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The secretary of defense let off some steam on his airplane, warning of the terrible consequences of leaking information about internal government policy debates. He’s “appalled.” Navy Times tells us that Gates said that “disclosures of sensitive information on any ‘options under consideration’ does not serve the nation well. Nor are they in the military’s strategic interests..” When I first came to Washington, and for many years thereafter, I thought leaks were just awful. How dare they? Among other things, I thought–and this I still think–that it has a chilling effect on internal debate. Because if you’re afraid that your...

Turkish prime minister Erdogan has flown back home after a 2-day visit to Tehran. It was a big deal in all senses of the term. He went to Iran with a large delegation, including three ministers, many businessmen, leaders of Parliament, scads of reporters, and television crews. He met with Iranian Foreign Minister Mottaki, “President” Ahmadinejad, and other ministers. According to Iranians who were involved in the meetings, the two countries reached agreement on many issues, the upshot of which is a considerable tightening of the working alliance between them: –The creation of a joint airline; –The creation of a...

Speaking publicly about the role of Iran in Afghanistan--which is substantial, and about which we have considerable information--seems to be taboo for our current leaders. This is neither new nor surprising. Iranians, and Iranian-trained terrorists from organizations such as Hezbollah, have been killing Americans for years. The Bush administration, for example, had similar information about Iran's role in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and top officials did their best to suppress it. According to reporter Bob Woodward, a top State Department official knew that Iran had committed "acts of war" against our troops in Iraq and kept that information from the...

Perhaps it will help put things in context by looking at the supreme leader’s recent movements. On October 5th he went from Tehran to Now Shar, where he visited a naval base and academy. Later that day he went to the city of Chaloos, preached a sermon, delivered a speech and returned to Now Shar. On the 6th he traveled by automobile to Ramsar, a very beautiful resort city, and which is graced by a palace of the late shah. Khamenei was supposed to spend three days there, but he wasn’t feeling well, and complained of difficulty in breathing. He...

Friday evening, Mark Levin spoke with Michael Ledeen about Iran and his new book 'Accomplice to Evil: Iran and the War Against the West.' Ledeen says of the situation in Iran, "The Supreme Leader is in a coma ... When an evil man dies, it is never bad." (Audio interview plus links and evidence of Iran's involvement in 9/11 after the jump.)

I suppose it’s a tribute to the president’s tenacity, or perhaps his inability to think outside the box of conventional wisdom, but he seems to be totally unwilling to accept a Divine gift. He’s facing some terrible foreign policy decisions, decisions he doesn’t want to make, and he’s right to want to avoid them, because whichever way he tilts, it’s going to be bad for him. Take Afghanistan. McChrystal and Petreus have told him that if he doesn’t go all in, to the tune of forty thousand or so additional American fighters, he’s likely to see the war there go...

The Obama administration's talks with Iran—set to take place tomorrow in Geneva—are accompanied by an almost universally accepted misconception: that previous American administrations refused to negotiate with Iranian leaders. The truth, as Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said last October at the National Defense University, is that "every administration since 1979 has reached out to the Iranians in one way or another and all have failed." After the fall of the shah in February 1979, the Carter administration attempted to establish good relations with the revolutionary regime. We offered aid, arms and understanding. The Iranians demanded that the United States...

Somehow NRO is having some trouble posting my full reply to my friend Andy McCarthy. I’m sure it will be fixed soon, but in the meantime, here it is: Nothing is better than getting honest criticism from a serious person. It’s almost impossible to find it nowadays, and I’m very grateful to Brother Andy for his kind words and trenchant comments. Ditto to Mark. How did these lawyers learn to write so well? I thought they beat that out of you in Law School… Bush Doctrine: As I remember it, we declared war on terrorist groups and on the countries...

In the middle of the night, at 1:30 in the morning of Friday, August 14th, there was a large explosion at the monster petrochemical facility of the Iranian Pars Petrochemical Company in Bandar Assaluyeh. It is the biggest such plant in Iran, and the second largest in the whole Middle East (second only to one in Saudi Arabia). The explosion, which took place in pipes carrying Liquid Petroleum Gas (which is mostly propane), caused fires throughout the facility. It took at least three hours before the fires were brought under control. At least two persons died (fortunately, at that hour...

Michael Ledeen on Iranian regime and their belief that he is apparently the main influence behind the Iranian opposition and recent protests. (about 4 mins)

For those who wish to think clearly about Iran, there are two fundamental facts: * the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran have been at war with us ever since the overthrow of the shah in early 1979; * the savagery they have unleashed on the people of Iran is precisely what they want to do to us. The Iranian leaders and their terror instruments, from Hezbollah to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, have been killing Americans for 30 years, from the Marine barracks in Beirut in the 1980s to the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan at the moment, where...

Iran doesn’t have elections, it has circuses, and this was proven once again on Friday, when the regime announced that Ahmadinezhad had been retained–call him “landslide Mahmoud” please–as president of the Islamic Republic. So much for the remarks of various pundits claiming that Iran was some sort of “democracy.” There isn’t a single educated Iranian who thinks that the official numbers represent anything more than a brazen insult to the opponents of the regime. Supreme Leader Khamenei rubbed it in when he called the outcome “divine,” but the subtlety was no doubt lost on American commentators, who were mostly concerned...

Just doing what he’s told, I suppose. After all, he came into the Bush Administration expecting to supervise the retreat from Iraq and the Grand Bargain with Iran, only to find that the president wanted to up the ante in Iraq and challenge the mullahs on the ground. So Gates duly supported the surge, and perforce cracked down on Iranian activities in Iraq. Now comes Obama, who is all about smashing al Qaeda, and making the Grand Bargain with Iran. So Gates duly blames the upsurge in violence in Iraq on al Qaeda–thoughtfully leaving Iran out of it, although they...

“A fine mess down there, I must say. Nobody learns, ever, so far as I can tell…” It was hard to disagree, especially with one of the great experts on intelligence, the late James Jesus Angleton, once upon a time the head of CIA Counterintelligence. I wanted his take on the latest Chinese fire drill over the abridged “torture memos” that the Obama people had made public, and all the subsequent smoke and fire about possible prosecutions and/or investigations of the “guilty parties.” I’d had some repairs made to my ouija board, and had tracked him down in the great...

The president’s response to the sentencing of Roxana Saberi—eight years in prison—is a testament to the power of Iranian blackmail and Obama’s own pigheaded refusal to understand the nature of our enemies. His “disappointment” in the mullahs’ action (echoed almost to the letter by Secretary of State Clinton) suggests that he hoped, maybe even expected, something better from them. And that, in turn, demonstrates a refusal to see Iran for what it is. If I were Saberi’s Iranian-American father, I would be furious, and I would be inclined to call a press conference to say that, while it may be...

When pundits and politicians talk about “negotiating with Iran,” it conjures up an image of well-dressed statesmen sitting in elegant rooms, talking about the niceties of international relations. But this is only a part of the picture; much of the process is conducted in little hotel rooms by secret intermediaries, and they talk about very unpleasant things, such as torture and blackmail. At least one recent “breakthrough” in relations with Iran was extorted from Great Britain and the United States by an Iranian proxy group in Iraq that kidnaped five British civilians two years ago, and, in the secret negotiations...

March 22nd, 2009 President Obama has devoted a lot of time to foreign policy this past week, focusing like a laser beam on three countries that begin with the letter “I.” He gave star billing in Washington to the prime minister of Ireland (who was treated a lot better than British Prime Minister Gordon Brown), during the course of which each read the other’s prepared text, perhaps a new departure in international diplomacy. He also sent a letter to Italian President Giorgio Napolitano (a member of the now defunct Communist Party), expressing confidence that the United States and Italy would...

March 15, 2009 Winston Churchill: “An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.” They like to call themselves “realists,” but their proper name is “appeasers.” They follow in the hollow footsteps of Neville Chamberlain, who signed an agreement with Hitler, believing it signalled “peace in our time.” But it only encouraged the Fuhrer to believe that there was no will in the West to resist the onslaught of Nazi terror, and thus hastened the onset of the Second World War. As Churchill darkly told Chamberlain upon his return to London, “You were given the...

So the Attorney General thinks we’re cowards because we don’t talk about race as much as he would like. Apparently he wants us to talk about it a lot. Maybe he does, although that is not his reputation here in Washington (he’s considered a consummate professional and a true expert on jurisprudence by his peers, including many who are Republicans). I was offended by Holder’s remarks. I think they’re obnoxious, ignorant, unhelpful and inappropriate. An awful lot of Americans fought very hard for many years to defeat those who wanted to talk about race a lot. I suggest he take...

Most Americans no longer read Alexis de Tocqueville’s masterpiece, Democracy in America, about which I wrote a book (Tocqueville on American Character; from which most of the following is taken) a few years ago. What a pity! No one understood us so well, no one described our current crisis with such brutal accuracy, as Tocqueville. The economics of the current expansion of state power in America are, as I said, “fascist,” but the politics are not. We are not witnessing “American Fascism on the march.” Fascism was a war ideology and grew out of the terrible slaughter of the First...

Ever wonder where CIA gets its nutty ideas about the world? This story helps, maybe. There’s a genius with the colorful name of Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, described by AFP (French reportage alert!) as an “advisor” to CIA and DoD, who boasts a 90 percent accuracy rate on predictions based on his “gaming and computer model.” Maybe AFP means “computerized gaming model,” but hey, I’m just telling you what they say. So Monsieur Bueno de Mesquita assures us that Iran won’t actually build any bombs, that religion (and therefore religious leaders) are on the decline, and that if you just...

By MICHAEL LEDEEN Last week Iran put its own telecommunications satellite into orbit. U.S. officials in the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon were certainly right to warn that this shows that the mullahs have now mastered the technology needed to launch intercontinental ballistic missiles. But the terror masters in Tehran believe the satellite has an even greater significance -- another step toward the return of the Shiite messiah, or Mahdi, the long-vanished 12th Imam. Many Iranian leaders believe that the 12th Imam will return in the Last Days, which will be marked by global chaos and conflict,...

Iran’s always tyrannical and sometimes apocalyptic mullahs have certainly been busy of late. They’ve been spinning faster than a champion dervish, trying to convince the gullible, at home and abroad, that their Hamas proxies in Gaza won a signal victory against Israel, and that Iran was the reason for their success. Meanwhile, they’ve called for the assassination of Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak, Saudi Arabian King Abdullah, and Israeli Foreign Minister Tsipi Livni, and organized mass rallies against President Obama, complete with ritual burning of his photo. Some of it shows the regime’s comedic skills at their highest pitch, such as...

Now he’s had his first real intelligence briefing, and it was probably an eye-opener, because it’s quite a scene out there. I hope he’s got someone close to him with the wit and the nerve to tell the president-elect that the intelligence community is also a mess, and that he can be morally certain the real world is even worse than the one he’s just been briefed about. The real world is so frightening that I can’t imagine Hillary Clinton will be foolish enough to accept the job of secretary of state; anyone who takes that job is almost certain...

This is the seventieth anniversary of Kristallnacht, the night when the Nazis unleashed a wave of physical violence against German Jews and their enterprises. The name comes from the shattered glass that filled the streets of Jewish neighborhoods, and it made it crystal clear that Hitler fully intended to annihilate the Jews of Germany, and, eventually, everywhere else that he could reach. Even the New York Times, which had a very mixed record on reporting the events of the Holocaust, described it on their front page in terms that left no doubt what was going on: A wave of destruction,...

Trends October 16th, 2008 It seems to me that nobody in the MSM has pointed out the clear shift to the right throughout the West in recent months. France (Sarkozy), Italy (Berlusconi), Austria, and now Canada. Australia’s a bit of an outlier, but the new leftist government has proven centrist, a clear recognition that the Australian electorate was just tired of Howard and wanted to play with a new kid. I think the repeated failure of referenda on Europe is part of this trend. A lot of this has to do with a slow, reluctant recognition of the threat of...

Winning Hearts and Minds July 7th, 2008 Way back at the beginning of this war, and continuing through tomorrow, we have debated how to win the hearts and minds of the people of the Middle East. I have always viewed this discussion as important, but perhaps ultimately unknowable, because as Machiavelli loves to remind us, these things are all about winning and losing. The war, not the debate. During the Cold War there was an endless discussion about our enemy, just as there is today. Back then, the main question was: are we fighting a global movement (international communism), and...

Iran, Friend of the Sunni Terrorists (Surprise!) [Michael Ledeen] I guess I've been saying and writing this for more than seven years, but it's always nice to have support, especially when, as in this case, it comes from the general manager of al Arabiya TV, and a columnist in several publications in the Middle East. That is to say, not a neocon. Abdul Rahman al-Rashed states quite categorically: ...Iran, an extremist theocratic Shiite regime with Ahmadinejad at its helm, is orchestrating and funding the activities of extremist Sunnis in the region. The paradox is most striking in the case of...

Ever since World War II, we have been driven by a passionate desire to understand how mass genocide, terror states and global war came about – and how we can prevent them in the future. Above all, we have sought answers to several basic questions: Why did the West fail to see the coming of the catastrophe? Why were there so few efforts to thwart the fascist tide, and why did virtually all Western leaders, and so many Western intellectuals, treat the fascists as if they were normal political leaders, instead of the virulent revolutionaries they really were? Why did...

The Italian Revolution May 1st, 2008 We are in Italy. Sicily, actually. And we are watching something amazing: an Italian revolution. The new Parliament, sworn in yesterday, does not have a single member who calls himself “communist.” That’s the first time since World War II. Gianfranco Fini, the new speaker of the House, announced that the post-war era was over, and he was entirely right. No one knows it better than he, because for most of his adult life he has been called a “fascist,” and scorned by most of the writers, salon hangers-on, and politicians in the country, even...

The Odd Vision of the NY Times Michael Ledeen April 13, 2008 In one of its periodic seizures of narcissism, the New York Times now claims that the American government is working very hard to convince the Iraqi government that Iran is supporting terrorism inside Iraq. As if the Iraqis had not known that. But the Times goes further, arguing that until very recently, Iraqi leaders were actually pro-Iranian. This is like saying that businesses paying protection money to the Mafia are pro-Mafia. It's not only silly, but it flies in the face of recent events, which saw the Iraqi...

Talking Cure Obama’s flawed thinking. By Michael Ledeen April 10, 2008, Senator Barack Obama wants to talk to our Middle Eastern enemies, notably Iran. He can’t imagine a happy resolution of the war without such talks. And he seems to think this desire is something new, maybe even revolutionary. He apparently does not know that it is not at all new, and certainly not revolutionary. It is instead the fully tested “policy” of the United States for the past thirty years, ever since the seizure of power by the mullahs in 1979. We have had high-level and low-level talks, public...

Senator Barack Obama wants to talk to our Middle Eastern enemies, notably Iran. He can’t imagine a happy resolution of the war without such talks. And he seems to think this desire is something new, maybe even revolutionary. He apparently does not know that it is not at all new, and certainly not revolutionary. It is instead the fully tested “policy” of the United States for the past thirty years, ever since the seizure of power by the mullahs in 1979. We have had high-level and low-level talks, public and private talks, talks conducted by diplomats, by spooks, and by...

The Continuing Iran-American War April 5, 2008 Those many pundits and politicians who have insisted on talking about “civil war” in Iraq imagined a sectarian clash, Sunni against Shi’ite, not the recent sort of conflict of radical Shi’ite militias against government troops and police. Meanwhile, on the other side of the sectarian divide, Sunni tribesmen banded together to defeat Sunni terrorists from al Qaeda in Anbar Province, again a seemingly counter-intuitive event. Sunnis and Shi’ites are fighting enemies of their own sects, not one another. What is one to make of it? A big clue to understanding this apparent mystery...

Khamenei is Shooting Craps... Michael Ledeen March 27, 2008 The Shi’ites are killing one another all over Iraq, most notably in Basra. Jules Crittendon, as always, has a fine roundup of the (mis)coverage from the MSM, delivers all the right insults (I particularly enjoyed watching the back of his hand slap the unctious Tony Cordesman) and asks all the right questions. What kicked this off? Who’s fighting whom? Who’s gonna win? Is it good for us or bad for us? The best way to understand these events is to take one little step back, and note that our people are...

Magdi, Ayaan, Salman, and Us. Michael Ledeen March 23, 2008 My friend Magdi Allam, the deputy editor of the Italian newspaper il Corriere della Sera, has converted from Islam to Catholicism and was baptized the night before Easter in a service conducted by the pope in St. Peter’s in Rome. It’s a courageous act, but then Magdi Allam is a brave man. His outspoken criticism of Italian Muslim radicals–especially their support for the Muslim Brotherhood and for Hamas–had already produced threats to his life several years ago, and, ever since, the Italian Government has protected him, his home, and his...

The Circus Is in Tehran Search for meaning in non-elections. March 20, 2008 By Michael Ledeen There were no elections in Iran last Friday, whatever you may read. The “turnout” was shockingly low, even by past standards, as is demonstrated by the obvious panic in Tehran, where the mullahs kept the polls open an extra five hours. This was not, as they said, to make sure the patriotic citizens of the capital could drop their ballots in the box, but because they had to bus the reluctant faithful and the subservient government employees to the election offices, so as to...

Tehran University Demonstrations Michael Ledeen Here is an account of the anti-regime demonstrations in Tehran last week, written by a democracy activist on the ground. I don't know if they have entirely stopped yet. Please note the last lines, the plea that the rest of the world report these events and pay attention to the cause of Iranian people, workers, students, and women. I so wish I had a government that did that, or a candidate who spoke out on their behalf. Here you go: Sunday, Jan. 27, was marked by the third day of protest by Tehran University students...

Vindicating Larry Franklin ELI LAKE January 16, 2007 When President Bush announced the new Iraq strategy Wednesday evening, acknowledging that Iran was effectively at war with us in Iraq by supplying terrorists with advanced improvised explosives, my thoughts turned to Lawrence Franklin. Nearly a year ago, Judge T.S. Ellis III, sentenced this Pentagon Iran analyst to almost 13 years in a federal prison after he pleaded guilty to discussing classified information with two former lobbyists from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. The case, which is thus far the Bush administration's only successful anti-leaking prosecution, illustrates the strategic confusion of...

The Straits of Hormuz January 9, 2008 So now the Iranians have denied “buzzing” American warships. No surprise there; the mullahs always deny any aggressive acts, even when they are caught red-handed. They deny arming, training and guiding terrorists in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon. They deny EVER carrying out belligerent acts, even though their armed forces, in uniform, attempted to capture American Special Forces in Iraq in September, 2006. And on and on. The most surprising thing about the Straits of Hormuz event is that anyone is surprised. After all, they’ve been attacking us for nearly 30 years. But that...

At the Foggy Bottom of the Iraq Story December 27, 2007 Michael A. Ledeen The Washington Post provided a luminously clear picture last week of the ongoing, enormously important, battle over the "meaning" of events in the Middle East war, including its own efforts. On Wednesday, December 19 tucked away on the fourteenth page of the front sections, the Post reported the Pentagon's analysis of the recent stunning decrease in attacks against Coalition Forces and Iraqis. Did it mean that Iran--widely viewed as a prime mover in support of terrorist groups in Iraq--had voluntarily cut back on its aggressive role...

The Chinese Economy Hoax and Other Economists' Fables Michael Ledeen A few years ago, when I was a member of something called “The U.S.-China Strategic Review Commission” (or so I remember it), we issued reports on China’s economy, military strategy, and political situation. In each of the first two such reports (I left the Commission before the third came out, and confess that I haven’t kept up with them) we took pains to state that the “official” data issued by the Chinese Government were totally unreliable. Indeed, we stated explicitly that the numbers were simply made up. Now the World...

October 25, 2007, 7:45 a.m. Red Army DreamsYou’re getting colder. By Michael Ledeen If you were Vladimir Putin, what would you think of Iran? You’d worry a lot about it, that’s what. Your own Russia is losing Russians, due to the usual grim demography that characterizes most of Europe. And, like the others, you’ve got a Muslim problem, with surging birthrates both within Russia and all along its borders, from Chechnya to the ‘stans. Lots of those Muslims are under Iranian sway. You know that well, having been trained in, and elevated by, the KGB, which was horrified to...

Why Did Larijani Resign? October 22, 2007 National Review Online Michael Ledeen The mullahologists are all atwitter over the “meaning” of the surprise resignation of one of Iran’s most public officials, chief nuclear negotiator and national-security council chief Ali Larijani. It must mean something, mustn’t it? This is a major figure in the Islamic Republic, who has long harbored presidential ambitions, and has played a key role in some of the regime’s most important policies. He was minister of culture, then head of state broadcasting, then secretary of the Supreme National Security Council. If such a powerful figure steps down...

Dennis Prager show Sep 12, 2007 Half hour interview of Michael Ledeen about Iran. **The single most important thing is for the President and Secretary of State to stand up and say that we are in favor of regime change in Iran. Also - Ledeen says we need to provide: * strike funds for Iranian workers * technological support - laptops, phones, etc so Iranians can communicate with one another and us without censorship and jamming by the regime * we need to broadcast on radio (VOA, etc) as we have done in past with soviets and other countries,: 1)How...

'The Iranian Time Bomb' September 07, 2007 WSJ Book Excerpt Chapter One: The Torture Masters - "At the very least, you could have given me a glass of water. Animals are slaughtered more humanely than this." --Atefeh Rajabi, sixteen years of age, about to be hanged for "adultery," August 15, 2004 "Absolutely, we do have political prisoners. There are those who are in prison for their beliefs." --"Reformist" president Mohammed Khatami, April 28, 2004 In the months following his successful revolution against the shah, the Ayatollah Khomeini consolidated his domestic power through the use of four basic techniques: –The first,...

Tick, Tock, Michael Ledeen on The Iranian Time Bomb September 05, 2007 National Review Online An NRO Q&A Most people…do not realize that, for nearly thirty years, the Iranians continuously attacked us, and, aside from some harsh rhetoric from time to time, we never responded.” So writes NRO contributor and American Enterprise Institute scholar Michael Ledeen in his new book The Iranian Time Bomb. The book is an analysis of Iran’s ongoing war with “the Great Satan” and a blueprint for finally fighting back. Ledeen took a few questions on the book and the current scene from National Review Online...

The Iranian Time Bomb - The Mullah Zealots' Quest for Destruction By Michael A. Ledeen The first salvo was the attack on the American Embassy in Tehran in the fall of 1979, leading to the seizure of American hostages, a crisis that lasted 444 days. The war continued with the assassination of American diplomats and military personnel in Europe and North Africa. The latest fronts in that war are in Afghanistan, Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq. Iran arms, funds, trains, and directs a variety of terror groups, numbering tens of thousands of terrorists, regardless of their religious or ethnic makeup. It...

Biden and Hagel...in 2002 Every U.S. Senator believes he or she should be president. Just listen to them talk, and watch the way they walk; it?s obvious. They?re rarely called to account, but every now and then they write something, and it goes into the record, and then someone googles it out. So take a look at this very statesmanlike op-ed that Biden and Hagel wrote four and a half years ago. Notice they had no clue what would happen after the overthrow of Saddam. Notice that they bought into the Saudi view of life, namely that nothing of merit...

Just Like the Mullahs Taking hostages is just standard operating procedure for Iran. March 27, 2007 National Review Online Michael Ledeen The deep thinkers now torturing themselves for an explanation of the Iranian seizure of 15 British hostages should reread the ancient wisdom contained in the fable of the scorpion and the crocodile. The scorpion is desperate to cross the river, but can?t swim, so he begs the croc to give him a ride. The croc is afraid the scorpion will sting him. The scorpion promises he won?t. The croc gives him the ride. As they get to the far...