Seeker Blog

I can’t comment on the latest Strategy Page bulletin on Iran — over a dozen Iran intelligence officials?:

March 26, 2007: The government is not happy with the way things are going. The UN refuses to back down on economic sanctions, or demands that Irans nuclear weapons program be shut down. Inside Iran, a majority of the population still opposes the government, and attempts to cajole or bully this majority into changing their mind, have not worked. The problem is that most Iranians are fed up with the “Islamic revolution,” and want less religion and corruption, and more democracy, in their government. Since the clerics running the government, as a dictatorship, could be prosecuted for corruption if they allowed free elections, there is no incentive to loosen up. In Iraq, most Shia Arabs, like most Iranians, have rejected the concept of a religious dictatorship. There is open warfare between pro and anti-Iranian Shia militias in southern Iraq.

But the most damaging development has been the capture/defection/kidnapping, by the Americans, of over a dozen Iranian intelligence officials in the last few weeks. Some of these guys are apparently talking, because more Iranian operations in Iraq are suddenly being discovered and shut down. The radicals who are into secret operations in Iraq, and elsewhere in the region, are allied with president Ahmadinejad, and other factions that believe democracy is un-Islamic. These are hard core Islamic militants, who have been held in check by more moderate (although more corrupt as well) clerics. That balance of power is falling apart.

RTWT…