The five months between now and the January 2005 swearing in of the next U.S. president is seen, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Tehran sources, as a window of opportunity for pressing ahead almost unhindered with Iran's nuclear weapons program and its new diplomatic offensive for pre-empting American or Israeli military action to destroy its nuclear facilities. Betraying their global ambitions, the ayatollahs are for the first time since the 1979 revolution brought them to power, confronting Washington with a diplomatic strategy that reaches outside the confines of the Middle East and Persian Gulf. Iran's diplomatic brashness reflects its pretensions to becoming a nuclear rather than a regional power, on the way to owning a full arsenal of atomic weapons and delivery vehicles, ballistic missiles, warplanes and military satellites.
This march forward is not entirely plain sailing. There is still some sharp debating within the regime that could slow forward momentum. But Iran's leaders are hell-bent on using the next five months to attain a non-reversible point in their nuclear development and diplomatic challenge to the United States. After that, it won't matter if President George W. Bush is re-elected or if he is replaced by Senator John Kerry, whom they prefer, like most Arab and Muslim nations from Saudi Arabia to Turkey. Iran cannot be made to turn back.
For Iran's political, religious and military leaders, Kerry is no better than Bush. They prefer Kerry because they hope he can be humiliated like his Democratic predecessor Jimmy Carter, around whom Khomeini ran rings by staging the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran and hostage-taking outrages in Lebanon. Carter finally lost his bid for a second term after Khomeini and Republican candidate Ronald Reagan reached a secret understanding for the embassy hostages to be freed on the day of the 1981 presidential inauguration, after 444 days spent under siege.
Iranian leaders are looking forward to Kerry's election, believing it will stretch the current five-month window of opportunity to four years - so that by the time the next U.S. presidential swearing-in rolls round in January 2009, they will have stocked up on dozens of nuclear bombs. Bush would be more of a problem.
Iraq fades as Iran's biggest stick against U.S.
In view of the larger picture, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Iran experts see signs of Iraq receding as Iran's primary weapon against American interests.
This does not mean the policy makers in Tehran have lost interest in Iraq. They would certainly not want a strong Iraqi neighbor ruled by a powerful government in Baghdad on their doorstep, or an autonomous Shiite state in the south. A Shiite-Sunni pact against the Kurds would be just as unpopular in Tehran as a Kurdish-Shiite pact against the Sunnis. What the Iranians would like to see most of all is years of debilitating guerrilla war against U.S. forces culminating in a state of chaos.
The two chinks exposed in America's armor by its decisions on Najef have further impelled Iran towards its strategy of demoting Iraq to second place on its global front:
One was the unforeseen mistake the U.S. made in letting the influential and moderate Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani leave the country for heart surgery in London just as American forces were poised to crush the rebellion staged by the radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr.
This week, they tried to correct this blunder by flying the grand ayatollah home from London, on Wednesday, August 25. But by then, three weeks of battles had run into a standoff. At the time, CIA and U.S. field commanders viewed Sistani as a potential obstacle to a full-scale offensive against the Mehdi Army and wanted him out of the way before it began.
Though beleaguered in the Imam Ali shrine, even Sadr managed to exploit the appearance of U.S. weakness for the empty but well-publicized gesture of offering to hand over the keys of the mosque to "senior religious authorities." He knew quite well that Sistani's absence left Najef's Shiite ayatollahs incapable of a common, strong stand against him and played, moreover, into Tehran's hands by leaving the holy city bereft of a unified, powerful Shiite leadership.
Secondly, once the battles around the Imam Ali mosque entered their fourth week, whether or not U.S. forces were victorious against Sadr's militia became politically and psychologically irrelevant in the eyes of Iran, Iraq and Shiites everywhere. The very fact of being pinned down by a ragtag militia of 2,000 men armed with nothing stronger than rocket-propelled grenades was perceived as an exhibition of weakness on the part Washington and the Iyad Allawi's government alike.
They all quickly grasped that U.S. troops' hands were held by orders not to damage the revered Shiite shrine in which Sadr and his men sheltered.
Even the U.S. military's desire to avoid heavy casualties was understood, but many wondered why no bold night raid was staged by a U.S. or Iraqi commando unit to cut the mosque off from the vast (five sq mile) cemetery surrounding it or from Sadr's forces outside.
Senior U.S. commanders failed to appreciate the negative impact their cautiousness in Najef would have on other battles sure to erupt quickly in other parts of Iraq, a misapprehension akin to letting Sistani leave the Najef scene at the wrong moment.
Iran's sights fixed on India-Pakistan Arc
What Tehran understands from these lapses is that America is mired deep in the Iraqi mud. Its leaders believe therefore that they can afford to bide their time and avoid the temptation to come to Sadr's aid in the final stages of the Najef confrontation, lest a showdown develop prematurely with the United States.
Instead, Iranian policy makers are swiveling their sights outside Iraq, to Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Pakistan, Turkey and India, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military and intelligence sources. Seen from Tehran, the severance of America's lifelines from those countries will cause Iraq's political, military, economic and intelligence structures to implode and eventually degrade the importance of the U.S. presence there.
This is a long-term scenario which Iran plans to pursue by three principle means:
The export of Tehran's joint Iranian-Al Qaeda terrorist campaign from Iraq to the Central Asian republics of Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and the Kyrgyz Republic. Local extremist Muslim groups will be mobilized to assassinate senior government officials in Baku, Tashkent, Ashgabat and Bishkek. Death squads will be assigned also to the Israeli and U.S. military officers stationed in those capitals or running the Central Asian electronic listening posts that monitor Iran's nuclear activities as well as its military and political electronic chatter.
The CIA, aided by Mossad operatives, has captured a number of Iranian agents and Al Qaeda hit squads in the field already. A revelation spilled by these detainees under interrogation is reported here by DEBKA-Net-Weekly's exclusive counter-intelligence sources: the son of Iran's spiritual ruler Ali Khamenei is head of the Iranian-Al Qaeda network in Central Asia.
Exploitation of regime change in New Delhi to undermine the diplomatic and military positions of influence enjoyed by the United States and Israel under Atal Bihari Vajpayee's government which welcomed strategic and military ties with the U.S. and Israel. His Bharatiya Janata (BJP) party was swept out of office last May in a shock election defeat. It made way for an administration led by prime minister Manmohan Singh's Congress Party, which depends on the support of centrist and left-leaning parties such as the Samajwadi Party, the Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Janata Dal (S). All these groupings are traditionally anti-American and anti-Israeli.
The Iranians are counting on Singh to be their man in Delhi. They have reason to be optimistic: despite escalating Muslim terror in Kashmir backed by the same elements in Pakistani military intelligence (SIS) that support the Taliban and Al Qaeda, Singh is stepping up his efforts to achieve a historic reconciliation with Pakistan. In a speech on August 15, India's Independence Day, Singh called for mutual trust and vowed to carry forward peace efforts with Pakistan. He also said: "It is evident that cross-border terrorism and bloodshed can make this task difficult" - the first time an Indian prime minister cited terrorism as an impediment to reconciliation. But he laid greater stress on his pledge to pursue peace with his country's long-time adversary. This was music to Iranian ears, seen as an opening to India's rapprochement with Muslim Pakistan and the formation of an arc into which Iran can fit snugly.
Turkey is initially amenable; India is not
The Iranians set their sights on the Indian subcontinent after their preliminary success in cutting down American and Israeli standing in Turkey. Khamenei coerced Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan into barring his country's airspace to Israeli planes sent on missions to strike Iran's nuclear or military locations. Erdogan's concession to Iran was not all that significant militarily; Israel would most likely prefer to reach targets in central and southern Iran by a southern flight path rather than the northern route over Turkey. Still, it was a painful slap for Israel. It also presaged Iran's next step to press the Turkish prime minister for a pledge to bar U.S. forces from launching ground or air offensives against Iran from bases in his country. This too might not be too difficult, the Iranians reason. After all, Ankara did back out of joining the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq to oust Saddam Hussein. Encouraged by its initial success with the Turkish government, Iran has moved over to India to press its advantage there. Last week, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources, a senior Iranian intelligence delegation secretly visited New Delhi under the cover of the low-level talks underway for some weeks on the fate of the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline. The Iranian delegation leader did not mince words with India's national security adviser Jyotindra Nath Dixit. He said: If India continues its "military honeymoon" and its trade with Israel, already worth more than $10 billion a year, New Delhi will lose the Iranian market along with diplomatic and military relations with Tehran. The Iranian visitors informed their Indian hosts that they wielded greater influence with Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf that did the Americans, and it was in their power to bring Pakistan to a rapprochement with India - provided India played ball and abandoned its military and intelligence ties with Israel. The Iranians were not as brash here as they were in Azerbaijan, where they demanded the expulsion of Israeli officers from the country forthwith. But they did suggest that it was time for New Delhi to end the exchange visits by senior Israeli and Indian officers and intelligence delegations.
India has so far not bent under the pressure from Tehran. But the Iranians are notoriously patient and expect the seeds they have planted to eventually bear fruit.
The Kurdish factor
This is the most complicated and potentially far-reaching element of Iran's global outreach. It again hinges on exploiting a given situation as seen from Tehran. Iran believes it can fan the discord between the Bush administration and the Erdogan regime in Ankara and drive Turkey into the concessions exacted for granting its burning objective of full membership of the European Union. One of these demands is to ease up on the persecution of Kurdish militants. EU membership will take Turkey a further step out of the American, and hence Israeli, orbit, which is all to the good in Tehran's eyes. How do the Kurds - Iraqi, Iranian and Turkish - fit into this shifting equation? Iraq's Kurds entertain a historic fear of a strong Shiite entity rising in Iraq and, most of all, of being engulfed by a potential Shiite-Sunni alliance. First signs that this was possible were seen in the collaborative operations undertaken since April by Shiite cleric Sadr's militia and Sunni guerrillas in battles against U.S. forces in Ramadi, Samarra and Falluja. The Kurds will therefore seek a protector to lean on after America's exit from Iraq and may well gravitate towards Ankara. If by then Turkey has turned its back on America and Israel, the Kurds will have to follow suit - according to Iran's prognosis. Such hypothetical Kurdish docility would suit Tehran to a tee as a damper for the national aspirations of its own Kurds, who make up one-tenth of the Islamic Republic's population.
Even if Iran's master plan is only partly successful, it could generate a measure of alienation for the United States and Israel in such strategic corners of the world as Central Asia, Turkey, India, Pakistan and Iraq.
And that is only the beginning. Iran's top diplomat, foreign minister Kamal Kharrazi, has spent the last ten days hopping from one Far Eastern capital to another, shooting poison arrows against Washington and Jerusalem in every one.
Iranian Ruler's Dynastic Bent
Mojtaba Khamenei - a Chip off the Old Block
The London-based Saudi newspaper al-Sharq al-Awsat reported this week that the Iranian spiritual ruler Ali Khamenei's son, Mojtaba, has launched a career with a near-bang.
It came in the form of a plot to assassinate several CIA agents in Baku ahead of a visit to the city two weeks ago by Iranian president Mohammed Khatami (which was covered by DEBKAfile - see HOT POINTS: "Iran Bullies Israel's Strategic Friends - With Eye on Washington").
But the plot, purportedly aimed at spoiling Khatami's pitch in the Azeri capital, was foiled by the Iranian president himself. He gave President Elham Aliyev's government the names of the Iranian assassins.
Or at least, that's what Iran wanted Aliyev to believe.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources report that the "plot" was in fact a piece of Iranian disinformation for portraying Khatami as a champion against terror...
On the other hand, it may not be far from young Khamenei's future assignments.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence and counterintelligence sources reveal that the hard-line ruler, Khamenei, aged 65, has big plans for his son, the favorite of his six children. He has put him in charge of an undercover unit tasked with manufacturing terror attacks against the United States and its allies inside the Muslim republics of Central Asia and the Caucasus. U.S. troops and agents in Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan will be targeted.
Mojtaba will be answerable directly to his father's bureau.
Khamenei junior's induction into Iran's ruthless "revolutionary" hierarchy is one of the regime's most tightly-kept secrets. While his father is grooming him as heir apparent to take over one of Iran's most important exports, international terror, very few details of his identity have been made public. Believed to be in his thirties, he is married to the daughter of the new Speaker of the Iranian parliament, the ultra-conservative Haddad-Aadel Gholam-Ali.
The clandestine unit he now heads was established a year ago with a huge budget and a broad operational mandate. Not satisfied with the job, Mojtaba is impatient to attain control of the entire international terror machine run from or sponsored by Tehran. But the older Khamenei thinks he needs more experience before he is given additional powers.
Nonetheless, in the past year Mojtaba managed to climb into the key position of sole coordinator between the Iranian regime and Al Qaeda in Iran and abroad, a job formerly split among senior Revolutionary Guards officers, the Islamic Propaganda organization and other groups which have long been in close touch with Islamic terrorist groups around the world.
Disrupting Afghan October election in time to hurt Bush
In the consultations he held this week, Iran's virtual dictator Khamenei effected a tactical turnaround in his priority goals for hurting President George W. Bush chances of election. He found that Afghanistan offered better opportunities for making trouble than Iraq.
This was his line of reasoning:
One, Iran has lost the resources for the showcase terrorist offensive against U.S. troops planned for ruining the U.S. president's campaign for reelection.
For one thing, the maverick Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr's rebellion is dying down and he looks like being eliminated one way or another.
For another, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) led by Abdel-Aziz Hakim no longer performs Iran's bidding. The organization, built and funded by Iran for two decades, has thrown its support behind the United States in hopes of a more dominant role in the Iraqi leadership.
In addition, senior Iranian intelligence agents in Iraq have been caught and betrayed Iran's plans for its terrorist assault. As we reported last week, four members of the Iranian trade delegation, Karbala consul Fereydoun Jahani, IRNA bureau chief in Baghdad, Mostafa Darban and others all gave away top secrets, including the names of local contacts and agents, thereby seriously hobbling Tehran's plan of operation
Two, Khamenei's advisers believe the situation in Iraq will stabilize within a year. Once a general election puts a permanent government and parliament in place, Washington will come under pressure to scale back or remove its presence in Iraq. The Americans will then be free to turn their attention to Iran and so carry forward the next stage of their blueprint for political, military and geographical change in the Middle East and strategic war against terror.
The new fronts Iran is already prying open to counteract that blueprint are covered in the first article in this issue.
Consequently, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Iranian sources, Tehran has stepped up its subversive activities in Afghanistan in collaboration with Al Qaeda. Here, Iran hopes for better luck than it had in Iraq and success in disrupting the country's advance toward democracy. The country's first democratic elections are scheduled for October 9. Afghanistan therefore presents a good chance for damaging Bush's campaign before the November election in America. The best way is to get Hamid Karzai defeated.
Iranian agents are therefore busy heaping up trouble for the interim president who has governed with U.S. support since the Taliban was overthrown and is already beset with opponents. Now, they are claiming he has no right to run for office as an incumbent. The flock of challengers is led by two ethnic Tajiks, the governor of the western Herat province, Ismail Khan, and defense minister Mohammed Fahim, as well as the ethnic Uzbek general Abdul Rashid Dostum and Hazara leader Mohammed Mohaqiq. Karzai, who belongs to the majority Pashtun, has further put backs up by getting in touch with a senior Taliban official, a fellow-Pashtun, and announcing that he sees no reason to bar Taliban clerics with no blood on their hands from his administration.
Seeing fruit ripe for plucking in Afghanistan, Iran is reported by DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources to have recently shipped the Herat governor a supply of 60,000 rifles and sub-machineguns together with hundreds of thousands of ammunition clips.
Tehran is also in close touch with Al Qaeda and Taliban operatives in the southern province of Kandahar. Iran's agents are not neglecting Karzai's Uzbek and Tajik rivals in their northeastern strongholds either. They are busy provoking fresh challenges to spike interim president Karzai's hopes of gaining elected office in Kabul. To subscribe to Debka Weekly got to www.debka.com. |
