Realpolitik Persian Style
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In The Crisis of Islam, renowned Middle East expert and scholar Bernard Lewis writes, "Unlike revolutionary France and Russia, revolutionary Iran lacks the means, the resources, and the skills to become a major world power and threat".
Robert Baer, not an academician but rather a former CIA operative, takes a very different view in The Devil We Know, writing, "What it comes down to is this: Iran is the most powerful and stable country in the Middle East - a country the United States must either fight in a new thirty-year war or come to terms with".
If the Neocons advising the President in the run up to the Iraq war had placed less emphasis on Lewis' theory and more on Baer's practice, the outcome of events there might have been quite different.
The portrait that Baer paints of Iran flies in the face of conventional wisdom.
He writes, for example, that "Iran is not a totalitarian state run by `Islamofascists' who believe they're in some quixotic war with the West and Western civilization. President Ahmadinejad is not intent on starting World War III; he's a figurehead no more able to take Iran to war than Joseph McCarthy was able to take America to war against Communism. Iran's real leaders are rational, pragmatic, and calculating".
The Iranian goals are those of an imperial superpower. They include the following:
* Dominion over surrounding countries either directly or through proxies such as Hamas and Hezbollah;
* A position of dominance in energy markets through control of shipping corridors (strategic pipelines and the Straights of Hormuz) and managing the extraction of its own reserves as well as those of Iraq and other neighboring countries;
* Control of Mecca and Medina, perhaps through a joint administration with Saudi Arabia;
* Recognition, the respect due a superpower, and internal security.
Baer argues that the Iranians are well on the way to achieving these goals, and, again contrary to conventional wisdom, that they do not need nuclear weapons to do so. In fact, one of the books more interesting chapters is entitled "Lethal and Elusive: Why Iran's Weapons and Tactics Make It Unconquerable - Even Without Nukes". In it he describes the military capabilities used by Hezbollah to deliver Israel its first ever military defeat in the Lebanese conflict of 2006. Baer places great emphasis on this writing, "There's a good argument that Iran's modernization of guerilla warfare is a military development as important as the introduction of the machine gun was to World War I or the tank to World War II".
The Iran that is described in The Devil We Know is significantly more dangerous than the caricature that most Americans have espoused. Baer argues that ultimately we will be forced to settle with the mullahs since we surely won't be able to prevail against them.
Sobering, but important material...
"Divide and Conquer"
Customer Rating: This is a Masterful Deception book attempting to convince the readers that "Iran is coming, Iran is coming! All the horrific crimes the Bush government has done are blamed on Iran in one way or other. At the same time the Muslims are being convinced that they should get ready to flight against Iran. The Iraq's tragedy is always someone else's fault, but largely the making of elusive terrorists, whose identities and sources of funds has all come from Iran. These kinds of lies are not even told by the Washing. According to the Bush PR folks the insurgents change according to whatever Washington's political mood dictates. The insurgents, as they were called until recently, were initially remnants of and Ba'ath Party loyalists, disgruntled Sunnis, then they morphed into foreign Arab fighters, then they were depicted as al-Qaeda sympathizers, copy-cats, then al-Qaeda itself with an Iraqi leader, then Iranian agents in cahoots with rogue Shiate militants loyal to whatever character doesn't suit the interests of the US and its allies. New characters were occasionally added to the Green Zone's ever predictable play, unwanted characters were swiftly removed, and the play's language was repeatedly rewritten. This book is filled with lies, deceit, and "divide and conquer" ploys. What one would except from an Ex-CIA man?
