Read the article linked in the OP. Douglas Feith’s department is not in the business of making contingency plans, it’s more proactive than that.
From the Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Feith:
Democracy.
As others, I’m on record that Iran is a war in the waiting. So is Bush. Last fall, during the IAEA talks, he was quite clear in stating that he would send in the boys if Iran decided to go nuclear.
I think it’s naive to think otherwise. Iran, unlike NK, is connected to several terrorist organizations and has (in the past at least) provided safe passage for al-Qaida operatives. Bush will never let Iran go nuclear, it’s the the ultimate man-with-a-suitcase scenario. The difference is that this time it will probably be as last resort. It will require a lot of soldiers and money, but I think Bush will see this as a matter of America’s survival. The military problem is that one (or two??) of the nuclear facilities is located too deep underground for conventional bombs. The facilities are also almost out of range for Israeli fighters (from Israel that is).
To show you just how fragile the relationship is, in an episode earlier this year 500 - 1000 Iranian soldiers took control over some disputed territory at the Iraq-Iran border, in the south. US military command ordered the British to hit them and hit them hard, to basically take them out. Apparently Jack Straw himself had to intervene, acting as an intermediary between the Iranians and the White House, to prevent a major incident.
The question really is what the Iranians will do. Do they back down? Do they think US forces are too stretched out and that the world will never follow Bush into a new war? Do they wait for a a new Iraqi government possibly friendly to Teheran? Do they decide to cooperate with the US in the shadows, as they did in the aftermath of the invasion of Afghanistan? Will India and Pakistan play a part?
On what terms was the situation resolved? That is, who controls the territory now?
I don’t agree. It’s a mistake to overplay the significance of the Third Force, as the students and other young people in Iran is called. Yes, there are powerful reformdriven forces at work in Iran, on several levels, but the country will likely not collapse from within. That, btw, was the same thinking the Bush administration possessed with regards to Iraq, that democracy would flow from the fountains and the country turn into a western democracy. But it’s tradition and religion which makes up a society and even though Iran has always been a tad western-oriented they will not turn western style.
Another common mistake is to consider the Iranian reformists the good guys and the conservatives the bad guys. The difference between them is that the reformists argues the need for economic reforms (which are badly needed) while the conservatives will keep things the old way. Both factions still desire to keep Iran an Islamic state. In fact, it was the conservatives who pushed to shut down al Qaida activity in Iran after 9/11 because they regarded al Qaida at odds with Islam, while the reformists opposed it because “my enemy’s enemy is my friend”.
British Forces. A brief description of the incident:
You may have a point about Iranian reformist’s intentions but the impression I have is that there is a dissatisfaction with the religious tyranny that replaced the Shaw. I’ve watched interviews with some of the students but that certainly isn’t a representation of the general population. Prior to the revolution, Iran was highly “Westernized” so I’ve always assumed the sounds of freedom still echo to those willing to listen.
Well, of course people aren’t satisfied, I’ve seen the pictures and read the stories, but you need more than a few students to create a revolution. You need a public uprising - or the support of one of the present power-bases in the Iranian society, like the military, religious leaders, the middle class, - to name a few.
Priot to the revolution Iran was westernized, but not free. On the contrary, I would say it was worse than it is today but I guess that’s a matter of opinion.
- . . . please . . . don’t remind me . . . [hunts in vain for vomiting smiley]
Proponents of regime change in Iran will receive a respectful hearing in a post-election Bush administration.
Following the release of a report in July 2004:
“…neo-conservative ideologues who had first promoted the Iraq invasion took it as an opportunity to put regime-change in Tehran firmly onto the agenda of the next Bush administration (should it win reelection)” That’s from Time Magazine.
Neoconservative Charles Krauthammer asked whether we invaded the wrong country in July 2004:
Wave that bloody shirt Charlie!
Actually though, we must remember that war advocates will have to deal with a skeptical Colin Powell.
Oh, that’s right, he’s reportedly retiring in early 2005.
From where will the voice of reason hail?
Let us never forget that there was a time when Iran was actually on the road to democracy. The CIA put an end to that. From the Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Iran:
And we know how that story ended . . .
Indeed.
I’m wondering, if something happens, whether Syria or Iran will go first. Logically, it should be Iran because they are aiming for nukes. Syria is less anti-US than Iran (even less so than Egypt or Saudi-Arabia streetwise). Still, there’s a lot of talk about Syria, and I suspect that the way the thinking goes is that an invasion of Iran might escalate to Israel and Syria. Better then to secure the hostile area around Israel first, then look at Iran, or possibly to scare Iran to back down as a temporary solutions. But there’s no soldiers available, which begs the question: Will Israel participate in a military operation? And will Congress even allow further military expeditions?
In regards to Iran I don’t think Congress will have much choice if they are determined to develope nuclear weapons. I’ve seen several non-partisan experts lately identifying the window of opportunity as less than two years. Syria is another matter.
As for the OP, the AIPAC case has been going on for a while now. My understanding is that they are ready to prosecute, but have been holding back since it’s an election season. That Douglas Feith is in the middle of this doesn’t surprise me at all. It’s mindfreshing how the network of foreign policy “experts” from AEI and their likes are popping up all over the place these days.
“Mindfreshing”?
Play the words my friend, play the words, the robots are watching … 
Gilaki, Manzandarani, and Lurs are Persian dialects, practiced mostly by “tribals” that that aren’t particularly restive or secessionist. Turks ( Azeri and Turkmen ), while they have had their differences with the central government over internal regional issues, are more or less long time co-dominant ethnicities with the Persians, heavily intermarried and intermingled in the halls of power. The dynasty that ruled Iran preceding the Pahlavi were the Turkic Qajars, with power bases in both Azerbaijan and Khurasan in the east. They and other powerful Azeri clans counted among them some of Iran’s most prominent families ( like the Eskandaris, Moezis, Sepahabodis and others - all part of the huge and formally royal Qajar clan ) that dominated political and economic life under the Shah.
Quite frankly the reverse is far more likely. Azerbaijan has been accounted part of Persia ( but not Fars ) since Cyrus the Great conquered the Medes in 550 B.C.E…
No. The Baluchis are in fact genuinely more secessionist minded. But Pakistan, far more important to the State Department, would pitch a bitch. The Baluchi secessionists have been far more active there than in Iran.
Again they have their complaints, but the Shi’a Arabs of Khuzestan are far less oppressed in Iran than Iraq and the secessionist movement there is not strong. Further that is a very intermixed population, with Turks, Persians and Lurs/Bakhtiaris spread throughout the region and intermingled with the Arabs ( not all of whom live in Khuzestan, for that matter ). Seperating out an Arab-dominated Khuzestan would be very difficult.
Even if it were possible they’d present the potential threat of a federation with Shi’a Iraq, a destabilizing scenario.
The Lurs/Bakhtiaris are again, mostly former or current pastoralists that are more Persian than not ( in fact the Bakhtiari have been called ‘the most Iranian of the Persian tribes’, probably due to their old-fashioned pastoralist ways ), long-time members of the Persian polity. The Bakhtiari confederacy, long a dominant military force in Iran played a particularly notable role in 1911, briefly dominating the country in the name of the last Qajar Shah.
The Kurds would be the best choice to excise, but of course that only becomes viable if the Iraqi experiment disintegrates into component chunks. Otherwise an independent Iranian Kurdistan would be, again, very destabilizing.
Despite the apparent internal diversity, Iran is not Nigeria. Mostly that diversity is part of an ancient interrelated and integrated whole that is not easily partitioned.
- Tamerlane
As to Khatami and the moderate reformers:
*It is widely accepted that the reform movement as defined by the presidency of Mohammad Khatami has come to an end, but few observers are fully cognizant of the international dimensions of this failure. One of Khatami’s unassailable achievements had been his ability to communicate with the West and to attempt to remove the ‘wall of mistrust’. This singular asset was, however, dealt a fatal blow by President Bush’s decision in January 2002 to classify Iran as part of an ‘axis of evil’. Having assisted the coalition in their war in Afghanistan, many Iranians considered this unjustified, but more damagingly it provided the opportunity for Khatami’s opponents to argue that the Iranian President was as inept abroad as he had been at home. In effect it marked the beginning of the end of the dominance of the notion of constructive engagement with the West. The politics of distrust returned.
It became clear that conservatives (albeit pragmatic ones) were taking the lead in negotiating Iran’s accession to the Additional Protocol of the Nuclear Non-
Proliferation Treaty. This view that the conservatives were very much in charge and could ‘deliver’ was one which was accepted as a matter of fact by Iran’s Western interlocutors, whose own priorities had shifted to a primary focus on security. Immediate developments nevertheless appeared to augur well in so far as the additional protocols were signed in November 2003. The fact that both sides sold the signing to their respective constituents as a victory should have suggested that differing interpretations of the process were being articulated. The conservatives in Iran were very pleased to have surmounted a crisis without recourse to President Khatami, and looked forward to reaping the political benefits at home. Few could have foreseen how sweeping their triumph would be, and while moderate conservatives were discomfited by blatant manipulation of the electoral contest (the Guardian Council summarily barred some 3,000 Reformists from standing, including many sitting deputies), the reality
was that there was no contest.*
From here: http://www.riia.org/pdf/research/mep/BP0904.pdf?PHPSESSID=92ff63f04b89e1819a45becec8a7a968
Another reason I’m not voting for Bush.
- Tamerlane
Let me go on record as saying – and I earnestly hope President Kerry will have the same viewpoint – FUCK PAKISTAN! Double-fuck Pakistan in every aperture without lubricant! They’re a haven for al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and they never made any sense as a country in the first place! Let them lose their Balochistan Province to a new independent Balochistan and lose their Northwestern Province to a new independent Pashtunistan (separate from Afghanistan)! And then maybe, just maybe, if the remaining “Pakistanis” get down on their well-worn knees and open their mouths real wide and ask really really nice, India will agree to take them back! (Bangladesh, too!)
Difficult, yes. Inevitable, maybe.
A Shi’ite Arab state comprising the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, Southern Iraq, and Iranian Khuzestan would make a hell of a lot more sense than anything we’re trying to create or preserve in the Iraq the British created.
I think a united, independent Kurdistan is something that will happen sooner or later. We Americans might as well do what we can to hasten the process, even if that pisses off the Turks.
I probably don’t need to remind anyone that Pakistan has nukes.
Well, I’m not suggesting the U.S. should go to war with Pakistan – only that we should stop cozying up to them, and propose punitive sanctions to make them stop supporting terrorists and stop allowing their nuclear technology to be sold abroad, and make it known that any Balochi or Pashtun secessionist movement would have some level of U.S. support (possibly, moral support only). (What are they gonna do? It’s pointless to use nukes on a territory you’re trying to hold on to.) And we should try to patch up any damage our recent alliance with Pakistan has done to our relations with India.