 16 years of misgovernment” by Rafsanjani and Khatami. In many cases, rampant corruption among officials close to the two former presidents was given as the reason for the reshuffle.

The results of the purge were entirely predictable; the Iranian oil ministry, for example, is being so badly run, that the country is losing enormous amounts of money and may reach a zero revenue stream by 2015:

Iran is experiencing a staggering decline in revenue from its oil exports and, if the trend continues, income could virtually disappear by 2015, according to an analysis released yesterday by the National Academy of Sciences.

Iran’s economic woes could make the country unstable and vulnerable with its oil industry crippled, Roger Stern, an economic geographer at Johns Hopkins University, said in the report and in an interview.

Iran earns about $50 billion a year in oil exports. The decline is estimated at 10 percent to 12 percent annually. In less than five years, exports could be halved and then disappear by 2015, Mr. Stern predicted…

The shortfall represents a loss of about $5.5 billion a year, Mr. Stern said. In 2004, Iran’s oil profits were 65 percent of the government’s revenues.

“If we look at that shortfall, and failure to rectify leaks in their refineries, that adds up to a loss of about $10 billion to $11 billion a year,” he said. “That is a picture of an industry in collapse.”

The analyst is quoted in the article as saying, “What they are doing to themselves is much worse than anything we could do.”

Be that as it may, this information also gives rise to the idea that if this is true, then the Iranian nuclear program should be seen as an actual necessity and not as a choice of the mullahs to become a regional superpower. In fact, the analyst makes that very case in the article:

The analysis supports U.S. and European suspicions that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons in violation of international understandings. But, Mr. Stern said, there could be merit to Iran’s assertion that it needs nuclear power for civilian purposes “as badly as it claims.”

He said oil production is declining, and both gas and oil are being sold domestically at highly subsidized rates. At the same time, Iran is neglecting to reinvest in its oil production.

“With an explosive demand at home and poor management, the appeal of nuclear power, financed by Russia, could fill a real need for production of more electricity.”

The only problem with that analysis is that it’s bull cookies. Iran has been trying to develop a nuclear weapon since at least the early 1990’s according to the CIA and possibly longer. There wasn’t a problem with oil revenues back then nor was any contemplated - as long as they had competent bureaucrats to run the oil industry.

But in Iran, you get what you pay for. And the hardliners bought into Ahmadinejad’s glorious vision of a corruption free, pious Iranian government. What they got is a nightmare of incompetence and stupidity. Ahmadinejad’s first choice for oil minister was a joke; a close friend, tea and carpet trader and former acting mayor of Tehran, Ali Saeedlou who received a geology degree in 2003 from “Hartford University,” a place no one ever heard of or can confirm the existence of. The Parliament refused to be the punchline to the laugher and nixed his confirmation. This is but one example of Ahmadinejad’s mismanagement of government. Throughout the ministries, not only has there been mismanagement, but the same kind of corruption that occurred under previous administrations, seems to continue unabated. So much for “reform.”

It isn’t Ahmadinejad’s loose lips about destroying Israel or his taunting of America that has him in trouble with the elites in Iran. It is his rank incompetence as an administrator that is driving much of the opposition against him. This is important to keep in mind if the so called “moderate” radicals get back into power because the fact is, all segments of the Iranian government agree with Ahmadinejad with regards to Israel and the United States. Changing faces in the leadership will not lead the Iranians to halt or slow down their nuclear program nor will it deter them from meddling in the affairs of Lebanon or in sponsoring terrorism.

I guess Ahmadinejad was too busy looking for the messiah to see to the competent administration of his government.

Looks like the self-styled “Mullah of the People,” President Ahmadinejad, may be in political hot water. Not with the Iranian people so much. They have about as much say in who governs them as sheep do in deciding who can shear them. The “electoral” process in Iran is not only rigged to prevent even a hint of secularism to intrude on the ruling holy men’s Islamic paradise but time honored electoral shenanigans such as stuffing ballot boxes, intimidating voters (200,000 Revolutionary Guards can be wonderful persuaders for the regime), and out and out dishonest counting assures the ruling elites of continued iron fist control over the country.

But judging by recent events, it appears that the messianic Golden Boy who the hardliners in the Assembly of Experts thought would lead them to a religious revival at home and regional dominance abroad may have over played his hand.

The Iranians may be poised to dominate the region as they have not done since the fall of the Shah but they are unloved by their neighbors, isolated internationally, and the regime itself is in mortal danger as a result of their dalliance with nuclear weapons. Other countries in the region view with alarm the idea of Iranian ascendancy, seeing an aggressive Shia state with nuclear weapons an intolerable situation. And the prospect of sanctions - however weak, limited, and watered down they might be - has the ruling elites nervous and wondering if more biting measures might be on the way.

But it is the threat of American and Israeli military action against Iranian nuclear facilities (and perhaps against the elites themselves) that worries Ahmadinejad’s opponents the most. The mullahs are not stupid. They’ve seen what the modern air forces of Israel and America can do to a nation’s infrastructure.

Make no mistake. Ahmadinejad’s enemies are not our “friends” by any stretch of the imagination. They hate America and the West as much as he does. But the confrontational approach taken by the Iranian President has served to unite most of the Europeans with the Americans in recognizing the danger of the Islamic regime while even their friends Russia and China are reluctantly coming around to the notion that some sort of sanctions regime is necessary. And the President’s bombastic, apocalyptic rhetoric about the holocaust, about the inevitability of Islam’s world dominance, and about the destruction of the regime’s foes has placed the ruling mullahs in the awkward position of being exposed for the truly aggressive nation they are. The pragmatists would much prefer to pretend being the peace loving, spiritual and moral leader of the region rather than the threatening, nuclear armed troublemaker that they wish to be.

All of this has led to an attempt to cut Ahmadinejad down to size, to embarrass him, and to reduce his influence. The President in Iran is actually subservient to the wishes of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. And his actions are overseen by the powerful Assembly of Experts whose internal political dynamic may be changing as a result of elections held on Friday. While most of the analysis I’ve read has been cautious, one thing is clear; the hardliners incurred a setback. Several candidates supported by Ahmadinejad have apparently either gone down to defeat or received far fewer votes than was anticipated.

In the Tehran district, the election for the Experts of the Assembly saw Ahmadinejad’s most frequent and outspoken critic, former President Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani receive a huge majority - 500,000 votes more than Ahmadinejad’s candidate. If Rafsanjani can gain control of the Assembly, he can block some of Ahmadinejad’s more radical internal policies such as his purging of the ministries and replacing long time bureaucrats with inexperienced and fanatical true believers.

And Rafsanjani, along with another former President Mohammad Khatami have both made it clear that Ahmadinejad’s confrontational approach must be moderated before serious damage is done:

Mesbah Yazdi, the ultra-conservative cleric who is a close ally of president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s new president, thinks that his government is God’s gift to enact Islamic values. This while three prominent and veteran Iranian politicians, former president Mohammad Khatami, former president Hashemi Rafsanjani and former chief of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Hassan Rouhani believe that Ahmadinejad’s presidency is an era filled with dangers that will deeply hurt the country and the Islamic Republic.

In an unprecedented move, Rafsanjani, the powerful man leading the regime’s Expediency Council that oversees the performance of the three branches of government, talks about the dangers that threaten the nation, and implicitly criticizes Ahmadinejad’s aggressive behavior and his unqualified, undeserving and incapable administration.

All of this manuevering has led to two interesting developments recently. First, the Iranian Parliament or Majlis has just recently slapped the President down by shortening his term in office, ostensibly under the guise of standardizing the election cycles for all elected offices. This will mean that Ahmadinejad will have to “face the voters” about a year and a half earlier than he anticipated which means he can be tossed out if the regime’s electoral machinery is used against him.

And that machinery gave Ahmadinejad a taste of what might be in store for him as local and regional elections held in conjunction with the Experts in Assembly show a move toward what the western press is terming “moderate” candidates but who are actually anti-Ahmadinejad pragmatists:

The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, faced electoral embarrassment today after the apparent failure of his supporters to win control of key local councils and block the political comeback of his most powerful opponent.

Early results from last Friday’s election suggested that his Sweet Scent of Service coalition had won just three out of 15 seats on the symbolically important Tehran city council, foiling Mr Ahmadinejad’s plan to oust the mayor and replace him with an ally.

Compounding his setback was the success of Hashemi Rafsanjani, an influential pragmatist and fierce critic of the president’s radical policies. Mr Rafsanjani - whom Mr Ahmadinejad defeated in last year’s presidential election - received the most votes in elections to the experts’ assembly, a clerical body empowered to appoint and remove Iran’s supreme leader. By contrast, Ayatollah Mohammed-Taghi Mesbah-Yazdi, Mr Ahmadinejad’s presumed spiritual mentor, came sixth.

Analysts attributed Mr Rafsanjani’s resurgence to his newly-found status as a saviour of the reformists, the liberal movement that shunned him as a hated symbol of the establishment when it held power. Mr Rafsanjani has been increasingly identified with reformers since last year’s presidential election and many voters turned to him to voice anger at Mr Ahmadinejad.

(As an aside, The Guardian referred to Ahmadinejad’s opponents as “moderate fundamentalists.” Huh?

And only the Guardian could refer to a movement of dyed in the wool, Sharia loving, fundamentalist Muslims as “liberal.”)

While the regime manipulates the election, Ahmadinejad is not without his own ability to fiddle with the vote:

Reformists hailed the poll - billed by many as Mr Ahmadinejad’s first electoral test since taking office - as a “major defeat” for the president, but they also warned that the slowness in declaring returns could indicate an underhand attempt to rig the outcome. The interior ministry, which is in the hands of Mr Ahmadinejad’s supporters, oversees the counting of ballots.

“The initial results of elections throughout the country indicate that Mr Ahmadinejad’s list has experienced a decisive defeat nationwide. They were tantamount to a big ‘no’ to the government’s authoritarian and inefficient methods,” a statement from the pro-reform Islamic Iran Participation Front said.

Don’t expect Ahmadinejad to take a back seat to the pragmatists. He burns with the fever of the true believer and can be expected to use whatever power he has to maintain his position. He evidently still enjoys the confidence of Khamenei. And the hardliners are still a powerful force in the ruling Guardian Council which oversees the Parliament and can veto any bill it wishes. The law that would knock time off of Ahmadinejad’s term in office for instance, has yet to be ruled on by the Council. A veto there would shore up his position, at least temporarily.

But the pragmatists seemed poised to either eliminate Ahmadinejad or at least minimize his influence. As for the former, there have been two attempts on the President’s life that we know about with whispered accusations against Rafsanjani being behind the plots. It just goes to show that in Iran, being a true believer is not always a guarantor of longevity.

This is an interesting development regarding the internal politics of Iran.

Just recently, you may have read that the Iranian parliament had taken the unprecedented step of reducing President Ahmadinejad’s term from 6 4 years to 5 3 by authorizing the next round of parliamentary elections to be held the same year as the next Presidential election. Since the parliamentary elections are to be held in 2008, this cuts more than one year off of Ahmadinejad’s term.

Was it a deliberate slap? One can hardly see it as anything else. The bill has a ways to go yet before it becomes law but with 80% of the legislature supporting the measure, it appears virtually certain to pass the constitutional tests required.

Now we have word that Ahmadinejad may have really stepped in it with his biggest boosters - the most fanatical believers in the Iranian theocracy - by attending the opening ceremonies of The Asian Games in Qatar (no bastion of liberalism itself) and watching women dancing and singing…in public…AND WITHOUT A VEIL!

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, who flaunts his ideological fervour, has been accused of undermining Iran’s Islamic revolution after television footage appeared to show him watching a female song and dance show.

The famously austere Mr Ahmadinejad has been criticised by his own allies after attending the lavish opening ceremony of the Asian games in Qatar, a sporting competition involving 13,000 athletes from 39 countries. The ceremony featured Indian and Egyptian dancers and female vocalists. Many were not wearing veils.

Women are forbidden to sing and dance before a male audience under Iran’s Islamic legal code. Officials are expected to excuse themselves from such engagements when abroad but TV pictures showed Mr Ahmadinejad sitting with President Bashar Assad of Syria and Ismail Haniya, the Palestinian prime minister, during last Friday’s ceremony in Doha.
Religious fundamentalists, usually Mr Ahmadinejad’s keenest supporters, are asking why he attended a ceremony that violated his own government’s strict interpretation of Shia Islam.

The Baztab website, considered close to Mohsen Rezaee, a former revolutionary guard commander with links to powerful sections of Iran’s political hierarchy, said Mr Ahmadinejad’s presence had offended Shias in Iran and elsewhere. “The failure of Ahmadinejad to object and his constant presence has damaged the image of Iran’s Islamic revolution and its commitment to Islamic rules in contrast with the Arab countries in the Gulf,” it said.

The significance of the criticism is its source. Mohsen Rezaee is considered an ally of former President and Ahmadinejad rival Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. The former President also chairs the powerful Expediency Discernment Council which advises Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei as well as ironing out differences between parliament and Council of Guardians (although in practice, what the Council of Guardians say is pretty much the law of the land).

Rafsanjani and another former President Mohammad Khatami have formed a loose opposition alliance to try and block some of Ahmadinejad’s more radical moves. They spoke out against his radicalizing the foreign service when Ahmadinejad fired several high level ambassadors and foreign service functionaries only to replace them with people who had little or no experience in foreign affairs. The President has carried out similar purges in other departments as well, each time replacing experienced technocrats with inexperienced fanatics.

Neither Rafsanjani or Khatami should be seen as wanting to do America any favors. Both are as rabid in their hatred of the United States as Ahmadinejad. However, they object to Ahmadinejad’s confrontational style, believing their revolution can advance farther and swifter if they lull the west to sleep by appearing to be reasonable and moderate.

And Rafsanjani, who initiated the Iranian nuclear program back in the early 1990’s when he was President, also fears Ahmadinejad’s anti-corruption campaign. It is an open secret that the former President is one of the richest men in Iran and got that way by stealing the country blind. While it is doubtful that Ahmadinejad would go after his rival in such a direct manner, the President could reel in some of Rafsanjani’s cronies in the ministries who helped him acquire his ill gotten gains.

Then there is the question of some of the assassination attempts on Ahmadinejad - two that we know of - and who might be behind them. Rafsanjani has been whispered as the mastermind but the official line is that separatists set the bombs off.

What does this attack on Ahmadinejad’s behavior really mean? It may help undermine Ahmmadinejad’s support with the powerful Assembly of Experts who will hold their election on December 15th. Getting an anti-Ahmadinejad majority elected to that powerful body would limit Supreme Leader Khamenei’s ability to back the President when he tries to enact his more radical agenda. The Assembly judges the actions of the Supreme Leader to insure that they pass muster with the Koran as well as the Iranian constitution.

The fact that Rafsanjani is running for a seat on the Assembly may have been at the bottom of this attack. Pure speculation, but given the circumstances, a logical deduction.

I find it deliciously ironic that the pious fanatic who constantly lectures others on godliness would be caught not only violating the tenets of Islamism but also lying about the transgression:

The president’s aides insist he was not present during the singing and dancing. His press secretary, Ali Akbar Javanfekr, claimed Mr Ahmadinejad had left for Doha airport before the performance.

However, Baztab posted footage which purported to show Mr Ahmadinejad in his seat after the show. Jalal Yahyazadeh, a rightwing MP, said: “We have heard from some sources that Ahmadinejad was in the stadium at the time. Those who created the conditions for his presence should be investigated as quickly as possible.”

It appears that Ahmadinejad is starting to enjoy his celebrity a wee too much, basking in the glow of the fawning masses who worship him for his tweaking the nose of the United States every chance he gets, lecturing President Bush and the American people, and addressing the United Nations in the manner of a hectoring church elder admonishing the congregation for their lack of morals.

It would be a satisfying turn of events indeed if this incident led to his being taken down a peg or two. I can’t think of anyone who would deserve it more.

UPDATE

Ed Morrissey ruminates on the way Islam treats women:

Is it just me, or does it seem like radical Islamists deeply fear women and their sexuality? Their entire worldview appears focused on the oppression of females — burying them under yards of cloth, denying them any freedom of movement, and avoiding even their singing voices in public. After all of Ahmadinejad’s ludicrous diplomacy and aggressive posturing, having him lose power because of a sporting event’s opening ceremonies is nothing short of surrealistic.

Ahmadinejad will certainly atone for his sins shortly. All it will take is another conference on how beautiful the world will be once Iran removes Israel and the United States from it. The radicals will forgive all in their xenophobic ecstasy.

Note: Thanks to Nikolay for correcting the length of Ahmadinejad’s term.

This article originally appears in The American Thinker

Americans have been in a foul mood recently.

One would think that taking satisfaction from giving the Republicans the heave ho and depositing them in the minority would lift the spirits of our citizenry and buoy their confidence so that we could face the future with that good old fashioned American optimism that has carried the nation through difficult times in the past.

Alas, such is not the case. America awoke the day after the election and realized that kicking the GOP out of power was only part of the problem. The other half of the electoral bargain - passing the baton to the Democrats - has so far, proven to be something of a disappointment. Rarely has a party come to power as the Democrats have with such a paucity of ideas on how to cure what ails us. You can hardly blame them. Their electoral strategy involved keeping their mouths shut while the Republicans self-destructed and events in Iraq played out to their advantage. Not a brilliant battle plan but it worked to perfection - with the help of Mark Foley and the media-savvy insurgents and terrorists who have made Baghdad and its environs a hell on earth.

Unfortunately, now that they are poised to run the legislative branch of government, the lack of specificity about what they intend to do about Iraq, about Iranian nukes, about a slowly deteriorating situation in Afghanistan is coming back to haunt them. This has further soured the mood of our fellow citizens and we approach the holiday season with some trepidation and many questions unanswered.

Events the world over seem to be spinning out of our control as conflicts and crisis in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon, Iran, Darfur, Somalia, and several other hot spots have proved themselves resistant to any solutions we have been able to offer. Whether our efforts have been unilateral, acting in concert with our allies, or even undertaken via the questionable auspices of the United Nations, it seems that the enemies of freedom have it all going their way.

Not so fast, my dejected countrymen. In a surprising number of conflicts and crisis where it appears the enemy has a singular advantage, the fact is that any “victory” they might achieve at our expense will almost certainly come with enormous problems for them as well. And given that their legitimacy is not based on popular sovereignty but rather comes from the barrel of a gun, this makes any domestic problems that may crop up as a result of an American “defeat” a threat to their very existence.

Take the Iranians, for example. As long as we’re in Iraq, the mullahs will continue to do their best to destabilize the government by supporting insurgents and the various Shia militias that are gleefully slaughtering their fellow countrymen who happen to belong to the Sunni branch of Islam. But something has happened in the last few months that even the Iranians didn’t count on. The militias appear to have splintered, many members breaking away from any kind of central command structure and are now operating as independent death squads. Even Muqtada al-Sadr, head of the extremist Mahdi Militia has admitted he no longer controls large numbers of armed men who are roaming the streets of Baghdad looking for victims.

Losing control of their proxies is not the worst of it for the Iranians. The Democratic electoral victory has them even more nervous. Not because they think the Democrats are interested in victory in Iraq but rather because they know that the Democrats want as quick an exit for our troops as can be done without exposing themselves to political charges of cutting and running. The obvious corollary to an American withdrawal is utter and complete chaos in Iraq with not only Shia slaughtering Sunni but also rival Shia militias - the Mahdi Army and Badr Brigades - slaughtering each other in a quest for power.

Ahmadinejad may be a loon, but he’s not crazy enough to tolerate a failed state on his border. The Iranians may be forced to send their own troops into the resulting chaos and quagmire to restore some semblance of order. And wouldn’t that be the irony of ironies as it would be payback time for Iraqis who would gladly transfer their hate from occupying Americans to the Iranians who they fought for 10 long years in one of the more brutal wars of the 20th century.

The collapse of the Iraqi government would also give greater independence to the Kurds in the north who already enjoy a large degree of autonomy from Baghdad. With Kurdish Iranians over the border already seething over their perceived second class citizenship and yearning to be united with their ethnic brothers and sisters not only in Iraq but also Turkey and elsewhere, the Persian nightmare of restless minorities causing trouble within the Iranian border may become an uncomfortable reality. And once a few groups start to rebel, anything is possible including a general uprising against the rule of the theocrats.

Also, any success that the Iranians may have with their nuclear program is a double edged sword. While the chances of an American strike against Iranian nuclear facilities may be fading, the fact is that most of the world is united against the idea of a nuclear armed Iran. The closer the mullahs get to their goal of manufacturing a weapon, the more pressure will result from countries like Russia and China that today seem to be hanging back, reluctant to impose even minimal sanctions.

As the Iranian program progresses, they may find those who have been running interference for them at the United Nations less and less sanguine about radical fundamentalist Muslims having the ultimate weapon. And with their economy in the toilet and nearly 50% of the population under the age of 25 (26% under the age of 14), tough sanctions and the resulting international isolation could create the perfect conditions for a revolutionary overthrow of the government.

Meanwhile, Syria is, if anything, in even more trouble than Iran. Just next door, Israel has been making noises about going after Hezb’allah’s patron and supporter in order to keep the terrorists from re-arming. And while Syrian President Bashir Assad continues to meddle in the affairs of his Lebanese neighbors, his support and encouragement of Hezb’allah may be about to yield the unintended consequence of a civil war. Nasrallah is no Syrian toady and is now following his own agenda that he hopes will bring him to power either directly through new elections or indirectly by giving him veto power in a new “government of national unity.”

Resistance to Nasrallah’s plans may erupt into street violence within the week. And while most observers believe that Hezb’allah would emerge victorious, the resulting fractured society would be almost as hard to govern as next door Iraq. Besides, Assad needs Lebanon virtually intact. The little country has been a cash cow for the Syrian Alawi ruling class as they milked and skimmed the economy in the past for every farthing they could.

It is Iraq where Assad faces the most danger. A precipitous American withdrawal would present the Syrians with many of the same problems faced by Iran with a few extra headaches thrown in for good measure. The 90% of Sunni Muslims who make up Syria’s population would not look kindly on the slaughter of their co-religionists in Iraq. Refugees would pour across the border, straining the government’s resources. And the nightmare prospect of a potential radical Shia state ensconced on his border has been one reason that Assad has cooperated - however minimally - with American efforts to staunch the flow of fighters coming into Iraq via Syria.

Even Russia and China, who would seem to gain from American setbacks in the Middle East, would be facing problems that may, in the long run, actually draw them closer to the United States on some issues.

The nuclear non-proliferation problem doesn’t end with Iran. Both nations realize that it is in their vital interest to keep a lid on the bottle containing the nuclear genie if only to forestall a nightmare future with dozens of nuclear powers, any one of which capable of igniting World War III. This is why eventually, both nations will work with us to keep Iran from getting the bomb. The alternative is just too gruesome to contemplate.

In the Middle East, both nations realize the need for peace and stability - especially China who in a few years will surpass Japan as the second largest importer of oil behind the United States. Russia, with its restless Muslim minorities, also sees peace in the Middle East as a key to its future internal security. Both nations may temporarily profit by US missteps in the region. But ultimately, both realize that it is the United States and our special relationship with Israel that is the key to peace. Anything that reduces American influence in the region also potentially diminishes the chances for stability, something both countries can ill afford.

The bottom line is that as bad as things may seem to us, the fact that our enemies will be limited in taking advantage of our blunders due to consequences beyond their control should, if not make us feel better, at least lift the pall of gloom and doom that emanates from the punditocracy on a daily basis. And it should also remind us that we’re in this war for the long haul. Temporary set backs in Iraq or anywhere else should not deter us from continuing the fight to rid the world of Islamic extremists and the putrid ideology they wish to impose on the rest of us.

More selective leaking from our friends at the Central Intelligence Agency:

A classified draft CIA assessment has found no firm evidence of a secret drive by Iran to develop nuclear weapons, as alleged by the White House, a top US investigative reporter has said.

Seymour Hersh, writing in an article for the November 27 issue of the magazine The New Yorker released in advance, reported on whether the administration of Republican President George W. Bush was more, or less, inclined to attack Iran after Democrats won control of Congress last week.

A month before the November 7 legislative elections, Hersh wrote, Vice President Dick Cheney attended a national-security discussion that touched on the impact of Democratic victory in both chambers on Iran policy.

“If the Democrats won on November 7th, the vice president said, that victory would not stop the administration from pursuing a military option with Iran,” Hersh wrote, citing a source familiar with the discussion.

Of course, the CIA might be wrong - or at least this analysis may be flawed. There are probably other assessments that are much less sanguine regarding Iran’s nuclear ambitions but no one leaked those reports. They’re a secret.

And I suppose Iran’s known and verified relationship with Big Daddy A.Q. Khan - father of Pakistan’s atomic bomb - and his travelling nuclear arms bazaar was just a coincidence - a happenstance of fortunate circumstance. Besides, Khan wasn’t selling nukes, he was selling ice cream machines.

Except that this document discovered by the IAEA, proves that either Iran is seeking to build nuclear weapons or those ice cream machines have one helluva kick:

A document obtained by Iran on the nuclear black market serves no other purpose than to make an atomic bomb, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Tuesday.

The finding was made in a report prepared for presentation to the 35-nation IAEA board when it meets, starting Thursday, on whether to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council, which has the power to impose economic and political sanctions on Iran.

The report was made available in full to The Associated Press.

First mention of the documents was made late last year in a longer IAEA report. At that time, the agency said only that the papers showed how to cast “enriched, natural and depleted uranium metal into hemispherical forms.”

The agency refused to make a judgment on what possible uses such casts would have. But diplomats familiar with the probe into Iran’s nuclear program said then that the papers apparently were instructions on how to mold highly enriched grade uranium into the core of warheads.

In the brief report obtained Tuesday, however, the agency said bluntly that the 15-page document showing how to cast fissile uranium into metal was “related to the fabrication of nuclear weapon components.”

Iran is probably claiming the document was accidentally stuck in between instructions on how to make a killer Rocky Road or maybe a sublime Moose Tracks.

Most of the rest of the planet believes that Iran’s heavy water reactors at Natanz and Arak serve no other purpose than to manufacture plutonium, a waste product of the nuclear reactions at the plants. Or perhaps the CIA believes that the heavy water will be used to create a particularly tasty variation of “Magilla Vanilla.”

And all of this secrecy and subterfuge surrounding their nuclear efforts is almost certainly not due to the fact that they wish to hide the development of a weapons program but rather because their recipe for “Black Cherry Surprise” promises to sweep the world.

All kidding aside, one point made by the assessment is probably correct; Iran is no where near having the capability to enrich uranium to the 85-90% necessary in order to build a bomb. And the heavy water reactors are years away from generating enough power to manufacture enough plutonium for a single weapon (although the 40 Megawatt facility at Arak promises to be a veritable plutonium assembly line once its fully operational and producing).

The key to the assessment is that the CIA has found no “firm” evidence of a secret Iranian nuke program. There is plenty of anecdotal and circumstantial evidence that they are, in fact, working hard to build the bomb. But the fact remains that there is no documentary or photographic “smoking gun” that would confirm our suspicions one way or another.

To proceed on the assumption that they aren’t building a bomb would be stupid. To bomb them without some idea of what facilities to hit would be equally dumb. And while negotiations would almost certainly be a waste of time, protocol, tradition, and common sense demands that we talk directly to the Iranians at some point. For this reason - and because they are at least 3 and probably more years from even getting close to succeeding - it would seem politic of us to sit down with the Iranians and discuss nukes, Iraq, and other regional issues that impact our security.

Besides, maybe the CIA will discover Iran’s secret frozen custard capability. That would make talking to the mullahs worthwhile.

The levels of irony on display with the “revelation” by the New York Times that some of the Saddam documents dealing with Hussein’s drive for nuclear weapons may constitute a dangerous release of classified info on how to build them is so perfect, so exquisitely delightful that it’s at times like these I wish I was a poet.

Only The Bard himself could do justice to the smorgasbord of delectable incongruities, tasty paradoxes, and bitterly sardonic idiocies that the New York Times, the left, our intelligence agencies, and yes - even those of us who pined for the release of this historic treasure trove of data have ultimately fallen into.

The New York Times, a news organ that has on many occasions revealed the existence of some of the most classified intelligence programs the government uses to protect American citizens, in violation of the law, of common sense, and (my own opinion) of their patriotic duty during a time of war, now implicitly criticizes the Bush Administration for (wait for it)…releasing classified information!

Last March, the federal government set up a Web site to make public a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war. The Bush administration did so under pressure from Congressional Republicans who said they hoped to “leverage the Internet” to find new evidence of the prewar dangers posed by Saddam Hussein.
But in recent weeks, the site has posted some documents that weapons experts say are a danger themselves: detailed accounts of Iraq’s secret nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf war. The documents, the experts say, constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb.

Last night, the government shut down the Web site after The New York Times asked about complaints from weapons experts and arms-control officials. A spokesman for the director of national intelligence said access to the site had been suspended “pending a review to ensure its content is appropriate for public viewing.”

Officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency, fearing that the information could help states like Iran develop nuclear arms, had privately protested last week to the American ambassador to the agency, according to European diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity. One diplomat said the agency’s technical experts “were shocked” at the public disclosures.

Michelle Malkin:

“The NYTimes blabbermouths are accusing the Bush administration of being careless with national security data?

Ouch. Stop. Sides. Splitting.

There really isn’t anything else one can say. Words are inadequate to the task of describing the poetic blindness evinced by The Times as they blithely empty the remaining arrows from their quiver of political barbs flung toward Bush and the Republicans in the lead up to Tuesday’s election. But to prove my point about this particular story being full of a particularly tasty brand of ironic disposition, in the process of trying to hurt the Republicans, they actually make their case about Saddam’s pre-war ties to terrorists for them.

Ed Morrissey:

This is apparently the Times’ November surprise, but it’s a surprising one indeed. The Times has just authenticated the entire collection of memos, some of which give very detailed accounts of Iraqi ties to terrorist organizations. Just this past Monday, I posted a memo which showed that the Saddam regime actively coordinated with Palestinian terrorists in the PFLP as well as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. On September 20th, I reposted a translation of an IIS memo written four days after 9/11 that worried the US would discover Iraq’s ties to Osama bin Laden.

Ed points to this excerpt that seems to explode a few cherished myths of the left about how close Saddam was to building an atomic bomb:

Among the dozens of documents in English were Iraqi reports written in the 1990’s and in 2002 for United Nations inspectors in charge of making sure Iraq abandoned its unconventional arms programs after the Persian Gulf war. Experts say that at the time, Mr. Hussein’s scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away.

European diplomats said this week that some of those nuclear documents on the Web site were identical to the ones presented to the United Nations Security Council in late 2002, as America got ready to invade Iraq. But unlike those on the Web site, the papers given to the Security Council had been extensively edited, to remove sensitive information on unconventional arms.

The New York Times - A Shill for Republicans? Who woulda thunkit?

Speaking of the left, it’s not surprising that they obediently took up the cudgel handed them by The Times to immediately bash Bush, the GOP Congress, and most notably, those of us who agitated for the release of the Saddam documents in the first place. Alas, in this season of ironic transposition and in their gleeful haste to score political points, they neglected to recall their previous position regarding the relative danger of Iran.

Even if some of the documents revealed secrets that might be helpful to a country’s nuclear program, how could it help a country like Iran who, according to legions of lefties, was not interested in building a bomb and was no threat to the United States in the first place?

To avoid this logical fallacy, the left does as it always does; they ignore the reality of any previous position they’ve taken and substitute an alternative narrative that begins, for all practical purposes, in medias res:

John Avarosis:

I’ve got a question for every Republican member of Congress on the campaign trail. Were you involved in this plan to propagandize to the American people that was so shoddy, so forced, so haphazardly thrown together that you gave al Qaeda and every other bad guy the plans for how to nuke New York?

Of course, we won’t ever have any hearings on this issue, or find out what went wrong, because the Republicans control Congress and they don’t hold the Bush administration accountable. They simply pressure Bush to literally hand Al Qaeda and Iran the plans for making a nuclear bomb.

Forgoing irony for the moment to highlight ignorance, here’s an expert’s opinion of whether or not al-Qaeda could use the information from the leaked web pages to build a bomb:

A senior American intelligence official who deals routinely with atomic issues said the documents showed “where the Iraqis failed and how to get around the failures.” The documents, he added, could perhaps help Iran or other nations making a serious effort to develop nuclear arms, but probably not terrorists or poorly equipped states. The official, who requested anonymity because of his agency’s rules against public comment, called the papers “a road map that helps you get from point A to point B, but only if you already have a car.”

I would suggest Mr. Aravosis stick with outing gays, which is something his personality and intelligence is perfectly suited - that of a grub crawling out from under a rock to “out” the slug as a multi-sexual mollusk. His powers of analysis - as in warning of an imminent attack by Evil George on Iran before the election next Tuesday - leave much to be desired.

For true irony (rather than blatant stupidity) Booman fills the bill nicely:

[T]he Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has completely f*cked up. You see, Peter Hoekstra just couldn’t believe Saddam Hussein has no WMD and thus posed no threat to the U.S. or his neighbors. So he threw a tantrum and insisted that our intelligence agencies put all the documents we seized in Iraq on the Internet where citizen wingnuts, fluent in Arabic, could discover evidence that our trained professional had missed. How did that work out?

[snip]

Hoekstra is supposed to be safe, but he is a total idiot that has endangered the safety of all 300 million Americans. There is no way he should be able to survive this, but Kotos doesn’t have much time to get the message out. Give him ten bucks so he can run some quick radio ads and maybe we’ll get a real progressive in a comservative (sic) western Michigan seat.

Leaving aside the laughably amateurish notion that a Dennis Kucinich liberal would have a ghost of a chance to win even if Hoekstra were to keel over and die, note first the title of Mr. Booman’s piece; “Peter Hoekstra Handed Our Enemies the Bomb.”

When has anyone on the left referred to any nation in the world as “our enemy” recently? Certainly not the Yankee Doodle minutemen killing our soldiers in Iraq. Those cuddly mullahs in Iran? The Laughing Goat in Venezuela? The inscrutable Mr. Kim in North Korea?

For the life of me, I can’t recall “enemy” being used by the left in any other context except when referring to the President of the United States. It would be delicious irony indeed if, in their haste to skewer Republicans over this story that the left discovered there are, in fact, nations who wish us ill and would destroy us if they could.

But I expect this eye-opening experience for the left to be a short lived fad - sort of like Hula Hoops or Davey Crockett hats but without the enormous collectible value attached. Once ensconced comfortably in power, the left will return to the moral blindness and suicidal ignorance about our enemies that has been their hallmark since 9/11.

In the end, I can’t let this ironic digression from the real world of a vitally important election go without reference to my own part and the part played by many conservatives in this Shakespearean interlude. We asked for it and we got it. And yes, as Ed Morrissey points out, many documents have surfaced (unreported by the Times and other mainstream news outlets) that prove if not conclusively than certainly circumstantially that Saddam Hussien had ties to terrorists and terrorist organizations - even al-Qaeda - that went far beyond what our intelligence agencies were telling the executive branch or the American people prior to the war.

But in our haste to discover the truth and in the Administration’s zeal to participate in this experimental program of unprecedented citizen-government cooperation, some respected experts believe we have damaged our own cause and given valuable information to those who wish to destroy us. This is perhaps the greatest and least palatable irony of all.

And in the increasingly dangerous world in which we live that will soon require decisions of monumental historical import regarding war and peace, the only laughter we may hear will be the bitter cackling of the Angel of Death, circling above bleached bones and rubble - remnants of a war that irony forgot.