Iranian regime change: "Faster, please!"
Neocon Michael Ledeen, long a proponent of "democratic revolution" in Iran, weighs the odds of military action by the U.S.
By Alex Koppelman
Read more: Iran, Politics, Vanity Fair, News, Iraq, Alex Koppelman
Michael Ledeen
(from Pajamas Media)
Jan. 15, 2007 | Even among his fellow neoconservatives, Michael Ledeen stands out as a politically divisive figure. He's loved -- and consulted at the highest levels -- by his fellow travelers for his hard-line positions on the Middle East. His catchphrase, "Faster, please!" refers to the speed with which he'd like the United States to compel regime change in Iran. He's hated with equal passion by liberals for those same stances, as well as for his connection, real or imagined, to two scandals. During Iran-Contra, Ledeen acted as an intermediary between the Reagan White House and Israel. It's even been suggested by more than one blogger that he may have played a role in either creating or couriering the infamous forged documents that said Saddam Hussein was attempting to obtain uranium in Niger. (Ledeen denies any role.)
On Friday, as rumors swirled about a possible secret executive order against Iran and Syria, and the shock waves from the president's speech and the raid on an Iranian consulate continued to reverberate, Ledeen spoke with Salon about what military action he thinks the administration might be contemplating and what he'd like to see happen in the region. He also discussed some of the more recent controversies in which he's been involved: his apparently mistaken report that the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, has died, and his denial, late last year, that he had ever supported the war in Iraq.
The president's speech Wednesday night certainly made it sound as if U.S. military operations might soon be expanded into Iran and Syria. How do you feel about that?
Well, what [Secretary of State Condoleezza] Rice said [Thursday] is that they're going to try and do it all inside Iraq. And I'm not sure that's possible.
Why is that?
Among other things, there's consular agreements and stuff like that. I mean, I think they're going to have a lot of trouble maintaining that it's kosher to go in to embassies [within Iraq], consulates, things like that, and arrest people. So I mean, I'm not sure that'll stand up legally.
What do you think the U.S. should do?
I want to support revolution in Iran.
How?
Listen, can I ask you a question? Have you read anything I've written?
Yes.
I mean, I've answered this so many thousand times, and I'm really bored by this question. And I've laid it all out in writing, so -- can we pass on that, since you know the answer to that question?
The answer to that question is basically that you'd like to fund student movements, give them communications tools...
Not just student movements. I want to declare regime change to be policy. I want to support the pro-democracy groups in Iranian society, which includes like 80 percent of the population. I want to support them politically and financially if they want it. I want to broadcast at them, exactly as we did into the Soviet empire during the Cold War. I want to replicate Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, which we're really not doing. I mean, they pretend to do it, but they really don't. Farsi service on [the Voice of America] is sort of a replica of CBS News or something like that. They want to be balanced; they give both sides. And we're not giving them what they need, more than anything else, which is the experiences of people who have participated in successful nonviolent revolutions.
Why will this work?
Well, I'm not sure it will work. But it ought to work. I mean, Iran fulfills every condition of a revolutionary society. It's a wildly unpopular government, it's a very young population, they've shown their unhappiness with it in every way that you can imagine, from street demonstrations to celebrating banned holidays and everything like that. The polls that the regime itself takes show upwards of 70 percent of the people wanting regime change. So why not? I mean, it ought to work. And most revolutions require some kind of external base of support in order to succeed.
What happens if democratic revolution doesn't work?
Then we're left in the same bind that we're in now, which is that Iran -- the Iranian regime -- has been waging war against us for 27 years, 28 years. And we haven't yet responded to it. I gather this administration is trying to grope their way through some way to do it now in Iraq.
But what would you want to see happen if democratic revolution doesn't work?
I don't really have an answer to that, because I expect that revolution will work. I certainly -- the only military things that I support are what I consider legitimate measures of self-defense, that is, going after terrorist training camps in Iran and Syria, where they train people who come in and kill coalition forces, and going after the facilities where they're putting together these explosive devices [IEDs].
Do you speak Farsi, the language of Iran?
No. That's why God invented translators.
Do you think that's at all a drawback for you in trying to understand what's going on there?
I don't know, I've been working on Iran since 1979. I think I've done pretty well. I mean, the book I did with Bill Lewis, also not a Farsi speaker, on the fall of the shah, has been universally acclaimed as one of the best scholarly works on the subject, and I've been at it ever since. I feel pretty comfortable about the quality of my work. I would be happy if I spoke Farsi, but I'm too old [65] to learn another language, I think.
