Dont' mess with iran's evolutionary process- By Philip Giraldi, A Former Cia Off

[2ND COMING]

Everyone is looking for something to say about Iran. The neo-conservatives are predictably hailing the march of democracy on the streets of Tehran for reasons of their own, while hawks like Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham are calling on the Obama Administration to do something to help anyone tagged as a reformer. More moderate voices are generally supporting President Barack Obama's initial show of restraint -- avoiding any open support of either side -- and only condemning the violence because it is disproportionate due to the suffering it has caused. Still others are calling on the United States to avoid any interference of any kind. The non-interventionists themselves fall into two camps: the constitutionalists and libertarians believe that interfering in other people's quarrels is intrinsically problematical because as John Quincy Adams said, "America does not need to go abroad in search of monsters to destroy." Realists argue that interventions by the United States rarely turn out well, citing the cases of Vietnam, Bosnia, Lebanon, Iraq, Somalia, and more.

Having spent much of my working life as an intelligence officer on the street in places like Istanbul, I am astonished at what passes for expertise in the debate over what to do about Iran. It is clear that even the few genuine experts on Iran don't really know what is going on there because they are slaves to their sources of information, which tend to reflect their own philosophical viewpoints and are, in any event, narrowly based. It is conventional wisdom in most of the US media that the Iranian election was stolen, the result of massive fraud. But was it? Opinion polls conducted by a US based organization several weeks before the polling predicted an Ahmadinejad victory. The president is hugely popular among poor rural Iranians and also enjoys overwhelming support for his defense of Iran's right to develop nuclear energy. Elections are very complex affairs and how a talking head sitting in Washington, breathlessly interpreting grainy texting images, can even pretend to understand what is going on in Iran and why defies all logic, particularly if the expert in question speaks no Farsi and probably would have difficulty in locating Isfahan on a map.

Mir Hossein Mousavi is a reformer and modernist, isn't he? Perhaps not. He has always been extremely conservative in his political alignments. As Prime Minister in 1981-9, he was regarded as a hardliner. He started Iran's nuclear program, helped found Hezbollah and may have directed the attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut. He is, in reality, a defender of extremely corrupt vested interests. That he has attracted the support of the so-called "Gucci crowd" of twentyish twitterers does not mean that he has embraced western values. As president, he would not abandon nuclear energy and would not immediately begin to talk nice to Barack Obama. His reformer credentials are pretty much non-existent, the creation of a media and an engaged punditry that wants to explain the Iran crisis in terms that a European or American audience would find comfortable.

And then there is the corruption issue, Iran's six hundred pound gorilla. Mousavi is heir to the corrupt Iran of the post-revolutionary period when the country was looted by the senior clerics cooperating with the business class, the bazaaris. Some intelligence sources believe that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has been demonized by the western media, is actually the reformer in that he has taken on the country's pervasive corruption with the full support of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader. Massive corruption has been business as usual in Iran, frequently managed by politicians who have called themselves reformers. Another so-called reformer, who is the money man behind Mousavi, is former Iranian Majlis speaker Akhbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, nicknamed "the Shark." Rafsanjani is a billionaire who controls large sectors of the country's economy, to include a chain of private universities which became the source of the young organizers who brought the twitterers out on the street.

If there was one thing I learned from twenty years of experience as a military intelligence and CIA officer it is that nothing is ever what it seems. If a situation appears to be clear cut, with good guys and bad guys arrayed against each other it is probably anything but. So maybe black and white comes out gray. All the more reason to step back. The interventionists from both left and right do not make it clear what the United States should do to help the "reformers." Perhaps that is just as well as the only options would be to hurl empty threats, start bombing, or initiate yet another CIA covert action to destabilize the regime, ignoring the lessons of the CIA's 1953 debacle, and with the predictable and contrary result of actually strengthening the clerics and their rule.

Change by evolution is better than by revolution. Both metamorphoses are underway in Iran: one is immediate and reactionary and, perhaps necessarily, more graphic and even grim. The other suggests the possibility that long-lasting change might happen in Tehran -- if outside influences do not upset the sensitive process of transformation. As is frequently the case, those who would do nothing probably have it right, whether arguing for constitutional reasons or as realists. Iran and its elections are issues that we do not and cannot understand and they are ultimately issues that have to be decided by the Iranian people. Rightly or wrongly, outside interference in what is taking place on the streets of Tehran will be exploited by the regime to deflect any legitimate criticism, making any change even less likely. The old Hippocratic advice to doctors to "do no harm" should perhaps be the best advice for the American political chattering classes and the media. Doing no harm regarding events in Iran is to stay out of it.


Copyright © 2009 The American Conservative Defense Alliance

[Deicide]

You're an evil 'lib'.

[headhuntersix]

I guess the fact that the CIA didn't see either the rise of the Revolutinay Guard as a political force or the student movement coming, should say all we need to know about any Western expets on Iran.

[Mons Venus]

HH6 = Receives Free Socialized Healthcare

HH6 = Receives Free Socialized College

HH6 = Receives Free Socialized Pension

HH6 = Receives Free Socialized Housing

HH6 = Receives Free Socialized MRE's/Dogfood

HH6 = If it's Free= it's 4 me!             

HH6 = Fuucck everyone else!

[Kazan]

HH6 = Receives Free Socialized Healthcare

HH6 = Receives Free Socialized College

HH6 = Receives Free Socialized Pension

HH6 = Receives Free Socialized Housing

HH6 = Receives Free Socialized MRE's/Dogfood

HH6 = If it's Free= it's 4 me!             

HH6 = Fuucck everyone else!

[Deicide]

HH6 = Receives Free Socialized Healthcare

HH6 = Receives Free Socialized College

HH6 = Receives Free Socialized Pension

HH6 = Receives Free Socialized Housing

HH6 = Receives Free Socialized MRE's/Dogfood

HH6 = If it's Free= it's 4 me!             

HH6 = Fuucck everyone else!

He does shoot brown people so I guess he deserves it.

[240 is Back]

He does shoot brown people so I guess he deserves it.

each of those afghans are worth less than 1/23,000,000 of the value of his dog

[headhuntersix]

Thats right 240....

Hey Mons.....all ur posts about me equal one big " I was kicked out of the service because I'm gay, weak, a pussy"...u fill in the blank......and I'm trying to compensate. Let me guess, u were special ops but too tough for em huh......I get healthcare, like many people with a job that pays like mine. I pay rent or morgage, like most people, I haven't eaten an MRE in several years....which shows the last time u were in. My guess is pre 911. But I do get a ton of really great gear. And i get to be better then u everyday.

[Deicide]

Thats right 240....

Hey Mons.....all ur posts about me equal one big " I was kicked out of the service because I'm gay, weak, a pussy"...u fill in the blank......and I'm trying to compensate. Let me guess, u were special ops but too tough for em huh......I get healthcare, like many people with a job that pays like mine. I pay rent or morgage, like most people, I haven't eaten an MRE in several years....which shows the last time u were in. My guess is pre 911. But I do get a ton of really great gear. And i get to be better then u everyday.

We still love you HH6...

[headhuntersix]

I know D, its Mons I'm worried about. 

[Kazan]

Thats right 240....

Hey Mons.....all ur posts about me equal one big " I was kicked out of the service because I'm gay, weak, a pussy"...u fill in the blank......and I'm trying to compensate. Let me guess, u were special ops but too tough for em huh......I get healthcare, like many people with a job that pays like mine. I pay rent or morgage, like most people, I haven't eaten an MRE in several years....which shows the last time u were in. My guess is pre 911. But I do get a ton of really great gear. And i get to be better then u everyday.

I highly doubt this mons person was ever military, I have never in my life met an vet that would talk/act like this. But it's OK if this guy wants to prove it he can provide his info, DD214 etc and I can have him veted.

[headhuntersix]

He said he served 4 years....with two combat tours, that was an add in for my benefit. Mons u really don't want to go down this road. But by all means post ur 214, we'll have it looked at by experts. Maker sure any BS school u have on their have the real dates so we can then make sure u had time to finish Basic and AIT or Boot and ur follow on school, then serve two tours, and I can get rotation dates for any and every unit. I'll be able to verify who ur officers where even without ur name, feel free to black that out. Plus 4 years....when? Even if it started in 2000 and ran through 2004, thats one tour in Afghanistan and one to Iraq, maybe. So u were in the 10th Mountain or the 101st? Maybe the 82nd.....or u were a Marine. Even easier, 24th or 22nd MEU? If u were Navy or AF, then this is pointless.