Anti-Iran hype reaches fever
pitch By Khody Akhavi
WASHINGTON - On the same day General David
Petraeus presented his much-anticipated progress
report to the US Congress on the US military's
"troop surge" strategy in Iraq, neo-conservative
ideologues associated with the American Enterprise
Institute (AEI) took aim at another of the reputed
foes of "freedom" - the Islamic Republic of Iran.
During a panel discussion on Monday aimed
at promoting his new book The Iranian Time
Bomb, Michael Ledeen, a resident scholar
at
AEI, criticized the "evil" nature of Iran's
clerical regime, its support for international
terrorism, and the need to back Iranian dissidents
and activists in a soft revolution to dislodge the
mullahs from power.
Along with the broad -
and at times mocking - generalizations about
Iran's attempts to foment "Islamic
totalitarianism" throughout the world, Ledeen,
accompanied by former Central Intelligence Agency
director James Woolsey and Clifford D May,
president of the hawkish Foundation for the
Defense of Democracies, appeared dead set against
any diplomatic engagement with Iran.
"The
[Iranian] leadership constantly tells its people,
'The Iranian people must prepare to rule the
world,'" said Ledeen.
"Everybody has
convinced themselves that they can make a deal
with Iran. We have been negotiating for 27 years,
as if there have been no negotiations ... there is
no escape," he said. "The only question is how
best to defeat them."
Citing a memorable
scene in the James Bond film Goldfinger, in
which the eponymous villain straps the fictional
British secret agent to a gurney and aims a laser
toward his genitals, Ledeen quoted German-born
actor Gert Frobe's famous line: "I expect you to
die."
"And that's Iran. They want us to
die. They want to destroy us," said Ledeen. He
went on to describe the Islamist sentiment in Iran
as a "political death wish, a political
necrophilia".
With strong links to US Vice
President Dick Cheney's office and the White
House, Washington-based AEI has, since the attacks
of September 11, 2001, enjoyed unparalleled
influence in shaping US interventionist policy in
the Middle East. The think-tank helped lead the
drive to war in Iraq, and more recently has
assumed a prominent role in rallying for regime
change in Iran.
While no longer under the
illusion of the type of large-scale "democratic"
intervention that precipitated the current Iraq
war, neo-conservatives still appear to be pumping
up a confrontational attitude between the US and
Iran, painting the regime as an existential enemy
with whom one cannot negotiate, a fanatical yet
militarily weak reactionary government that
desires the destruction of the world.
Speaking wistfully about the Cold War,
Woolsey compared the Islamist political resurgence
in the Middle East to the then-communist
government in Moscow, describing the latter as the
"ideal enemy".
"I have a certain bizarre
nostalgia for the Soviet Union," said Woolsey. "It
is our misfortune that today we have to live with
Sunni and Shi'ite totalitarianism."
However, the panel's unanimous and
confrontational sentiment did not translate into a
coherent foreign policy toward the Iranian regime,
and ultimately leads to what the panelists
described as two equally disturbing options: Iran
with a bomb or bomb Iran.
"If our [US]
survival is at stake and they [Iranians] are
readying themselves to attack us, we will bomb
them," said Woolsey.
Iran's
uranium-enrichment program is operating well below
capacity and is far from producing nuclear fuel in
significant amounts, according to a confidential
International Atomic Energy Agency report obtained
by Reuters.
For Ledeen, it seems the
problem is not a nuclear-armed Iran as much as it
is an Islamist government in Tehran, and his
ultimate goal is the removal of the clerical
establishment from power.
The panelists
did not advocate military action, instead choosing
to promote an aggressive but non-violent soft
revolution that would ostensibly be led by Iran's
"moderate" political actors: intellectuals,
students, women, former "reformists", and members
of Iran's once-burgeoning civil society.
Yet they omitted the idea that, for all
the resentment harbored against the regime,
frustrated dissidents may not want US help to
change the political landscape in Iran. At worst,
aggressive US support - most notably US$75 million
for "pro-democracy" activities - has engendered
the belief among regime insiders that the
Washington intends to foment a revolution.
In a visit last year to the United States,
Iranian dissident journalist Akbar Ganji declined
an invitation to meet with White House officials,
citing his belief that Washington's current
policies were hurting, not helping promote,
democracy in Iran. Ganji, who was imprisoned in
2000 after writing a series of articles accusing
Iranian Intelligence Ministry agents of killing
dissidents, said he was tortured repeatedly during
six years in prison.
"Any intervention by
any foreign power would bring charges of
conspiracy against us," he told the Associated
Press.
And they already have. Most
recently, the regime put Haleh Esfandiari, a
US-Iranian and Middle East expert at the Woodrow
Wilson Center in Washington, and Kian Tajbakhsh,
an urban planner who has worked with the Soros
Foundation and the Iranian government, in jail for
inciting a revolution.
Esfandiari was
released from Evin Prison this month, but
Tajbakhsh continues to be held without charge.
It appears Iran will remain a target for
AEI ideologues and their associates in the months
to come. The question remains as to whether this
aggressive pseudo-policy will yield productive
results, or if it will end, as many in the
international community fear, in military
confrontation.
The panelists at Monday's
discussion left little room for compromise, and
their generalizations about Iran as an irrational
actor support a very clear and consistent
neo-conservative message: there can be no
negotiation with Iran.
In the final
analysis, military confrontation with Iran becomes
a foregone conclusion.
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