Document Text Content
From: Jeffrey Epstein [jeeyacation@gmail.com]
Sent: 2/15/2013 4:52:58 PM
To: Larry Summers
take-it-or-leave-it deal by the U.S. on the
nuclear issue is the wrong strategy
Ray Takeyh
February 14, 2013 -- On Feb. 26, the United States and Iran will once
more resume their diplomatic ritual, in the so-called six-party talks, over
Iran's disputed nuclear program. As the two perennial adversaries eye one
another, there are competing paradigms about how to deal with Tehran.
An emerging school of thought suggests that the best means of "testing"
Iran is to offer it a final nuclear agreement that presumably promises
measurable relief from sanctions for significant Iranian concessions. Iran's
failure to grasp such an offer would then conclusively demonstrate to both
domestic and international audiences that the cause of the impasse is not
American belligerence but Iranian truculence.
But this approach fails to recognize that an arms-control process is
necessarily an incremental one, nor does it offer a practical substitute to
the existing step-by-step diplomacy.
Iran's nuclear program encompasses a vast complex of enrichment
facilities, centrifuge construction plants, uranium extraction companies
and thousands of scientists working in university and government
laboratories. Iran is enriching uranium at both 5% and 20% levels,
experimenting with high-velocity centrifuges and seemingly in the process
of constructing additional enrichment facilities.
Such a multilayered, multifaceted program can be dealt with only on a
piecemeal basis, as the technical details and rules for inspections are too
complex to be addressed in a single agreement.
Moreover, should the United States offer Iran a final deal, Tehran still has
a right to contest and negotiate its provisions and offer counterproposals.
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 018197
The international community is unlikely to concede to either more
sanctions or the use of force until Iran's objections are taken into full
consideration. As such, a grand deal that is supposed to provoke a moment
of clarity is likely to be enmeshed in the existing, protracted arms-control
process.
Another complication is the advent of public opinion and critical
constituencies in Iran devoted to the perpetuation of the program. The
growing public sentiment is that Iran has a right to acquire a nuclear
capability. As the program matures, it is becoming a source of pride for a
citizenry accustomed to the revolution's setbacks and failures.
Also emerging is a bureaucratic and scientific establishment with its own
parochial considerations for sustaining the nuclear investment. A clerical
leadership that is dealing with a restive population and empowered
security services cannot easily dispense with its nuclear trump card.
All this suggests that the best means of addressing Iran's nuclear challenge
is to mitigate its most dangerous dimensions. The focus should remain on
Iran's high-grade enrichment and its underground nuclear facility nestled
in mountains outside Qom. Tehran seems to have conceived an ingenious
path to nuclear advancement, one that involves increasing the size and
sophistication of its civilian atomic apparatus to the point where it can
quickly surge into a bomb. While staying within the rules of the
International Atomic Energy Agency's inspection process, Iran is
essentially expanding its capabilities while shielding them under the
veneer of legality. Given the fact that much of civilian nuclear technology
can easily be misappropriated for military purposes, Iran can construct an
elaborate nuclear infrastructure while remaining within IAEA guidelines.
The diplomatic challenge is to derail this path to a nuclear weapon by
imposing significant restraints on its program. And this can still be done
through a process that proceeds incrementally and sequentially.
U.S. officials would be wise to get out of the crisis mode and put some
time back on the clock. The Iran issue always seems urgent, and yet
somehow there is always time to deal with it. Washington should
acknowledge the obvious, namely, that given Iran's gradualist approach, it
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 018198
is still years from completing an efficient enrichment infrastructure,
constructing a nuclear arsenal and developing a reliable means of delivery.
By agreeing to a compressed timeline, the U.S. only narrows its options
and makes a solution even more elusive.
As the United States again contemplates its Iran conundrum, it should
eschew calls for a take-it-or-leave-it deal. The history of Iran's
confrontation with the international community suggests that keeping it a
crisis situation benefits the Islamic Republic. Ironically, it is the Western
powers that have generated alarmist conditions. And then to escape the
predicament of their own making, they offer Iran more concessions and
further incentives.
To avoid a repeat of that outcome, it would be prudent to have a sense of
proportionality and appreciate that, in the end, time works best for the
United States and not the economically beleaguered theocracy.
Ray Takeyh is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Article 2.
The Guardian
Whether it's North Korea or Iran, sanctions
won't work
Simon Jenkins
13 February 2013 -- Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinej ad. 'Threats
and sanctions have not weakened the regime's determination to proceed
[with nuclear weapons], but rather weakened opposition to it'. Photograph:
Sven Hoppe/EPA
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 018199
North Korea has set off a third nuclear test explosion. It has done so in
defiance of the UN, America, Japan and even, reportedly, its sponsor,
China. It has said to hell with everyone, in a brutal comment on western
economic sanctions.
The UN security council met yesterday and Washington threatened
"significant consequences" — code nowadays for "tighter sanctions". Every
shred of evidence suggests that these will not achieve the declared goal.
They will merely add to the impoverishment of North Korea's people by
its own government. Sanctions are the most counter-productive tool
known to diplomacy. Yet we keep imposing them. Why?
Sanctions assume that all countries react to external pressure as might a
capitalist democracy. They assume a misguided regime will change its
mind and put financial advantage above its definition of national interest.
"Smart sanctions" (really dumb sanctions) further assume the rich can be
punished without punishing the poor, and that all dictators' wives want to
fly abroad and shop at Harrods. They assume that trade guides political
action and political action trumps dictatorship.
Economic sanctions are hugely popular to western politicians, not because
of their effect but because of their cause: the desire to stand on an
international stage and being seen to "do something". They are the least-
cost first resort of the laptop bombardiers of global intervention. They
sound punitive and aggressive without inflicting any hardship on the
imposer.
After North Korea the other target in the sanctions frame is Iran.
Everything at present suggests that ever-tighter sanctions have done
nothing to curb Iran's nuclear programme. Indeed, by inducing paranoia,
probably the reverse. Sanctions have certainly "bitten", to the glee of their
advocates. They have brought inflation and a collapse in the currency, the
rial. They have harmed ordinary people and solidified sentiment against
the west and the "great Satan" of the US. Assassination and cyber-
weapons have wiped out a few scientists and scrambled a few computers.
What sanctions have not done is weakened the power of the ayatollahs or
their private army, the Revolutionary Guards. Both seem as secure as ever,
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 018200
while (relatively) moderate civilian politicians are reduced to feuding and
arresting each others' children. Iran's nuclear programme appears to
proceed independent even of the organs of its own state.
A spoof article in the Economist last year portrayed Iran's supreme leader,
Ayatollah Khamenei, ruminating on western nations' obsessive posturing
towards his country. He mused that these were unstable, unreliable places,
dangerous though probably not all mad. But since it was hard to be sure, "I
would feel a lot safer if we already had that bomb". Similar insecurity
drove sanctioned Cuba to accept Russian missiles in the 1960s, and
sanctioned Iraq and Libya to pretend to build weapons of mass destruction
in the 1990s.
Sanctions never stop bad things happening. Rather they entrench dictators,
build up siege economies and debilitate the urban middle class from which
opposition to dictatorship grows. As Khamenei said in a speech a year
ago, sanctions were "painful ... but make us more self-reliant". Indeed, for
a regime to be sanctioned is to receive an elixir: witness Castro, Gaddafi,
the ayatollahs and the ruling cliques of Burma, Afghanistan and North
Korea. That sanctioned regimes sometimes come to an end is not proof
that sanctions work, rather that they take a long time and usually require
war to "work".
This is a rarely researched topic because sanctions are diplomatic ideology
rather than science. A debate in 1998 in International Security magazine
saw the Chicago academic, Robert Pape, barely challenged in his view
that only around five of the 115 cases of sanctions imposed since the war
could claim any plausible efficacy. Most merely inflicted "significant
human costs on the populations of target states, including on innocent
civilians who have little influence on their government's behaviour". They
are a ready invitation to war.
When I was reporting on South Africa in the 1980s I became convinced
that sanctions were aiding import substitution and benefiting the Afrikaner
economy, probably giving apartheid an extra decade of life. They likewise
prolonged Ian Smith's regime in Rhodesia. Sanctions made Libya's
Gaddafi so rich he could spoon money into the London School of
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 018201
Economics. They made Saddam Hussein one of the 10 wealthiest people
in the world. Besides, sanctions create sanctions-busting which, like drugs,
is a global criminal industry born entirely of the idiocy of western
diplomacy.
A year ago the Foreign Office defended yet another round of sanctions
against Tehran on the grounds they would "hasten Iran's economic
collapse and deepen rifts within the regime, in the hope that saner voices
will deem the price of pursuing nuclear weapons too high". Economies
don't collapse, any more than poverty changes governments. Even Greece,
now the most "sanctioned" nation in Europe, has not collapsed. Places just
get poorer. As for "saner voices", they go into exile, hiding or prison.
That's where sanctions send them.
Iran is a proud nation of 80 million mostly Muslim people, one of many
Asian and African states struggling between theocracy and democracy,
tradition and modernity. These are agonising struggles among and within
peoples, to which the west has contributed nothing but hostility and
belligerence. Under the cloak of "counter-terror", it has been as crass as it
was during the Crusades. Of course no one wants to see nuclear weapons
spread. Russia tried to stop China getting them. China tried to stop North
Korea. The west tried to stop India and Pakistan, while hypocritically
tolerating Israel and the replenished arsenals of France and Britain. No
pressure made the slightest difference to anyone.
If Iran really wants a nuclear weapon, it will get one — the more so when it
is threatened with dire retribution if it does. That is how such states react
to pressure. Ever since the dodgy election of 2009, threats and sanctions
have not weakened the regime's determination to proceed, but rather
weakened opposition to it. If ever there was a country unlikely to respond
to diplomatic bullying, it is Iran. If ever there was a country that might
respond to constructive engagement, to commercial, governmental and
cultural intercourse, it is also Iran. Why the west should want to make it
another North Korea passes comprehension.
Article 3.
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 018202
The Washington Institute
Year of Decision: U.S. Policy toward Iran in
2013
James F. Jeffrey and Thomas Pickering
February 12, 2013 -- On February 7, 2013, James F. Jeffrey and Thomas
Pickering addressed a Policy Forum at The Washington Institute.
Ambassador Jeffrey, a former assistant to the president and deputy
national security advisor, is author of the new Institute study Moving to
Decision: U.S. Policy toward Iran. Ambassador Pickering served in
numerous key posts at home and abroad over a five-decade career,
including undersecretary of state for political affairs. The following is a
rapporteur's summary of their remarks.
JAMES F. JEFFREY
The move to decision on Iran is the most pressing and dangerous issue on
the U.S. and international agenda in 2013. The year ahead will largely
define the longstanding struggle between Washington and Tehran, and the
considerable stakes involved make it absolutely crucial that a swift and
decisive resolution be achieved. Regardless of the outcome of the nuclear
issue, however, Iran will continue to present a long-term challenge to the
United States because of clashing ideologies, conflicting foreign policy
goals, and Iran's claim to regional hegemony.
There are four likely outcomes to the nuclear issue: a unilateral Iranian
decision to halt or dramatically slow its progress toward a nuclear weapon;
a negotiated outcome, whether through the P5+1 (i.e., the five permanent
members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) or bilateral
negotiations; a military strike, as threatened by President Obama and
Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and an explicit or implicit
shift to containment, indicating that Washington would be prepared to
coexist with a nuclear-armed Iran.
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 018203
The most effective resolution would be a negotiated outcome -- to achieve
it, Washington will need to take preliminary steps on several fronts. A
serious compromise needs to be put on the table, including an offer to
suspend crippling oil sanctions in return for specific, verifiable Iranian
steps to eliminate any nuclear breakout capabilities. Equally significant is
establishing a credible military threat, given that Tehran has been willing
to endure increasing economic pressure in order to continue its nuclear
program. The regime is unlikely to concede anything during negotiations
if it does not believe that Washington will actually follow through on such
threats. Although specific public redlines are often unpalatable, the Obama
administration must clarify internally when it would take military steps,
and these intentions must be made clear to the Iranians.
In the same vein, the military option requires a credible negotiating
complement, as seen in the early 1990s with Iraq. To legitimize military
action against Saddam Hussein's regime, Washington had to prove that all
other options had been exhausted. Similarly, the only way to set the
predicate for military action against Iran is to show the regime and the
international community that everything has been tried, and that
Washington has left Tehran with a way out. Failure to do so would
undermine the legitimacy of any strikes.
It is also important to understand that curtailing Iran's nuclear progress
will not by itself alter the regime's regional agenda -- nuclear ambitions
are but an extension of Tehran's wider aspirations toward hegemony in the
Middle East. Unfortunately, none of the longer-term proposals for
addressing that issue seem feasible at the moment (e.g., regime change by
internal or external means; a shift in Tehran's views on the Supreme
Leader and succession; a "grand deal" between Washington, Iran, and the
international community).
One lesson to be learned from past interactions with Tehran (or lack
thereof) is that when the United States proactively opposes Iranian
aggression in the Middle East, the regime relents, but when Washington
offers a more passive response, Iranian aggression increases. With respect
to Syria, for example, it cannot be assumed that Bashar al-Assad will fall
at all, let alone quickly, without active U.S. engagement. If the Assad
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 018204
regime does in fact survive, Iran would become increasingly emboldened,
with potentially disastrous consequences for the United States and its
allies and interests in the Middle East.
Denuding U.S. forces in the region to enable a pivot to Asia is also risky.
Nowhere else in the world is America more likely to deploy forces than in
the Persian Gulf in opposition to Iran, and nowhere else is it of utmost
importance that any potential confrontation be won decisively in the next
five to ten years than with the Islamic Republic.
Going forward, Washington must discriminate between Iranian behaviors
it considers unacceptable -- such as support for terrorism, hegemonic
ambitions, and progress toward nuclear weapons -- and those it can
tolerate. U.S. officials could open the door for negotiations by making
clear to Tehran that they do not seek regime change; the first step in that
regard would be to let Iran know that Washington respects it as a nation-
state and not a transnational revolutionary movement.
Finally, disorganization within the U.S. government and a "go it alone"
mentality have accounted for many of Washington's internal difficulties in
responding to the Iranian challenge. To alleviate this problem, all cabinet-
level officials must be in constant and complete coordination, devoid of
routine bureaucratic obstacles. In addition, the appointment of a senior
subcabinet official whose sole responsibility is Iran (or, alternatively, a
small group of officials in constant coordination) could allow the
administration to reorganize bureaucratically in preparation for this year of
decision.
THOMAS PICKERING
Discussions of containment policy typically imply accepting the Islamic
Republic as an inevitable nuclear power and using deterrence to deal with
a nuclear-armed Iran. Yet such an outcome would be disastrous for U.S.
nonproliferation policy, which is based on the notion that fewer nuclear
states means less chance of miscalculated use. If Iran attains a nuclear
weapon, other regional powers would likely follow suit -- clearly an
undesirable outcome for the international community.
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 018205
At the other end of the spectrum, using military means in the short term to
guarantee prevention would entail a vast use of force -- essentially an
unofficial, semipermanent occupation of Iran. This is not a viable path,
particularly since other diplomatic possibilities have not yet been
exhausted.
Similarly, sanctions, while effective, are not sufficient by themselves.
They must be intertwined with negotiations -- as Washington and its allies
increase the pressure, cohesive and meaningful talks with equivalent
concessions should follow suit. Some have argued that negotiations should
expand to a "big for big" format, but decades of mistrust between the
United States and Iran make smaller deals more practical. Such an
approach would have to focus on ending Iran's most problematic
enrichment activity: processing uranium to the 20 percent threshold, which
makes the leap to weapons-grade material much easier. Instead, the regime
could limit itself to 5 percent enrichment, and under strict supervision by
the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The intelligence community widely believes that although Iran has not yet
decided to make a nuclear weapon, it is still moving to acquire all the
necessary capabilities in case it chooses that path. Accordingly,
Washington will need to obtain a concrete Iranian commitment to convert
its stocks of readily upgradeable gaseous uranium into metallic fuel
elements, which pose significantly less of a threat. A serious inspection
system would need to be implemented in order to monitor these
requirements. In return, the Iranians would expect the lifting of nuclear-
related sanctions. They would also likely ask for acknowledgement that
they have the right to continue their civil enrichment program, whether for
supposed use in cancer treatment or to safeguard against a potential
Russian decision to cease fueling the Bushehr reactor.
Thus far, President Obama has been frustrated at the lack of progress in
response to his openness toward the Iranian regime, and his new cabinet
has an obligation to help him solidify a negotiating position that improves
the situation. If the Iranians continue to reject U.S. positions that
seemingly respond to some of their demands, then the administration
should begin applying other pressures. These steps should be taken sooner
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 018206
rather than later so that the parties can move toward a mutually acceptable
conclusion.
Washington must also keep in mind that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei
has the last word on all matters in Iran, and that negotiations will go only
as far as he allows them to go. In years past, he issued a fatwa condemning
nuclear weapons -- Washington could take advantage of this fact by
drafting a UN Security Council resolution endorsing the fatwa. This could
be a small step toward boosting Khamenei's international profile while
simultaneously pressuring Iran to follow its own religious decree.
To be sure, regime change remains an attractive alternative on paper, and
some in Washington view it as an insurance policy. Historically, however,
regime change has not been a successful option for the United States, and
internal attempts at toppling Iran's leadership have thus far been crushed
by Stalinesque suppression, including the 2009 uprising. Despite such
failures and Washington's limited influence in Iranian domestic affairs,
U.S. policy should be to demonstratively support popular democratic
movements.
Article 4.
TIME
Spy Fail: Why Iran Is Losing Its Covert War
with Israel
Karl Vick
Feb. 13, 2013 -- Slumped in a Nairobi courtroom, suit coats rumpled and
reading glasses dangling from librarian chains, the defendants made a poor
showing for the notorious Quds Force of the elite Iranian Revolutionary
Guard Corps. Ahmad Abolafathi Mohammed and Sayed Mansour Mousa
had been caught red-handed and middle-aged. And if the latter did them a
certain credit — blandly forgettable always having been a good look for a
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 018207
secret agent — the prisoners still had to explain why they had hidden 15
kg of the military explosive RDX under bushes on a Mombasa golf
course.
Created to advance Iran's interests clandestinely overseas, the Quds Force
has lately provided mostly embarrassment, stumbling in Azerbaijan,
Georgia, India, Kenya and most spectacularly in Thailand, where before
accidentally blowing up their Bangkok safe house, Iran's secret agents
were photographed in the sex-tourism mecca of Pattaya, one arm around a
hookah, the other around a hooker. In its ongoing shadow war with Israel,
the Iranian side's lone "success" was the July 18 bombing of a Bulgarian
bus carrying Israeli tourists — though European investigators last week
officially attributed that attack to Iran's Lebanese proxy, Hizballah. That
leaves the Islamic Republic itself with a failure rate hovering near 100%
abroad and an operational tempo — nine overseas plots uncovered in nine
months — that carries a whiff of desperation. A Tehran government long
branded by U.S. officials as the globe's leading exporter of terrorism may
be cornering the market on haplessness.
Within Iran's own borders, however, the story is different. Twice in the
past two years Iranian intelligence has cracked espionage rings working
with Israel's Mossad, Western intelligence officials tell TIME. In both
cases, the arrests were the furthest thing from secret: announced at a news
conference, each was later followed up by televised confessions broadcast
on Iranian state television in prime time. Given Iran's history of trumped-
up confessions, skepticism is more than justified. But the arrests appear to
be solid. One intelligence official said the captured Iranians provided
"support and logistics" to the Mossad operatives who carried out the
assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists.
At least four scientists were killed on Tehran's streets from 2010 to 2012,
when, as TIME has reported, Israel ratcheted back on covert operations
inside Iran. Officially, Israel has remained silent on the killings, though
government officials will coyly say they welcome the deaths. The Jewish
state maintains the same ambiguous posture on other "setbacks" to Iran's
nuclear program widely — and correctly, Western intelligence officials
say — attributed to Mossad, from the Stuxnet computer virus, to
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 018208
mysterious explosions like the massive blast at a missile base, which
destroyed ballistic missiles that could reach Israel.
The covert onslaught dovetails with Israel's history of reaching "over the
horizon" to disarm perceived threats at a distance. To keep advanced arms
from reaching Hamas and Hizballah, Israel in the past year sent warplanes
to bomb convoys and arms depots in Sudan and Syria, respectively,
without apparent retribution. In the case of Iran, however, experts say the
audacity of Israel's covert campaign stirred Tehran to revive an espionage
effort that lay largely fallow since 9/11. The Spy vs. Spy contest that
ensued would prove woefully one-sided, even in the third-world countries
where Iran chose to strike, hoping to avoid heightened security awareness
in the developed world. In the end, its only success came inside Iran,
where the secret police operate without inhibition.
The shadow war may have started on Jan. 15, 2007, the day Ardeshir
Hosseinpour passed away. Hosseinpour was a specialist in
electromagnetics at the Nuclear Technology Center in the city of Isfahan,
Iran, but his death might have escaped notice had Iran's government not
kept it under wraps for almost a week, finally attributing it to fumes from
a faulty heater. An online report by the American private intelligence firm
Stratfor suggested another cause — radioactive poisoning — and hinted
that Mossad's Caesarea section was back in business. Caesarea, named for
an Israeli beach town that dates back to Roman times, is the operations
branch of Israel's secret service, most notoriously responsible for the
assassinations of some two dozen Palestinians (and an innocent waiter)
after the 1972 Munich Olympics. Assassinations are carried out by a very
small unit dubbed Kidon, the Hebrew word for "tip of the spear." Kidon
operates at a remove from the legions of Mossad employees working in
less lethal fields.
It would have been a unit called Hatzomet, or "The Junction," that
recruited Majid Fashi, a handsome young Iranian who dropped out of high
school to pursue a career in kickboxing. By the account he gave on Iranian
state television early in 2011, Fashi presented himself at the Israeli
consulate in Istanbul in 2007 and was vetted for a solid year before being
shown any trust. Two years later, on Jan. 12, 2010, he would place a bomb
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 018209
on a motorbike parked on the sidewalk outside the Tehran home of
Masoud Alimohammadi, the nuclear physicist was killed when it was
detonated by remote control.
In the broadcast, Fashi accurately described the Mossad campus north of
Tel Aviv. He said he had been given a laptop equipped with a second
operating system and used it to communicate through online drop boxes.
He was impressed by his handlers' thoroughness. At one point Fashi
described studying a scale model of Alimohammadi's street. "It was an
exact copy of the real one," Fashi said. "The tree next it, the street curb,
the bridge." In a later broadcast, he was seated across from
Alimohammadi's widow, who glared at him as he bowed his head and
wept. Mossad officials were "pissed off and shocked" seeing their agent
on television, the intelligence official said.
Fashi was executed in May 2012. About the same time, Iran's intelligence
minister announced the arrest of 14 more Iranians, eight men and six
women dubbed members of the "Terror Club" in the subsequent prime-
time broadcast of that name. Filmed in shadow, and rich in atmospherics,
the Aug. 5 program recreated Alimohammadi's death and four subsequent
attacks: they started with the Nov. 29, 2010 nearly simultaneous attempts
on Majid Shariari and Fereydoun Abbasi, nuclear scientists driving to
work when magnetic "sticky bombs" were attached to the side of their cars
from passing motorcycles. Abbasi managed to escape before it detonated,
saving his wife as well. Shariari was killed — a significant setback for the
Iranian nuclear program where he was the top scientist, according to a
Western intelligence official.
The confessed agents offered absorbing detail — they were aboard a Bajaj
Pulsar, wearing helmets, when the magnet bomb stuck on the right front
panel of Shariari's car exploded. The riders scrambled into the "trail car"
assigned to follow the target and disappeared into the traffic of the Imam
Ali Autobahn. Already gone was the car assigned to cut off and slow the
car carrying the scientist. They claimed to have rehearsed on a practice
track inside Israel. None of the details could be confirmed, but an
intelligence official acknowledged: "Another network was taken."
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 018210
The third scientist, Dariush Rezaeinejad was shot on July 23, 2011 after
picking up his child at a day care; his wife described hearing shots whiz by
as she chased the assailants. The most recent assassination was the Jan. 11,
2012 death of Mustafa Ahmadi-Roshan, an expert on uranium enrichment,
also by a magnet bomb slapped on his car during his morning commute.
By then, Iran was trying to strike back. The task of avenging the scientists
fell to the sprawling Quds Force's own covert-operations division, known
as Unit 400. It took a shotgun approach, targeting Israeli diplomatic
missions in a variety of countries, mostly in the developing world where
the global antiterrorism mesh is not so fine. Exposed in Baku, Tbilisi,
Johannesburg, Mombasa and Bangkok, the failures mounted at a pace that
was itself one of the problems. In the world of espionage, a quality covert
operation can take years to pull together. Yet in the 15 months from May
2011 to July 2012, the Quds Force and Hizballah attempted 20 attacks, by
the count of Matthew Levitt, a former State Department counterterrorism
official. "Hizballah and the Quds Force traded speed for tradecraft and
reaped what they sowed," Levitt writes in a January report for the
Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "Quds Force planners were
stretched thin by the rapid tempo of their new attack plan, and were forced
to throw together random teams of operatives who had not trained
together."
The decline in quality was so striking it initially inspired disbelief Recall
the preposterous-sounding plot weaving together a former used-car
salesman, Mexico's Zetas drug gang and a bank transfer from a
Revolutionary Guard account to assassinate Saudi Arabia's ambassador —
by bombing a Washington restaurant? A year on it looks like the new
normal. In Bangkok last month, an Iranian agent entered a courtroom in a
wheelchair, having accidentally blown his legs off while fleeing police. A
January alert issued by Turkish intelligence was light on specifics but
quite certain the Quds operatives would be staying in five-star hotels.
"There's a number of reasons that Iranian intelligence has suffered," says
Meir Javedanfar, an Iranian-born analyst who lectures at the
Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel. "No. 1," he says, "is the 2009
uprisings in Iran." The street protests over a fraudulent election
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 018211
undermined the perceived legitimacy of the state among people who once
would work for it, including in its secret services. "People less and less see
it as a nationalist endeavor and more as a Khamenei-related project to
strengthen himself," Javedanfar says, referring to Iran's Supreme Leader
Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, who by some published accounts personally
authorizes all overseas attacks.
Hard-liners further aggravated the situation by purging competent
reformists from both the secret services and from Iran's embassies —