The Way We Dealt with the Soviets Is the Way To Deal with Iran

Of the many errors committed by Western governments and their intelligence services in the run-up to Operation Iraqi Freedom, none was so grave as a fundamental error of strategic vision: the failure to recognize we would automatically be involved in a regional war, not simply a battle against the regime of Saddam Hussein. We imagined that Afghanistan was secure and that we could deal with Iraq all by itself. Then, at our convenience, we could move on against the other terror-masters in Damascus and Tehran. But that conceit has been shattered. Everyone knows that the terror war against Iraq and our coalition forces there is actively supported by Syria and Iran, with the mullahs in the first rank. There will never be decent security in Iraq or Afghanistan so long as the mullahs and the Assads rule in Tehran and Damascus. Sooner or later, we will have to confront them, whatever we may wish.

That decision was made by our enemies, not by us. Iran has long been at war with the West, above all against the United States. The Ayatollah Khomeini branded the U.S. "The Great Satan" in 1979, and Iranians and Iranian proxies have been killing Americans and American friends and allies ever since, from Lebanon to Iraq, from Afghanistan to Somalia, from Gaza and the West Bank to Argentina (which has recently issued indictments and arrest warrants against several top officials of the Islamic Republic). In recent days we have seen evidence of Iran-made explosive weapons deployed against coalition soldiers in Iraq, received confessions from officials of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps--including the operational chief of the Quds Force, whose job it is to kill Iran's enemies abroad, and who reports directly to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei--and seen the evidence of high-powered Austrian rifles sold to Iran, now showing up in the hands of Iraqi terrorists.

Meanwhile, the EU, confident that sweet reasonableness would produce a step along the road to peace with Iran, where cowboyish unilateralism had failed, has now confessed the failure of its diplomatic enterprise, informing the 25 members that Iran will indeed have atomic bombs. A recent memo to the EU's "foreign minister," Javier Solana, admitted that negotiations and sanctions will not stop the Iranian nuclear project. Nor will such measures stop the Iranians from arming, training, guiding and funding terrorists on a global scale, which should have provoked a vigorous Western response long since. We should have started with the successful "Helsinki" policies of the Cold War, when support for human rights in the Soviet Empire eventually eroded the communist tyranny. Instead, we have usually been silent in the face of vicious repression, torture, and a tempo of executions of political opponents that makes Iran the world's number two (after China) in the application of the death penalty.

The Iranians and their proxies are doing their utmost to sabotage hopes for peace in the entire region. This would seem to require effective action from the West, but instead, the noisiest sector of Western public opinion is frightened that the United States might actually act against Iran. Despite innumerable assurances from every imaginable quarter in Washington, the noisemakers assure us that the Americans are planning to invade Iran (or at a minimum bomb the Iranian nuclear sites), just as they invaded Iraq.

So far as I can tell, there is no truth to the alarms. Indeed, it would be fairer to condemn the Bush Administration for excessive timorousness with regard to Iran. Until a few weeks ago, our troops were under orders not to kill Iranians in Iraq, and if by accident an Iranian were arrested, he was released almost immediately. Now our soldiers are permitted to strike back against their killers, and Iranians without proper diplomatic credentials are held for interrogation. It's little enough. Too little, in fact.

The proper strategy toward Iran is non-violent regime change, of the sort that was accomplished to the ruin of the Soviet Empire. Military attack against Iran would be a mistake, indeed it would constitute a tragic admission of the utter failure of the United States and her allies to conceive and conduct a serious Iran policy over the course of nearly three decades. Political support for the tens of millions of Iranians who detest their tyrannical leaders is both morally obligatory and strategically sound. Perhaps ten per cent of Soviet citizens were willing to openly challenge the Kremlin; the Iranian regime's own public opinion polling shows that upwards of 70 percent of Iranians want greater freedom and better relations with the United States, and hardly a day goes by without strikes, demonstrations, and the occasional armed attack against the mullahcracy. Political support would include serious broadcasting into Iran, money for workers (as America and Western Europe did for Portugal in the 1970s and Poland In the 1980s) to enable them to go on strike in the oil fields, the textile factories, and the trucks and vans on the country's highways, and provision of modern communications equipment (servers, laptops, cell and satellite phones, etc.) to pro-democracy groups, of which there are scores.

Support for revolution in Iran should have been undertaken before the military assault against Saddam. I argued in 2002-2003, when hundreds of thousands of Iranians were demonstrating in the streets of the big cities, that a successful non-violent regime change in Iran would have enabled us to topple Saddam with a minimum of armed violence, and perhaps with none at all.

A rational strategy for regime change in Iran is more urgently required today than four years ago. But we cannot even begin to debate it so long as the issue is limited to Iraq alone, and the Bush Administration is blamed in advance for something it does not want to do. It, and every other Western government, should be blamed for their failure to see the war in its regional context, and to support the Iranian people all along. Perhaps it is yet possible for us to liberate Iran, and eliminate the Middle East's most threatening regime, without military action.

Precisely the wrong path to take, IMO.

Unless we are prepared to sacrifice Israel, and other likely sections in the area, to eventual annihilation which will ultimately originate from Tehran, military intervention must occur within the next 18 months, IMO.

Uh, Mikhail Gorbachev ran his country into the ground financially. [i]Glasnost[/i] exposed the corruption, social strife and nationalism the Communist Party had been covering up for years. The USSR dissolved itself.

I think we are past regime change by supporting a revolution and perhaps that time was 2003-2004 as the writer suggests. However, since so much of the population hates the mullocracy, an attack on Iran to me would simply be attacking Tehran, dropping leaflets as we did during WWII that says get out within 24 hours or your considered a combatant. Whomever is left is the enemy, to be destroyed without mercy. Iran falls into the category of 'all leadership in the capitol' like many countries did in WWII. We won Iraq this way by invading Baghdad and causing Saddam to flee to a hole in the ground while we broadcasted victory to the rest of the nation. Of course, Iran intervened directly to keep this conflict going and securing Iraq without stopping Iran is now impossible...

We should deal with China, right now, like Reagan dealt with the Soviets. We may avoid a future, major war if we do so.

But with Iran, since they are already sending their paramilitary forces and diplomatic corps into Iraq and both with personnel and material actively supporting our enemies in the killing of our soldiers and destablization/insurgency against our ally (Iraq), we should be fighting them directly, right out in the open, and taking them down HARD...right now.

Anything short of that will be viewed as weakness and will lead to far worse.

Just my opinion.

"Unless we are prepared to sacrifice Israel...to eventual annihilation which will ultimately originate from Tehran, military intervention must occur within the next 18 months, IMO."

You may be right. My question to the proponents of the containment strategy is - what happens when a cargo container containing a nuclear weapon of unidentified origin detonates in NY or Boston Harbor?

No one to blame, no claims of responsibility, the UN is against us (as always) and our so-called allies in Europe (now utterly terrified and intimidated) are actively working to prevent retaliation in the event we can figure out who attacked us.

In the event there is a satisfactory answer in the case of a nuclear attack, what about chemical or biological attacks by persons unknown and unattributed to a government?

We should issue a statement, right now, that any WMD attack on the US or its allies by terrorists, using means of attack that cannot be directly traced, shall be considered an attack by Tehran and Damascus and that the US will respond, devastatingly, in kind.

Those two noations can only avoid said retaliation by immediately taking on a true republican form of government, immediately ceasing all ties to terrorists, giving up wanted terrorists within their borders or control, and by dismantling all of their own nuclear or other WMD programs, subject to immediate and on the spot US inspection.

Otherwise the initial statement remains in effect.

I respect Michael Ledeen, and I agree wholeheartedly with his call for more, and earlier efforts at supporting the opposition in Iran.

But the security of the West shouldn't depend on whether or not the Iranians deal with their psychotic governement.

Events of 1979 indicate that they are quite capable of doing so, IF THEY CHOOSE.

The oft-posted map of the region shows that we have Iran surrounded.

Let's get on with it.

I would amend your statement to include North Korea, and send back channel messages to Pakistan, as well.

The problem with this is that the Soviets were at least rational enough to understand MAD-Mutually Assured Destruction, and never really tested us to see if we really meant it.

The Imams look At MAD as a free ticket to Paradise, and there are any number of candidates out there who would gladly ride a nuclear fireball to Allah.

No debate when the initial argument rests on a false assumption- there was no non-violent regime change that befell the Soviet Union. Reagan's Star-Wars programs and defense spending accellerated the demise of the Soviet Union, since the communist economy could not compete; ultiimately they were stretched too thin, and the economy, and then political system came unglued. Gorbachev was around for the descent.

Isn't "regime change" a grand expression? Are there many examples where this was accomplished without significant bloodshed? What this really means, is that we will engage in highly suspicious intervetnions in Iran, boosting the opposition. When Iran realizes what's happened, they will respond forcefully. Then we'll have the war these neocon scammers were hoping for, from day one.

The same ones giving us advice in Iran, are the same ones who misled us about Iraq both in terms of WMD and it being a cakewalk. Now we go right back to fawning on them when they speak about Iran. What, are we a nation of 2 year olds? Answer: yes.

"We should issue a statement, right now, that any WMD attack on the US or its allies by terrorists, using means of attack that cannot be directly traced, shall be considered an attack by Tehran and Damascus and that the US will respond"

OK, so we issue the statement, the bomb goes off and we retaliate. Millions are now dead in the US, Iran and Syria. We then find out that the device was a Russian or North Korean bomb - you are now a mass murderer on a level of the worst in history. What are you supposed to say, oops?

My only point in spinning this scenario is to try and point out that a strategy of containment may have worked against the Russians, but may not now.

I said a WMD attack by terrorists would be construed as an attack by Syria and Tehran who are the largest supporters of terrorists. I also pointed out a way for them to avoid the retaliation, by disavowing, disaccociating from, and turning over terrorisats, and by becoming a republica form of government.

If they will not do those things, then we are already at war with them, and if we are hit, they should get hit back...much, much harder I stand by that.

It's far past time to stop "containment" and recognize that we are at war. The way you contain war is to abjectly defeat the enemy, completely.

We killed hundreds and hundreds of thosuands in World War II. The enemy's populations were part of the target because they supported the war machine. In as much as we have enemy regimes doing the same today, the way to defeat them is not just on the battlefield, but also in the hearts and minds of their people. When the people literally beg us to stop and start handing over the terrorists amongst them...we will be on the right track.

IMHO, none of that is mass murder, that's attacking and defeating your enemies.

"It's far past time to stop "containment" and recognize that we are at war. The way you contain war is to abjectly defeat the enemy, completely."

We have agreed from the begining. I only spin the containment scenario because I think there would be no or limited success if we tried it.

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