Michael Ledeen, a neoconservative polemicist and long-time Iran hawk who joined the Foundation for Defense of Democracies after leaving the American Enterprise Institute in 2008, is being honest when he reminds us here that he has opposed direct US military intervention in Iran. For Ledeen, Iranian-regime change is more attainable if [...]]]>
Michael Ledeen, a neoconservative polemicist and long-time Iran hawk who joined the Foundation for Defense of Democracies after leaving the American Enterprise Institute in 2008, is being honest when he reminds us here that he has opposed direct US military intervention in Iran. For Ledeen, Iranian-regime change is more attainable if it’s executed from the ground up, and the US should do everything it can to facilitate that process. In 2010 he unapologetically argued that the US should covertly or openly support regime change-inclined Iranians during a debate at the Atlantic Council and reiterated that argument in “Takedown Tehran“ this year. (For some reason Ledeen seems to think that the Green Movement would invite the regime-change-oriented US support he advocates, even if key opposition figures have opposed the broad sanctions that he endorses. This may be due to his allegedly well-informed sources, some of whom have led him astray in the past.)
In any case, sanctions should be part of the US regime-change strategy, argues Ledeen, who promoted the US invasion of Iraq (although he later denied doing so), but sanctions alone will never be the means to his desired end:
But I don’t know anyone this side of the White House who believes that sanctions, by themselves, will produce what we should want above all: the fall of the Tehran regime that is the core of the war against us. To accomplish that, we need more than sanctions; we need a strategy for regime change.
Like fellow ideologues — such as Bret Stephens, a Wall Street Journal deputy editor and “Global View” columnist – Ledeen argues that the US must also execute a war strategy with Iran because like it or not, we’re already at war (for a closer look at this line of reasoning, see Farideh’s post):
But even if all these are guided from Washington and/or Jerusalem, it still does not add up to a war-winning strategy, which requires a clearly stated mission from our maximum leaders. We need a president who will say “Khamenei and Ahmadinejad must go.” He must say it publicly, and he must say it privately to our military, to our diplomats, and to the intelligence community.
Without that commitment, without that mission — and it’s hard to imagine it, isn’t it? — we’ll continue to spin our wheels, mostly playing defense, sometimes enacting new sanctions, sometimes wrecking the mullahs’ centrifuges, forever hoping that the mullahs will make a deal. Until the day when one of those Iranian schemes to kill even more Americans works out, and we actually catch them in the act. Then our leaders will say “we must go to war.”
But Ledeen’s Washington Times column this week suggests that he may be pivoting toward the military option:
I have long opposed military action against the Iranian regime. I believe we should instead support democratic revolution. However, our failure to work for regime change in Iran and our refusal to endorse Mr. Netanyahu’s call for a bright “red line” around the mullahs’ nuclear weapons program, makes war more likely, as similar dithering and ambiguity have so often in the past.
Interestingly, in August Ledeen stated that the Israeli strategy was to push the US to attack Iran:
…Israel does not want to do it. For as long as I can remember, the Israelis have been trying to get U.S. to do it, because they have long believed that Iran was so big that only a big country could successfully take on the mullahs in a direct confrontation. So Israel’s Iran policy has been to convince us to do whatever the Israelis think is best. And while they’re willing to do their part, they are very reluctant to take on the entire burden.
“Faster, Please!”, right?
]]>Weekly Reads/Watch:
- News: US PRESIDENT Barack Obama accelerated cyberattacks on Iran’s nuclear [...]]]>Weekly Reads/Watch:
Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post: The blogger who wants the U.S. to go to war with Iran on Israel’s behalf agitates for a U.S. war with Iran, again:
With a competent and responsible administration, we’d be very publicly drawing up a military option, putting ships in the region and consulting with Congress about our options. We might even discuss with Israel its “red lines” — and let that discussion become public. We would be justified in taking all steps needed to unleash a military option and/or to support Israel in the event of hostilities. But we don’t.
But while Rubin thumps her neoconservative chest in alleged support for Israel, the majority of Israeli defense chiefs oppose an attack on Iran. Hmmm…
Mark Dubowitz, US News: The director of the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies who has reportedly been a main architect of the Obama administration’s Iran sanctions policy advocates military strikes on the Islamic Republic:
“The last thing the president wants is an attack before the election in November—especially an Israeli attack,” says Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Still, it might be possible to take out Iranian facilities where the obstinate regime is believed to be producing nuclear centrifuges, Dubowitz says.
“The centrifuge-production facilities are the key choke points for the broader program,” Dubowitz says. “If Israelis know where they are and do bomb them, a strike like that could set the program back 10 years. And I think the Israelis have a pretty good idea where they are. Those facilities would be central to any military plan.”
Danielle Pletka, Washington Post: The long time hawk and vice president of the American Enterprise Institute argues that the U.S. should intervene in Syria because it will serve as a “blow” to Iran:
Another political virtue is the impact intervention would have on Iran. Ousting Tehran’s last reliable satellite regime and replacing it with a Sunni, democratic government would reassure our friends in the region that Washington is determined to stand up to Iran when necessary. Even those who oppose involvement in the Syrian conflict allow that the loss of Assad would be a blow to the Islamic republic.
Michael Ledeen, Pajamas Media: The neoconservative pundit and Foundation for Defense of Democracies “freedom scholar” advocates U.S.-backed regime change in Iran:
]]>Sanctions will neither stop the Iranian nuclear program nor stop the Real War. Only a change in regime can accomplish that. To that end, sanctions could be a positive force if they were combined with support for the Iranian opposition. Just ask the Revolutionary Guards how serious the resistance is: the RG just deployed an additional eight thousand soldiers—some in uniform, others in plain clothes–in the streets of Tehran.But no Western leader cares to help the Iranian opposition, even verbally. When those leaders say “no option is off the table,” they mean some day there might be a military attack against Iran. But financial and tactical assistance to the Iranian people willing to actively fight for freedom is totally off any Western strategic table;
The Wall Street Journal: Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, writes that Afghanistan is costly and “a strategic distraction,” and that U.S. military resources could be better used by preparing for a conflict with North Korea and Iran. Haass says [...]]]>
The Wall Street Journal: Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, writes that Afghanistan is costly and “a strategic distraction,” and that U.S. military resources could be better used by preparing for a conflict with North Korea and Iran. Haass says an important factor is, “[T]he increased possibility of a conflict with a reckless North Korea and the continued possibility of a confrontation with Iran over its nuclear program. U.S. military forces must be freed up to contend with these issues.” While “total withdrawal is not the answer,” he concludes that “The perception that we are tied down in Afghanistan makes it more difficult to threaten North Korea or Iran credibly—and makes it more difficult to muster the forces to deal with either if necessary.”
New York Post: An editorial in NY’s Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid picks up on the threats of an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps general that Iran will retaliate for the assassinations of its nuclear scientists. “It may sound like an empty threat, or an unhinged response,” write the Post editors. “But the threat is dead serious — proof of how hellbent Iran is to split the atom.” They add: “For Iran, nukes are its foreign policy — along with the terror it exports to Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.” They add the threat of nuclear war looms large if Iran gets the bomb: “An atomic Iran could launch traditional military and terrorist attacks and tie the world’s hands by threatening nuclear war when any nation moves to fight back. By then it won’t have to rattle its sabers — it can aim its nukes instead.”
Pajamas Media: Foundation for Defense of Democracies scholar Michael Ledeen writes that last week’s terror attack in Southeastern Iran wasn’t a terror attack at all, but was “against the symbols and enforcers of the Shi’ite regime: Revolutionary Guards, Basij, and Quds Force fighters.” Ledeen cites internal political wrangling and suggests that the regime is in a “death spiral.” He concludes by making a case for regime change as a means of “reverse linkage” in the most sweeping manner seen yet: “If only there were a Western leader with the prescience and courage to support the Greens, we would find many terrible problems a lot easier to manage: Iraq and Afghanistan would go better, the tyrant Chavez and his ‘Bolivarian’ Axis of Latin Evildoers would be weakened, and the misnamed ‘peace process’ might even have a chance.”
]]>Incredibly, he’s become even more strident in his calls since he was purged by Danielle Pletka from the American Enterprise Institute along with a handful of other hard liners (who then reacted badly). Imagine having your scholarship questioned by the likes of Pletka!
And so how refreshing it is to have a funny take down of a recent Ledeen post (it was covered in our Daily Talking Points) from the Poor Man Institute, a blog that I was heretofore unfamiliar with, but intend to check back on quite often. Even the title of the post was pitch perfect: “Funnier, Please!” — a send up of Ledeen’s Pajamas blog.
I’m going to quote a section of the piece at length, but I first want to highlight this important link — a blog post by Eric Martin – discovered therein: a catalogue of Michael Ledeen’s unfailingly belligerent comments about Iran. In short, these are actual calls for war, conta Ledeen’s common statements that “of course, he’s not calling for war on Iran.”‘ Don’t be fooled.
From the Poor Man post:
]]>In a recent offering, Ledeen again hams it up for the crowd by feigning ignorance as to how Secretary Gates could possibly claim that the Iranian people might rally around the flag in the face of a series of massive US or Israeli airstrikes targeting all manner of Iranian military and nuclear facilities (many of which are embedded in civilian areas and would, thus, lead to many dead civilians – although even their scientists and soldiers are Iranians and might be missed).
Imagine that. How crazy. And does Gates have any actual evidence for this conspiracy theory (history be damned)?
In order to perpetrate this thinly veiled ruse, Ledeen pretends that every regime opponent either has a family member locked in prison, or has multiple deceased family members courtesy of the regime (considering that he pegs the opposition in the tens of millions, one wonders at the size of the Iranian prison population - and size of the mass graves).
In reality, of course, the opposition is probably smaller, and there is a large spectrum of viewpoints represented in that opposition, with many opponents of the current ruling clique not urging on revolution as much as supporting their own candidates within the system (or for more human rights protections regardless).
But nevermind reality, we’re discussing a Ledeen column.