article:
"The fact that the regime had to create a new police force tells us a lot about the mullahs' lack of self-confidence (a proper tyrant would have used the traditional instruments), and indeed recent reports from Tehran suggest that the regime has brought thousands of foreigners to the capital to fight against the anticipated July 9 demonstrations. According to these sources, which have been very reliable in the past, large numbers of Palestinians and Iraqis have been brought to Tehran, and are undergoing paramilitary training."
A tottering government's resort to foreign mercenaries for domestic suppression, in lieu of existing regime-protection forces, indicates that its end is near. Ledeen's report is even more dramatic given the historic animosity between Sunni Muslim Arabs and Shiite Muslim Farsis (Iran's majority ethnic group). If this is true, Iran's mullah regime is so scared that they've abandoned the religious issue to their enemies. THAT is news.
One also wonders what the Palestinians' price is for helping Iran's mullah regime against its own people. Al Qaeda's price, for using its non-Afghan forces to keep the Taliban in power, was use of Afghanistan as a terrorist base to attack America. Will Iran give Hamas free use of Iranian diplomatic immunity to attack Jewish and Israel targets? Iran's Argentine embassy was suspected of a role in past terrorist attacks upon Argentine Jews, and Israeli diplomatic facilities there.
This is certainly something to keep an eye on. It would also be nice if the U.S. government could use the pending Iranian revolution/civil war to our advantage, notably in the war on terror. Not doing so magnifies the chances that our enemies will use those events for their benefit. We should consider what is about to happen in Iran as an opportunity for us, not our enemies, but that requires human intelligence and strategic planning capabilities which we presently lack.
Our intelligence capability inside foreign nations dreadful. A Chicago hood and a Marin County yuppie got into Al Qaeda, but not the CIA. Intelligence analysis is as bad. Doubting the Shah of Iran's longevity was a career-ending move in the national security apparatus thirty years ago, though it was bloody obvious he had become isolated from events on the ground.
This is a structural, not merely managerial, problem, though we'd get better intelligence with the CIA restricted to South Pacific weather intelligence (Bora Bora as opposed to Tora Bora), and on-the-street intelligence assigned to the Drug Enforcement Agency. The DEA has a decent record at infiltrating nasty foreign conspiracies. The U.S. government plain lacks an effective middle-term strategic planning apparatus and can't get one through its existing institutions, which have shown major problems dealing with multiple related crises.
The major issue here is the State Department, as it has been so captured by its foreign constituencies that it is effectively on the other side in the war on terror. Consider the following from their perspective. The Bush Administration has announced a new policy of forcibly changing governments which are not overtly at war with us, and clearly implied that some "failed states" will be turned into protectorates of, if not annexed by, our allies or us. Worse, it overtly proposes sneak attacks on such countries. If the Bush Administration doesn't meet the State Department's definition of a "rogue state", what does?
And the State Department is THE source of foreign policy expertise for the U.S. government. Such expertise really is vital for national security - consider State's unsung role in revising the international trade/financial settlement system to cope with the oil shock after the 1973 Yom Kippur War. From their viewpoint, it's their duty to deny such expertise to further the Bush Administration's putatively aggressive, illegal policies. That such policies are in our interests because we've been attacked and are at war didn't keep the State Department from absenting itself from a policy-making role in World War Two.
"The State Department played a minor role in the direction of the war for political, personal and organizational reasons. During the war, the State Department continued to believe that its function was diplomacy and that diplomacy was distinct from force..." Huntington goes on to explain how the Joint Chiefs of Staff became our de facto strategic planning organization for World War Two.
We can't afford to let that happen again. 9/11 grew directly from our failure to eliminate Saddam Hussein in 1991. "War is too important to be left to the generals." The Bush Administration has a choice here. It can do nothing, and let middle-term strategy be formulated ad hoc in reaction to new crises fomented by our enemies to complicate our dealings with current ones, i.e,, give the initiative to the enemy. Recent surges in the perennial Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and Pakistani/Al Qaeda terrorism against India, evidence this. Iran should not become another such example.
Or the Bush Administration can create a new organization for middle-term strategic planning, so we can act in fluid situations with foresight rather than in response to events. We won't have the luxury of dealing with only one crisis at a time in the war on terror. Our enemies have and will create multiple simultaneous ones. The United States has the resources to out-think them if we have the will to use it.
It is time to reorganize the national security apparatus just as domestic security is being reorganized.
