Iran Bubbles Over

NRO : Internal And External Tensions Boil

(National Review Online)  Mullah Spin
As I predicted after the elections, the regime is now showing its fangs, both at home and abroad. I have no doubt that the professional analysts in the State department, the intelligence community, and the National Security Council are presenting a soothing interpretation of these events, arguing that there is a new "administration" in Tehran, and it will take a bit of time before they tone down their rhetoric and come to terms with reality. But this assumes that the Iranians are capable of understanding reality, and that we are capable of understanding them. The record to date suggests both assumptions are false.

Manic Moments and Exodus
The mullahs are altogether capable of deciding that events are now running strongly in their favor, and that they should strike directly at the United States. They look at us, and they see a deeply divided nation, a president who talked a lot about bringing democratic revolution to Iran and then did nothing to support it, a military that is clearly fighting in Iraq alone, and counting the days until we can say "it’s up to the Iraqis now," and — again based on what they see in our popular press — a country that has no stomach for a prolonged campaign against the remaining terror masters in Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia.

Osama bin Laden came to similar conclusions, and ordered the events of 9/11. Why should the Iranians — who have been major supporters of the terror network ever since the 1979 revolution — not do the same?

Many Iranians have come to the conclusion that their country is a dangerous place, and they are running. A significant number of former officials have left Iran for infidel countries in the past few weeks and months. The former minister of culture, Ayatollah Mohajerani, has gone to London, along with the former mayor of Tehran, Mohammed Hassan Malekmadani. Mohsen Sazegara, a founder of the Revolutionary Guards, is now in Washington. Mohammed Taghi Banki and Cyrus Nasseri, until recently high-ranking officials, have gone to Austria. And these are the lucky ones, because they have managed to escape the Islamic republic. Within the cauldron, the purge continues, as I have suggested it would. Ten members of the Khorassan judiciary have been forced to resign. The commander in chief of the army is gone. Payman Forouzesh and Golmohammad Baqeri, both members of the last parliament, have resigned, as has Mohammed Mirlohi, the deputy minister of legal and parliamentary affairs. Other resignations and departures are likely to follow in short order; a friend of mine who knows a great deal about the affairs of banks in the Persian Gulf tells me there is an unprecedented flow of private money out of Iran to places like Dubai, Abu Dabhi, and Qatar.

This exodus does not bespeak either a tranquil country or a regime confident of its internal power, especially against the background of the massive repression now under way. It rather suggests a regime that knows it is hated, and intends to stay in power by crushing anyone in its way, both at home and abroad. It is reminiscent of the final days of the Nazi regime, when the Fuhrer in his bunker swung wildly between megalomaniacal dreams of miraculous world conquest, and deep depression, alternately purging his old guard and promoting incompetent underlings to positions of great power.

It may well be that the mullahs are torn between wild fear of America, and a fanatical conviction that they can finally destroy the great Satan. If, as I fear, they are either very close to, or actually possess atomic bombs, it might help explain their manic moments, and enable them to tell themselves that America would not dare attack a nuclear power.

Our policymakers have thus far utterly failed to design anything worthy of the name of an Iran policy, even though it is arguably the single most important challenge we face. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley recently answered a question about Iran policy by saying that we did indeed have a policy, but we hadn’t yet written it down. This is reminiscent of the old riddle of whether a falling tree makes a sound if no one is there to hear it: can there be a policy if nobody can define it?

Lacking any defined policy, we can only judge the president and his aides by their actions, and there aren’t any, aside from the occasional speech or offhand remark at a press conference. The mullahs see that, and treat it with the contempt it deserves. We are currently indistinguishable from the Europeans, who run whenever the Iranians snarl at them.

This is not a war on terror, it is paralysis at best, and appeasement at worst. The hell of it is that it is costing thousands of lives, and will cost many more until the terror masters are destroyed, or we surrender. Those words were inconceivable for many years, but it is a sign of our present fecklessness that they are now entirely appropriate. We can still lose this war. And we cannot win it so long as we are blinded by our potentially fatal failure of strategic vision: we are in a regional war, but we have limited our actions to a single theater. Our most potent weapons are political and ideological, but our actions have been almost exclusively military.

Our main enemy, the single greatest engine in support of the terror war against us, whether Sunni or Shiite, jihadi, or secular, Arab or British or Italian or Spaniard, is Iran. There is no escape from this fact. The only questions are how long it will take us to face it, how effective we will be when we finally decide to act, and how terrible the price will be for our long delay.


Michael Ledeen, is an NRO contributing editor and a resident scholar in the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute.