With an eye on Iran

May 23, 2007

ABC News reported yesterday that the Bush administration’s interest in regime change in Iran continues unabated.

The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert “black” operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and former officials in the intelligence community tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com.

The sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the subject, say President Bush has signed a “nonlethal presidential finding” that puts into motion a CIA plan that reportedly includes a coordinated campaign of propaganda, disinformation and manipulation of Iran’s currency and international financial transactions.

“I can’t confirm or deny whether such a program exists or whether the president signed it, but it would be consistent with an overall American approach trying to find ways to put pressure on the regime,” said Bruce Riedel, a recently retired CIA senior official who dealt with Iran and other countries in the region.

This isn’t necessarily bad news. If the administration is pursing covert actions in Iran, then the administration isn’t pursing overt military actions in Iran, at least not yet. “Vice President Cheney helped to lead the side favoring a military strike,” said former CIA official Riedel, “but I think they have come to the conclusion that a military strike has more downsides than upsides.”

That said, it’s not exactly encouraging news, either. Remind me — what’s the CIA’s track record of using covert ops to “replace” unfriendly governments?

As for the politics, the reaction in some corners to ABC News’ report is downright bizarre. Apparently, some of our friends on the right believe now that the proverbial cat is out of the bag, we might as well go to war.

As Brad Plumer noted, several conservative bloggers seem to believe, “Now that ABC News has blown the lid off the president’s secret plan to have the CIA destabilize the Iranian regime from within, the only option we have left is to take military action. Bush never wanted war, mind you, but the liberal media and those loose-lipped ‘traitors’ in the agency have left him no choice.”

Really? Really.

And here I thought the media were against war with Iran…. Ross and ABC News have purposefully undermined the non-military removal of a government that is a proud state sponsor of terrorism. If Ross and ABC News are successful in derailing covert non-military attempts to replace the Iranian government, then a military option may very well end up being our last remaining option.

If we are forced into a war because ABC News torpedoed our last, best hope at a non-military solution to the problem of Iran’s militant, expansionist, Shia Islamist government, then the resulting deaths on both sides will belong in part to ABC News executives and Brian Ross.

Even Ed Morrissey is buying into this line of thinking.

The White House intended on using this plan to keep from having to use a military option to stop the mullahs from getting their hands on a nuclear weapon. In fact, ABC reports that Dick Cheney preferred the military option, but that Bush overruled him in favor of the covert action instead. As I have written repeatedly here, a military strike is a lousy choice given the terrain, battleground, and options for targets in Iran as well as the political situation on the ground.

Thanks to the loose lips at Langley and ABC, that option may have to go back to the top of the list…. Someone in the CIA or in the larger “intelligence community” can’t keep their mouths shut. Thanks to them, we may wind up with no other option against Iranian nuclear ambitions except the military strike.

Be afraid.

On the positive side, we’ll win the game of Central Asian Destabilization tic-tac-toe. Iraq-Iran-Afghanistan.

Be afraid, Turkmenistan. Be very afraid.

  • Apparently, some of our friends on the right believe… we might as well go to war.

    This is what they always believe. War (fought by someone else) is their first option.

    The good news is that righty bloggers, for all the attention the MSM gives them, are irrelevant. They are just one of the less important bits of the wurlitzer, rattling loudly but meaninglessly.

  • To paraphrase George Tenet, if anyone thinks Dick Cheney needs to hear the words “ABC News report” to go to war against Iran, they’re crazy.

  • Well what do you expect? Diplomacy obviously hasn’t worked. And by “diplomacy” I mean “refusal to speak to the Iranians about Iran.”

  • I’m pretty sure that the neocons will also use their fabulous BS skills to argue that we will have to use nuclear weapons, because the troops are stretched so thin and because they’re in such a vulnerable position. To not use nukes would be irresponsible, they will argue. And of course Cheney knows that if we nuked Iran then all their scandals would be knocked off the front burner. He may even see it as an opportunity to finally complete the “Unitary Executive” and flush the Constitution down the toilet once and for all.

    Yeah, we’re not out of the woods yet. Our democracy is hanging by a thread, and Cheney is looking around for a knife.

  • Dick Cheney needs to go to his secure undisclosed location and stay there until Jan 2009 in time out.

    As far as blowing up Iran and trying to put the pieces back together again over a 25 year period…..yeah that’s just what we need to do. After all it is working so well in Iraq.

    But it would be the first time a decision like this has been made in history. Old maxim, goes something like this: you got a losing general not meeting his objectives, he thinks what the hell. Why not expand the war, sure more shit blows up, but there may also be an opportunity to snatch a victory out of the ensuing chaos. Hint, this does not work. Chaos begats more chaos begats more shit blowing up and if you were upside down before, you’ll be further in the hole afterwards as events spiral out of control.

  • “The kind of dealings that the Iranian Revolution Guards are going to do, in terms of purchasing nuclear and missile components, are likely to be extremely secret, and you’re going to have to work very, very hard to find them, and that’s exactly the kind of thing the CIA’s nonproliferation center and others would be expert at trying to look into,” Riedel said.

    And of course Valerie Plame was a covert agent working where…?

  • “Someone in the CIA or in the larger “intelligence community” can’t keep their mouths shut.” Sounds like Cheney

    He would consider this a huge success: “Thanks to them, we may wind up with no other option against Iranian nuclear ambitions except the military strike.”

  • Do they look around at what has become of our international reputation, our military, our exploding debt and deficit, and the attendant weaknesses at home and think, “C’mon guys, we can do worse!”

    In their screwed up minds is war with Iran really the only thing left to do? Over what exactly? The country is doing something we and dozens of others do, but we told them they better stop and they aren’t? Better kill as many of ’em as we can in the name of justice! Right away, Mr. President!

    After the 2004 elections one of the ways I dealt with the depression was to look at my son, who was then an infant, and think that he would not even be in kindergarten by the time W was finally gone from office. Now I look at him at 3 years old and wonder how old he and his baby brother will be if and when this country puts itself back in the good shape we were in heading into this century. Will it take until they are in high school? College? Will they ever see the kind of longterm peace and prosperity we had in the 1990s?

    Bring ’em on and smoke ’em out, indeed.

  • What secret CIA plan? Any intelligence analyst worth their salt would have already figured out! It’s not like the Iranians are as dumb as NeoCons or RW columnists here. They do read and have some rather intelligent people working for them.

    Did the RW blobbers just forget the ole “Axis of Evil Speech” of 2002? Ya know, Iraq, Iran and North Korea?

  • I think it’s been “common knowledge” that the US would be trying to use spy tactics to disrupt the regime in Iran. At least it’s been expected/suspected by everyone I talked to.

    So I’m ambivalent about the report because A) I think it does send a big heads-up to Iran, putting US agents at greater risk, but B) everyone already expected the US to be trying this tactic.

    As for “the cons leaked it so now their only option is military conflict”, well.. that is not only disturbing but probably spot-on.

  • So. We will be providing funds to interfere with the economy, society and government of Iran. We are doing this for two reasons:

    1. The Iranian pursuit of ‘nuclear development (and, by the by, they still have not, other than problems with inspectors, violated the Non-Proliferation Treaty), and

    2. Because they are providing funds to interfere with the economy, society and government of Iraq.

    Make Sense?

    Signed:

    Billy (a liberal, progressive, Democratic veteran)

  • So, exactly when did we become the Saudi’s unpaid mercenaries?

    Cheney must be desperate to carry out the orders received when he was ordered to report to the Saudi royal family a few months back.

    Next, hey will be telling us that Iran is the financier of Al Quaida, not the Sunni royal family.

    And the wingnuts will eat up every word.

  • Lovely. So the Iranians one-up us somewhere else. Then we one-up then one more. “I’ll call your de-stablization and raise it one embassy ‘event’ in some obscure part of the middle east….” Where will it stop?

    All it takes is one itchy finger on the trigger and we have a nightmare!

    In the meantime, my gas goes from $3.59 (just last night, of course) to $10 a gallon as the Saudis, Iranians (and Bushes) laugh all the way to the bank.

  • Hmmm…according to multiple reports (AP, Reuters, CNN), we now have two carrier groups—Stennis and Nimitz—plus Bonhomme Richard’s entire group (amphibious assault ships assigned to 17th MEF) off the Iranian coast.

    This whole thing could go “uber-ugly” real fast—and wouldn’t it make a perfect distraction for all those “little problems” that Bu$h is facing right now?

  • We already tried this crap in 1953. The CIA and Britain’s SIS overthrew Iran’s Prime Minister Mossadeq and installed the pro-western Shah of Iran in his place. Through the great wisdom and foresight of the CIA, this led to the rise of Ayatollah Kohmeini 25 years later in 1978 and the current line of anti-American leaders in Iran.

    I wonder what despot they would propose to put in charge of a new government, since the populace of Iran surely wouldn’t vote for an American puppet after a coup. Democracy surely wouldn’t do in this situation. And of course this couldn’t possibly lead to an even more anti-American government to arise in the wake of another botched Bay of Pigs, this time in the Middle East.

    Geniuses! Frickin’ geniuses!

  • I still don’t understand what the big revelation is. Don’t you think every Iranian already assumes the U.S. is trying to destabilize the government with propaganda, disinformation, and finanacial maneuverings?

  • I chuckle about the self-seriousness of the Government on this stuff. “Disrupt their financial transactions” “plant ‘disinformation'”. . . whatever.

    You would do more harm by surreptitiously handing out wireless enabled laptops with internet browsers installed, and flying nighttime airdrops of Levis, Top 100 CDs, and DVDs of American Idol.

    And I really dont mean that as a joke. When we try and make this complicated, we end up installingcronies who inadvertently broadcast anti-American materials. Remove the middleman and just jam their signals with Fuse.

  • I just hope there’s a second step in the plan- an idea of what to do next or what happens next after Iran is destabilized. Iran is a big, powerful country in the region, which means it effects a lot, and it also has apparently aggressove leaders. So destabilizing it means there are consequences- I just hope we have not, upon discovering a big monster, decided to just poke the monster with a stick over and over and see what happens. Making a plan just to look like we’re doing something isn’t a good idea- we shouldn’t go with the poke-with-a-stick operation unless we’re 100% sure we’re willing to be drawn into a war with Iran and have them lauching attacks in the region. I think that can’t be the case.

    Anyway, it’s really easy for someone with a confrontational mentality to say “we’re going to have to confront this eventually” every time they see something big and bad lying around, but, thar just might not be the case every time. If you can’t deal with the hornets’ nest but you can deal with a few hornets, it might end up being better in the long run just to not give the whole nest a reason to wake up.

  • “ABC forced us to us military force.”

    That sure is a convenient excuse. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn BushCo leaked the info themselves just so they had an excuse to say they’re non-military options are no longer valid.

  • This war may as well have started last night. Once the Democrats caved, Bush/Cheney got out their evil wishlists and started checking off things to do this week.

  • God these people are so stupid and easy to manipulate. We know what the CIA wanted us to know. “Loose lips” my ass. With the NSA wire taps etc. in place the CIA knew what these reporters were gonna say before they ever went public. What clowns these reporters are but don’t tell them, it’s top secret.

  • You would do more harm by surreptitiously handing out wireless enabled laptops with internet browsers installed, and flying nighttime airdrops of Levis, Top 100 CDs, and DVDs of American Idol.

    Comment by Zeitgeist — 5/23/2007 @ 11:38 am

    You think Iranians don’t already get this stuff? You’d only do harm to the black market in banned American goods by driving the prices down.

  • toasterhead – they have indeed been getting it, and becomng downright capitalist and cosmopolitan in the cities when Khatami was in power. but since the hardcores reassumed control, there has been a significant crackdown on trading and use of such western goods. which is why surreptitiously reminding the repressed majority there of what they had aspired to but are now blocked from, reminding them how much more information, expression, etc is out there, givingthem a way to tap into it around their government would do much more good than whatever else the CIA may have in mind. (And this goal would actually be furthered by driving black market prices down.)

  • So the war games begin.

    I like this quote:
    “This training demonstrates our commitment to security and stability in the Gulf area and our commitment to regional partners,” said Vice Admiral Kevin J. Cosgriff, commander of 5th Fleet.

    Followed by this:
    America’s Gulf Arab allies have grown increasingly uneasy with the U.S. stance against Iran, fearing an outbreak of hostilities could bring Iranian retaliation. All lie within range of Iranian missiles.

    The Gulf Cooperation Council, a loose alliance of Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, has called on members not to support any U.S. action against Iran, while Qatar and the Emirates have publicly prohibited the U.S. military from launching strikes on Iran from U.S. bases on their soil.

    Watch out…the time is drawing near…

  • OK, I have a question:

    *Can* Bush go to war with Iran without the Congress’ permission? And would the Congress give such permission, seing how well the one to use force in Iraq has worked out?

  • So, exactly when did we become the Saudi’s unpaid mercenaries?

    Uh, that would be January 2001, when W was sworn in.

  • “*Can* Bush go to war with Iran without the Congress’ permission? And would the Congress give such permission, seeing how well the one to use force in Iraq has worked out?”

    — libra

    A logical question. The illogical answer, I fear, is that Bush can do any damn thing he pleases. There’s no evidence to the contrary.

    Frankly, the sturm and drang over Iran conveniently obscures the present danger of the shaky Musharraf government in Pakistan. There, a significant, already-developed nuclear arsenal is already in place for the nearest terrorist gang to grab.

  • “but I think they have come to the conclusion that a military strike has more downsides than upsides.”

    Gee!! I wonder what made the bushies draw that conclusion..You would think they may have tried a war in this region before…wait..

  • Zeitgeist –

    Ok, good points. But it’d still be bad to have an American face on the operation, or even the appearance of a hint of an American face on it. What we should do is get China to do the airlifts for us. The goods are all manufactured there anyway, so we just cut out the middleman and save the extra shipping charges…

    • Comments are closed.