Colleagues: Although the alleged Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. in a Washington restaurant seemed implausible and something from the Keystone Cops sagas given its absurdity, the evidence increasing confirms the involvement of high level Iranian authorities. In particular, the powerful Quds Force/Revolutionary Guards, according to the Obama administration, were orchestrating the plot that would have killed a number of Americans as well as the Ambassador.

Secretary of State Clinton pledged we would take action against Iran; many observers demanded action. The problem was, short of declaring war on Tehran and being prepared to employ decisive military force, there appears to be little the United States can realistically do. In addition, after the first days of astonishment, many experts began to shy away from employing any coercion or sanctions against the Iranian regime. “Was this infantile project worth war?”, many asked.

Lee Smith, writing in the NeoCon journal, the Weekly Standard, has laid out a series of strong actions the US/West should undertake, including efforts to depose the Supreme Ruler, Ayatollah Khamenei. While I sympathize with Smith here, I am not persuaded that we have identified and can effectively execute the series of realistic actions that would be needed to destabilize Iran, assist the dissidents, and even depose Khamenei. But we certainly need to keep trying–dealing with Iran will only get more difficult as time goes by and its nuclear program nears reality.

Finally, I don’t think many of us really know much about the Supreme Leader himself. Following Smith’s op-ed, I have included a biographical sketch on Ali Khamenei, whose earlier pragmatism and conciliatory approach in contentious issues left him under attack from more fervent Islamists. The Supreme Leader today has shifted significantly, however, and now espouses strong Islamist, anti-West/US, and revolutionary rhetoric. Interesting transformation!

— Ty
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/tripoli-tehran_598448.html

From Tripoli to Tehran

Lee Smith

October 31, 2011, Vol. 17, No. 07

Killing Muammar Qaddafi wasn’t easy. What President Obama said would take days wound up taking eight months. At first the administration did not seem to understand that NATO’s objective of protecting the civilians rising up against the Libyan tyrant’s 40-year rule would require capturing or killing the man who was most likely to harm them. Unfortunately, the learning curve here seems to be something of a yardstick for Washington’s understanding of the Middle Eastern state most likely to kill Americans—the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Still, we applaud the White House for at last getting Qaddafi. His execution at the hands of Libyan rebels closes a dark chapter in history, one that saw the murder of hundreds of U.S. citizens in acts of terror sponsored and directed by Qaddafi, including most spectacularly the Lockerbie bombing in 1988. Our thoughts are primarily with the family and friends of those killed by Qaddafi’s agents. The justice they have now is final and cannot be betrayed again, as it was two years ago when Libyan intelligence officer Abdel Basset al-Megrahi was released from a Scottish prison and returned home to a hero’s welcome. Later it became clear that Megrahi’s freedom was the price the British government paid for a prospective oil deal—with the cost borne by the relatives of Qaddafi’s victims.

London, to be sure, played a leading role in the NATO action against Qaddafi. But the Megrahi deal should remind us that our interests do not always align with those of our allies. The point of American leadership is not only that we lead, but that we do so for the purpose of maintaining and advancing American security, especially the protection of U.S. citizens. If this is not a priority for the British, then it is certainly not going to matter to, say, the Russians and Chinese. So why is the Obama administration wasting valuable time seeking support from Moscow and China in its efforts to isolate Iran?

When one considers Qaddafi’s career of anti-American terror, a larger and even more dangerous assault on the United States becomes ever clearer: the Islamic Republic of Iran’s decades-long war against America. Given Tehran’s efforts the last several years in Iraq and Afghanistan, the clerical regime and its Revolutionary Guards cohort are perhaps responsible for more American deaths than Qaddafi. The U.S.-led coalition against Saddam Hussein compelled Qaddafi to abandon his nuclear weapons program. The Iranians have pressed on with theirs.

The White House is rightly proud to have brought down Qaddafi without risking the lives of American ground troops. Libya, the administration believes, is a new model for projecting American power. “What we’re moving towards,” says deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes, “is a far more targeted use of force in which we apply direct power against al Qaeda and those who pose a direct threat to the United States and then galvanize collective action against global security challenges.” But that is not the way it is going to go with Iran. Instead, the United States is going to find itself in a large and destructive conflict with the Islamic Republic.

The plot to kill the Saudi ambassador in a Washington restaurant shows that the Iranians are getting bolder. The bizarre belief that the Drug Enforcement Administration, FBI, and CIA have fundamentally misconstrued the Iranian operation in its details and its provenance shows that American elites have become even more elaborate in their efforts to explain away Iranian intentions and ambitions. In effect, we’ve executed a disinformation campaign against ourselves, in which we keep saying the water that is about to come to a boil is only getting a little warmer. The Iranians, though, see it rather more clearly: The Americans have deterred themselves and will pull back even further once we’ve acquired the bomb.

Iranian aggression and American wishful thinking will bring not peace but war. Hitler was incensed with Chamberlain when the Brits finally went to war after the invasion of Poland: There was nothing in the past behavior of the allies that suggested they would ever do anything but appease the German dictator. We can imagine Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khameini will be similarly furious when we finally take action against the Iranian regime. The Americans did nothing to stop us before, they will rightly note—not when we bombed their embassy in Beirut and the Marine barracks, not in Iraq, not in Afghanistan, not when we plotted to kill the Saudi envoy regardless of American casualties in the U.S. capital.

One day soon, however, the Iranians will cross the line, and the American president will have no choice but to retaliate—even if the Iranians have the bomb. There won’t be time then for the “collective action” prized by Obama and his deputies. The time for “collective action” is now.

Collective action does not mean bringing the unmovable Russians and Chinese on board. It means going after Revolutionary Guard camps. It means destabilizing Iran’s ally Syria by creating a no-fly zone there that protects the Syrian opposition and helps bring down Bashar al-Assad. Collective action means using every possible method and tactic to destabilize the Iranian regime by working with allies inside and outside of Iran. It means doing everything possible to ensure that Ayatollah Ali Khameini, stripped of his clerical robes, is the next Middle East dictator dragged from a hole in the ground.

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Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Khamenei

Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Khamenei (born 1939) followed Ayatollah Rohollah Khomeini as supreme spiritual and political leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran. A favored Khomeini disciple, key revolutionary strategist, and innovative president, Khamenei was elected supreme leader by a Council of Islamic Experts on June 5, 1989.

Born in 1939, Sayyid Ali Khamenei was raised in a family of Islamic scholars in Meshed, a key city in northeast Iran. At 18 he began advanced religious training at Najaf, Iraq. Some sources claim that Khamenei also undertook limited paramilitary training in Palestinian camps in Lebanon and Libya. He moved to Qom, Iran, in 1958, where he became a close student of Ayatollah Khomeini. In 1963 Khamenei was involved in the massive student protests against the shah’s Western-oriented reforms. The protests were brutally crushed, and Khomeini was exiled. Khamenei continued his studies in Meshed, eventually achieving recognition as hojatolislam (“authority on Islam”), a rank only one step beneath ultimate esteem as an ayatollah.

Khamenei’s Farsi, Arabic, and Turkish language skills helped him as a literary critic and translator of works on Islamic science, history, and Western civilization. Khamenei’s own books include a study of “the role of Muslims in the liberation of India.”

Revolutionary Strategist

Khamenei’s teachings drew the wrath of the shah’s agents. Frequent arrests and three years of imprisonment were followed by a year of internal exile in the Baluchi desert region. Undaunted, Khamenei returned to Meshed in time to help orchestrate the nationwide street battles that resulted in the shah’s overthrow and the triumphant return of Khomeini in 1979.

Khamenei rose rapidly as the clerics gradually consolidated their control over the revolution. An original Revolutionary Council member, Khamenei cofounded the Islamic Republican Party, was designated the prestigious Friday prayer leader for the capital city of Tehran, and was elected to the Majlis (consultative assembly). Khamenei’s early tasks also included the ideological indoctrination of the shah’s military and the formation of the autonomous and ideologically driven Revolutionary Guards. Khamenei staunchly defended the militant students who held 52 American diplomats for 444 days (1979-1981). After Iraq invaded Iran, Khamenei was Khomeini’s first personal representative on the powerful Supreme Defense Council, from where he helped discredit then president Bani-Sadr for being inclined to accept Iraqi cease-fire offers. Khamenei viewed hard-line stands as beneficially producing a “born again” self-confidence in the Iranian people.

Khamenei was elected president on October 2, 1981, almost by default, since scores of top revolutionary clerics had been killed by bombs planted by the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (Islamic-Marxist guerrillas). Khamenei himself barely survived a tape-recorder bomb; his right arm and voice remained damaged.

Presidential Years

As president, Khamenei’s authority was significantly checked by Iran’s complicated constitutional structure. Khomeini’s original choice for prime minister, Ali-Akbar Velayati, was rejected by the Majlis in favor of the independent-minded Hussein Moussavi. Like the French system, Iran’s divided executive increasingly suffered from bureaucratic confusion and tensions. Velayati, for example, became foreign minister, but many of his deputies were morebeholden to Moussavi.

Khamenei’s policy positions did not necessarily follow his earlier hard-line reputation. In social matters Khamenei tended to advocate stern social and cultural purity. Yet, he was quick to encourage skilled Iranians to return from abroad, regardless of their fidelity to revolutionary norms. In economics Khamenei’s defense of the Bazaaris (merchants) against un-Islamic socialism clashed sharply with Moussavi’s enactment of radical land and businessreforms. When such disputes became severe, the theoretically supreme Ayatollah Khomeini tended merely to endorse such “constructive debate” and to praise the loyal service of both Moussavi and Khamenei. Though Moussavi’s measures were often vetoed by Iran’s conservative Council of Guardians, some observers viewed Khamenei’s presidency as becoming ceremonial.

Khamenei’s most significant presidential contribution was in foreign policy. As Iran struggled to break its pariah status, Khamenei launched in 1984 what became known as an “open door” policy. With Khomeini’s blessing, Khamenei transformed the “neither east nor west” revolutionary slogan away from isolationism to mean neither eastern nor western domination. “Rational, sound, and healthy relations with all countries” will help Iran meet its “needs,” he said, while aiding in the non-violent spread of Iran’s revolutionary message. Khamenei insisted that reciprocity and mutual respect were Iran’s criteria for good relations, not ideological conformity. Thus, even unconverted “Satans” like the United States could become friends.

Khamenei’s “open minded policy” was frequently denounced by radical hardliners, particularly after the revelations of covert dealings with the United States. Still, the pragmatic analyses of Khamenei and Majlis speaker Rafsanjani arguably were behind Iran’s “surprise” acceptance of a cease-fire with Iraq in August of 1988. The Salman Rushdie uproar was a subsequent setback for the pragmatists. When Khamenei suggested that the condemned author could redeem himself, Khomeini publicly reversed Khamenei, saying that Rushdie could not repent from intentional blasphemy.

Supreme Leader

Despite past controversial stands, the 49-year-old Khamenei was swiftly selected as the new supreme leader after Ayatollah Khomeini’s death by an 80-member Council of Islamic Experts. The context for Khamenei’s selection had been set by Khomeini’s demotion of his previously designated successor, Ayatollah Hossein Montazeri, for his hardline international views and brazen criticisms of postwar executions of Mujahedeen leaders. Though elevated to ayatollah status, Khamenei’s credentials were challenged by more senior Islamic clergy, including Montazeri. Yet, Khamenei’s loyalty to Khomeini and his “skills gained during eight years as president” were deemed to take “priority” over religious training.

As spiritual leader, Khamenei followed Khomeini’s tendency to seek conciliation among factions. To placate the marginalized radicals, Khamenei occasionally cautioned the powerful new president, Ali Rafsanjani, not to lose sight of revolutionary principles. Yet Khamenei’s sanctioning of careful international financing of reconstruction exemplified his continued emphasis on pragmatic needs.

No longer as immersed in policy making, Khamenei’s sermons took on the air of a detached theoretical historian. Such reasoned discourses on the unique and lasting aspects of Iran’s Islamic revolution can still be displaced by fiery rhetoric. Amidst the 1990-1991 Persian Gulf crisis, Khamenei proclaimed a “Holy War” against notions of permanent U.S. bases in Saudi Arabia, even as he supported “international” efforts to remove Iraq from Kuwait.

Kamenei continued his defiance of the U.S. during the 1990s. In a ceremony marking the sixth anniversary of the death of Khomeini, he accused Washington of interfering in the affairs of Iran, saying; “It is very clear that the government of Iran is against U.S. interests.” Anything with an American flavor came under his attack. With Khamenei’s religious ruling, both Coke and Pepsi were banned in Iran. He launched a drive to make the universities more Islamic, and to increase censorship of newspapers, books, and films. While many in the public sector had little enthusiasm for continuing the revolutionary fervor, Khamenei with an extremist viewpoint attempted to keep Iran from moderating its stance. During the 1997 elections, Khamenei’s choice for president, Ali Akbar Nateq-Noori, was defeated by Mohammed Khatami in a referendum by the general public for more freedom and liberty.