Michael Ledeen Article on Iran By Donnel Jones, May 15, 2003

Michael Ledeen, writing for the National Review, has warned us repeatedly about the ruling theocracy in Iran. There is so much to lose in ignoring this most dangerous of the Muslim terrorist nations. Like Iraq, it is a strategic target in the war against terrorism. Now that Saddam is gone it remains for Iran to have a regime change as well as Syria. Iran is the big brother of Syria so the removal of its Islamist regime will spell doom for Bashar Assad and his gang just as the fall of Saddam is a death foretold for Iran's mullahs.

There's a certain elegance to Ledeen's reasoning and by no means is it his alone. That reasoning states that Iraq, Iran, and Syria are three hard-core terrorist states which have interacted with, and supported, each other. Remove one and the other two get much weaker. Remove the second and the third doesn't have a chance. One could argue that such elegance is simplistic (the French certainly would) and that so many things could happen to snafu the project. But the plan here has empirical elements in that there is plenty of evidence to show just how dangerous Iran and Syria are. Surely "wings of a feather" holds true for terrorists countries as well. It's a demonic boy's club and it's time we bust up this bunch.

A nice touch to this plan is that American military intervention should not be required to bring change in Iran. The fall of the theocracy in Iran could, and should, happen from within.

As Ledeen puts it: Many Iran watchers believe that it is only a matter of time before the Iranian people rise up against their oppressors, and it could well begin on July 9, the date set by the student movement for a national strike against the regime.

This also means the terror-sponsoring neighbor to Iraq will pose a grave danger to the U.S. reconstruction efforts. The last thing the Iranian mullahs want is a terror-free Iraq.

Faced with American forces and expanding freedoms in both Iraq and Afghanistan, the mullahs have decided to go all-out to drive the United States out of Iraq, and convert that country into an Islamic Republic.

But the State Department sees things differently: . . . a few weeks earlier, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage proclaimed Iran "a democracy," . . . .

This is not simply a misunderstanding on the part of Armitage, or a fine parsing of esoteric foreign affairs. It is outright delinquent. Anyone who knows anything about Iran, if not about the entire Middle East, is that it is not a democracy by any stretch of the imagination.

It's time for the Bush Administration to rein in Armitage and other elements that favor appeasement of the Iranian mullahs.