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Eli Lake: Reality in Iran/Michael Ledeen: Sucker's Game

 
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 01, 2005 1:28 pm    Post subject: Eli Lake: Reality in Iran/Michael Ledeen: Sucker's Game Reply with quote

Eli Lake: Reality in Iran/Michael Ledeen: Sucker's Game

From Email Broadcast By: Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi


Reality in Iran
By ELI LAKE

http://www.nysun.com/article/23836
December 1, 2005

Earlier this week, following a story in Newsweek that America will restart talks with Iran on stabilizing Iraq, the chief of Iran's revolutionary guard gave a revealing press conference. According to Iran Press News, Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi told reporters in Tehran that America has tried since 1979 to "thwart the export of the revolution." But, he said, "the activities in Lebanon, Palestine, and present-day Iraq, as well as Islamic and freedom-seeking nations of the world proved the opposite."

Get that. The man in charge of a military devoted to the violent spread of Islamic theocracy has just said his side is winning in Iraq, not to mention Lebanon and Palestine. And America now wants to engage Iran in limited negotiations to cooperate in thwarting terrorism in Iraq. Let us pause to marvel at the wonders of foreign policy "realism."

On the same day as Mr. Safavi's tirade, a State Department spokesman explained that America's ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, had a "a very narrow mandate" dealing "specifically with issues related to Iraq." The narrowness of the Iraq portfolio is debatable, as is whether this initiative constitutes a new "mandate."

Mr. Khalilzad has been empowered for some time to discuss areas of mutual concern with Iran. He invited their envoys to the 2001 Bonn Conference on reconstruction in Afghanistan. In December 2002, he brokered talks between Iraq's opposition in London that included members of Iranian sponsored groups that are now in power. At the time, negotiations were stalled until the representatives of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq received negotiating authority from Tehran.

In 2003, Mr. Khalilzad started talks with the Iranians in Geneva, Switzerland on the subject of Iraq. At those talks he briefly considered, before rejecting, a swap of terrorists with Iran. Since assuming the ambassadorial post in Iraq, Mr. Khalilzad has had numerous back channel discussions with the Iranians on matters that far exceed the "narrow mandate" of Iraq, such as the Islamic Republic's nuclear program and negotiating position at the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Discussions alone are not necessarily appeasement. But the assumption that underlies these talks comes close. Secretary of State Rice and her predecessor, Colin Powell, have repeatedly said that Iran and Syria have an interest in stabilizing Iraq. And while it may make sense for a transparent republic to help prevent a civil war in a neighboring country, our enemies do not think like we do.

Look for example at the gruesome reports on the Iraqi Interior Ministry's constellation of secret jails, or the reporting this week that death squads comprised of Shiite Iraqi security forces are arresting and murdering Sunni Iraqi Arabs at random. Does anyone think this sort of bloodletting is not being done with the consent if not aid of Mr. Safavi's revolutionary guards?

Or consider how in 2004 at least, Muqtada al-Sadr appeared to be coordinating his attacks with Al Qaeda and the Baathists against American soldiers. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, according to Michael Ledeen and others, travels in and out of Iran frequently. And the Pentagon has warned that most of the increasingly sophisticated improvised explosive devices blowing up our soldiers in Iraq are imported from Iran.

Now all of this revolution export has been happening in Iraq despite on again, off again talks with the Iranians conducted by Mr. Khalilzad. This is not to doubt the diplomatic skills of a man who has proven his mettle under fire in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Rather it is to doubt the intentions of the Iranians.

Perhaps this time, Mr. Khalilzad could really try something new. He could widen the parameters of his new mandate. Instead of limiting talks to Iraqi security and questions having to do with the control of a border open to escaping members of Ansar al-Islam in 2003, America's ambassador in Baghdad could broach the fate of Iranian political prisoner Akbar Ganji and other dissidents.

According to Mr. Ganji's wife, Massoumeh Shafii, her husband has received death threats in jail. It would be nice of Mr. Khalilzad said publicly in earshot of Iranian reporters that not a hair on Mr. Ganji's head should be touched, or there would be hell to pay. He could follow this up by reaching out to the student groups now demonstrating again on Mr. Ganji's behalf and simply asking if there is anything America might be able to do for them.

This sort of diplomatic maneuver does not fit neatly into the "realism" of the president's new approach to Iraq. The realists will point out that there is no guarantee that support for Iranian democrats will yield regime change, let alone when this will happen. And in a sense they are right. It is next to impossible to predict the timing and success of non-violent democratic revolutions.

But the uncertainty of this strategy is preferable to what seems to be the certain failure of the diplomatic initiative Mr. Khalilzad will begin anew this week with Tehran. For nearly seven years, two presidents have tried engagement with Iran, only to leave the Islamic Republic's leaders ever more emboldened. Just ask Mr. Safavi.

______________________________________________

Sucker's Game
By MICHAEL LEDEEN
December 1, 2005

The president gave us an often brilliant assessment of the war in Iraq, along with a welcome outline of his plan for victory over the terrorists there. It was full of vision and grit, both of which have been in alarmingly short supply in what has passed for our national debate, and it paid appropriate tribute to the armed forces - ours, our Coalition allies', and the growing numbers of Iraqi soldiers - deployed against the terrorists. No doubt we are making real progress. No doubt the areas of tranquility are multiplying, as the terrorists' death toll mounts relentlessly. No doubt, as Senator Lieberman reminds us, the great majority of Iraqis see reason for hope that they will govern themselves and dominate their enemies.

But the hard, unpleasant fact remains: we are playing a sucker's game in Iraq, because we are trying to win a regional war by fighting in a single country. The president knows this. He constantly describes Iraq as one battlefield in a broader war. He knows that the terrorists in Iraq are funded, trained, armed and inspired by the tyrannical regimes of three neighboring countries, Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. He often names the first two, while finessing the third, which is both an ally and an enemy in the terror war. And he knows the one big thing: that this is a war of freedom against tyranny, and that the tyrants are waging an existential war against us in Iraq because they know that if we succeed, they are doomed to fall at the hands of their own people, who are hoping that our efforts to spread freedom will not be limited to Iraq, but will eventually embrace them as well.

That is why the president said, in Annapolis, "Freedom's victory (in Iraq) will inspire democratic reformers from Damascus to Tehran, and spread hope across a troubled region..."

Fine words indeed (although he would have done better to speak of "democratic revolutionaries," which is the correct designation; freedom will not defeat the Syrian, Saudi, and Iranian tyrants by a gradual process of reform), and they are words that cry out for action. But the president does not provide action.

He has convinced himself, and seeks to convince us, that if we stay the course in Iraq, democracy will spread to the other countries all by itself. And that is a sucker's game. Revolution has almost always required external support, it is not a natural process, it does not simply grow out of the failures of evil regimes, and it is not a spontaneous explosion of the righteous indignation of oppressed peoples. People do not have an intuitive understanding of revolution, they must learn its methods, and obtain its tools. In the great democratic revolution of our time, which has transformed the known world in ways no one foresaw back in the 1970s, when the dictatorships of Spain and Portugal gave way to peaceful revolutionary changes, the revolutionary forces have invariably had outside support.

* In Iberia, the combination of a brilliant and courageous Spanish king and a remarkable generation of political leaders ranging from Adolfo Suarez to Mario Soares, received wise council and material support from Western governments, progressive political parties and tough-minded trade union organizations.

* Throughout Latin America, military dictatorships were toppled in large part because their democratic opponents were supported by the Reagan administration (and the dictators were given harsh ultimata by Washington);

* In the Soviet Empire, with Poland the keystone of the revolutionary edifice, pro-democracy forces got money, advice, technology (such as fax machines, at the time a revolutionary device) and a steady flow of support and information from the radios of the free world, from Western governments, and from a heroic trade union network guided by Lane Kirkland and Irving Brown, and backed up by the American government.

* In recent democratic revolutions in Yugoslavia, the Ukraine, Lebanon, and Georgia, American support has been key.

Indeed, it is hard to think of a single case in which a successful democratic revolution has taken place all by itself, without an international network of support and, above all, without significant American help.

Thus, when the president speaks as if he believes that democratic revolution can succeed in the Middle East purely and simply because we defeat the terrorists in Iraq, he gainsays the lessons of the past 30 years, and demeans his own leadership by seemingly opting out of American participation in the spread of freedom. It is impossible to believe that this vision can be fulfilled. Indeed, it is more likely that, by limiting our actions to the Iraq theater, we will give our tyrannical enemies the chance to find a winning strategy that will lead to our defeat, to the triumph of the fanatical forces in Iraq, and to the consolidation of the dictatorships in Riyadh, Damascus, and Tehran.

Worse still, it is folly to believe that we can defeat the terrorists in Iraq without directly challenging the terror masters in Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia.They cannot accept such an outcome, and they will constantly raise the stakes, escalating the level of violence in the Middle East and in our own capitals. This is implicit in the very nature of the terror war, for they are not fighting for the control of a small piece of territory, but for domination of the West itself in the name of a totalitarian vision called jihad, to establish a global dictatorship called caliphate.

There is no escape from this war, which grows out of the terrorists' hatred of our success and our power. They know that our very existence threatens the legitimacy of their regimes, both those that hold sway today in the Middle East, and the dream of global domination that motivates them. We, and they, are doomed to see it through until there is a winner and a loser.

That is why, despite his fine words and his dazzling insight into the nature of the war, President Bush's strategy is not good enough. It leaves the initiative where it has been all along - in the capitals of the terror masters - instead of shifting it where it belongs - in our hands. We are making excellent progress in Iraq, and I have no doubt that the terror masters are enraged at their failure to break the will of American fighting forces, and to create a mass anti-American movement on the ground in Iraq. They had hoped to do that, and they have failed. But they must believe that they can reverse the tide, and they will find new ways to menace us and menace those Iraqis who so desperately want to be free.

Left to their own devices, the Iranians, Saudis, and Syrians will find new stratagems, no doubt hoping to win a political victory in America even if they cannot win a terror war in the Middle East. The president cannot permit them the luxury of time. He must threaten them with the revolution of their own people, who today dominate the real Islamic street.

That would be the right thing to do, even if there were no terror war, and even if the attacks of September 11, 2001, had never happened. Freeing oppressed peoples is the heart of the American mission, and it is the winning strategy in the current crisis. The president knows all this. Thus far he has failed to act on that knowledge, and his latest speech gives no reason to believe he will soon do so.

More's the pity, for us and for all those who seek their share of freedom.


Last edited by cyrus on Tue Jul 17, 2007 3:26 pm; edited 2 times in total
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 17, 2007 2:27 pm    Post subject: Iran Is Found To Be a Lair of Al Qaeda Reply with quote

From Email Broadcast By Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi wrote:


Islamist Occupiers Of Iran Is Found To Be a Lair of Al Qaeda
Intelligence Estimate Cites Two Councils


By ELI LAKE
Staff Reporter of the Sun
July 17, 2007
http://www.nysun.com/article/58507

WASHINGTON — One of two known Al Qaeda leadership councils meets regularly in eastern Iran, where the American intelligence community believes dozens of senior Al Qaeda leaders have reconstituted a good part of the terror conglomerate's senior leadership structure.

That is a consensus judgment from a final working draft of a new National Intelligence Estimate, titled "The Terrorist Threat to the U.S. Homeland," on the organization that attacked the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. The estimate, which represents the opinion of America's intelligence agencies, is now finished, and unclassified conclusions will be shared today with the public.

The classified document includes four main sections, examining how Al Qaeda in recent years has increased its capacity to stage another attack on American soil; how the organization has replenished the ranks of its top leaders; nations where Al Qaeda operates, and the status of its training camps and physical infrastructure.

The judgment that Iran has hosted Al Qaeda's senior leadership council is likely to draw some criticism from those outside the government who doubt Iran plays a significant role in bolstering Sunni jihadist terrorism. Iran 's Shiite Muslims are considered infidels by the Salafi sect of Sunnis that comprise Al Qaeda.

While there is little disagreement that a branch of Al Qaeda's leadership operates in Iran, the intelligence community diverges on the extent to which the hosting of the senior leaders represents a policy of the regime in Tehran or the rogue actions of Iran's Quds Force, the terrorist support units that report directly to Iran's supreme leader.

In the estimate's chapter on Al Qaeda's replenished senior leadership, three American intelligence sources said, there is a discussion of the eastern Iran-based Shura Majlis, a kind of consensus-building organization of top Al Qaeda figures that meets regularly to make policy and plan attacks. The New York Sun first reported in October that one of the Shura Majlis for Al Qaeda meets in the federally administered tribal areas of Pakistan , one of the areas the Pakistani army this week re-engaged after a yearlong cease-fire. Both Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, participate in those meetings.

The other Shura Majlis is believed to meet in eastern Iran in the network established after Al Qaeda was driven from Afghanistan in 2001.
Following that battle, a military planner trained in the Egyptian special forces, Saif al-Adel, fled to Iran . Mr. Zawahri then arranged with the then commander of Iran's Quds Force, Ahmad Vahidi, for safe harbor for senior leaders.

The three main Al Qaeda leaders in Iran include Mr. Adel; the organization's minister of propaganda, Suleiman Abu Ghaith, and the man who some analysts believe is the heir apparent to Mr. bin Laden — one of his sons, Saad bin Laden. The locations of the senior leaders include a military base near Tehran called Lavizan; a northern suburb of Tehran , Chalous; an important holy city, Mashod, and a border town near Afghanistan , Zabul, the draft intelligence estimate says.

In 2003, Iran offered a swap of the senior leaders in exchange for members of an Iranian opposition group on America 's list of foreign terrorist organizations, the People's Mujahadin.

That deal was scuttled after signal intercepts proved, according to American intelligence officials, that Mr. Adel was in contact with an Al Qaeda cell in Saudi Arabia .

In the aftermath of the failed deal, Al Qaeda's Iran branch has worked closely in helping to establish the group in Iraq . The late founder of Al Qaeda in Iraq , Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, had multiple meetings with Mr. Adel after 2001. In the past year, the multinational Iraq command force has intercepted at least 10 couriers with instructions from the Iran-based Shura Majlis. In addition, two senior leaders of Al Qaeda captured in 2006 have shared details of the Shura Majlis in Iran .

"We know that there were two Al Qaeda centers of gravity. After the Taliban fell, one went to Pakistan , the other fled to Iran ," Roger Cressey, a former deputy to a counterterrorism tsar, Richard Clarke, said in an interview yesterday. "The question for several years has been: What type of operational capability did each of these centers have?"

A senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and Iran expert, Vali Nasr, said he did not know that the Shura Majlis had reconstituted in eastern Iran, but he did say his Iranian contacts had confirmed recent NATO intelligence that Iran had begun shipping arms to Al Qaeda's old Afghan hosts, the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Mr. Nasr, however, said Iran 's recent entente with Al Qaeda could be simply a matter of statecraft. " Iran and Al Qaeda do not have to like one another," he said. "They can hate each other, they can kill each other, their ultimate goals may be against one another, but for the short term Iran can unleash Al Qaeda on the United States ."

Mr. Cressey said the Iranian regime's relationship with Al Qaeda is one of tolerance as opposed to command and control.

"I think the Iranians are giving these guys enough latitude to operate to give them another chit in the game of U.S.-Iranian relations," he said.

An intelligence official sympathetic to the view that it is a matter of Iranian policy to cooperate with Al Qaeda disputed the CIA and State Department view that the Quds Force is operating as a rogue force. "It is just impossible to believe that what the Quds Force does with Al Qaeda does not represent a decision of the government," the official, who asked not to be identified, said. "It's a bit like saying the directorate of operations for the CIA is not really carrying out U.S. policy."

Some intelligence reporting suggests, the source said, that the current chief of the Quds Force, General Qassem Sulamani, has met with Saad bin Laden, Mr. Adel, and Mr. Abu Ghaith.

The link between Iran and Al Qaeda is not new, in some cases. The bipartisan September 11 commission report, for example, concluded: "There is strong evidence that Iran facilitated the transit of Al Qaeda members into and out of Afghanistan before 9/11, and that some of these were future 9/11 hijackers."

According to the commission, a senior Al Qaeda coordinator, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, said eight of the September 11 hijackers went through Iran on their way to and from Afghanistan .

In 2005, both Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns and the then ambassador at large for counterterrorism, Cofer Black, disclosed that America believes that senior Al Qaeda leaders reside in Iran.
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 17, 2007 3:25 pm    Post subject: Re: Iran Is Found To Be a Lair of Al Qaeda Reply with quote

ELI LAKE wrote:


Islamist Occupiers Of Iran Is Found To Be a Lair of Al Qaeda
Intelligence Estimate Cites Two Councils


By ELI LAKE
Staff Reporter of the Sun
July 17, 2007
http://www.nysun.com/article/58507

WASHINGTON — One of two known Al Qaeda leadership councils meets regularly in eastern Iran, where the American intelligence community believes dozens of senior Al Qaeda leaders have reconstituted a good part of the terror conglomerate's senior leadership structure.

That is a consensus judgment from a final working draft of a new National Intelligence Estimate, titled "The Terrorist Threat to the U.S. Homeland," on the organization that attacked the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. The estimate, which represents the opinion of America's intelligence agencies, is now finished, and unclassified conclusions will be shared today with the public.


Any kind of relation at any level between Islamist occupiers of Iran and Al Qaeda leaders is considered crime against Iranian People National Interest and crime against humanity and those Mafia revolutionary guards and Mafia Mullahs who are involved will be punished severely by any future Free Iran elected government and if they run away from Iran Interpol and International Courts will go after them for many crimes .

With data below, these fools must know it is just matter of time the Islamist Occupiers of Iran will collapse and Iranian people are going after them one by one.

1- Assume over 95% of Iranian people are considered as Anti Tazi and the Islamist regime. The regime has no real public support (Islamist regime must go.) . The only reason the regime survive today is their control over Oil Money and ability to pay highly to their thugs and supporters (5%).
2- 10% of Iranian Army is supporting Islamist Mafia Mullahs (Tazi) and 90% are against them.
3- 30% of Revolutionary Guard is supporting Tazist
4- 50% of Militia is supporting Tazist
5- More than 80% of Iranians are pro American and they watching every move.

These fools must learn from history …

Security Forces (Police, Pasdaran and Military) who wish to survive and be respected by the people must act now for regime change and replacing it with Free society and Secular Democracy. The Iranian people have already spoken by boycotting Elections. The Armed forces must choose between defending and serving the people or serving Mullahs. This is up to armed and security forces to choose between SHAME and HONOR, serving Mullahs or their Sisters, Brothers, Fathers & Mothers who pay their salary.
To avoid war Iranian people of all ages do not have any choice other than be prepared to fight by any means to free their homeland from Viruses of Iranian society whether the armed forces serve them or serve the enemy of freedom and free society. Iranian people should be prepared for final battle for freeing their homeland from TAAZI and must not forget that their FOREVER leader Cyrus the Great died in battlefield in 530 BC at the age of 60 and not in bed.
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