Former CIA chief Woolsey on what to do about Iran

In testimony before the House Committee for Foreign Affairs, former CIA chief R. James Woolsey gave his personal view of what the U.S. should do about Iran.

Wooley said the Islamic Republic’s “threats to destroy Israel and, on a longer time-scale, the United States are part and parcel of its essence," and that this is nothing new as, in his words, "Iran’s regime has defined itself by its fundamental hostility to the West, and especially Israel and the US, for nearly three decades (“Great Satan” etc.).”

He claims that President Ahmadinejad is a follower of the Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi in Qum, and because of this association, believes that “large-scale killing should be welcomed because it will summon the return of the 12th Imam, the Mahdi, which in turn will lead to the end of the world.”

As evidence that this is the case, Woolsey cites assertions he says can be found on the Islamic Republic's Broadcasting website which say the world is in its "last days" and that soon Jesus will appear, along with the Mahdi, the imam that Shiites believe went into hiding in the 9th century who will return after a cosmic war to usher in the end stage of God's plan for humanity, i.e. the age of Islam.

(For more on Ahmadinejad and his belief in the return of the Mahdi (or Madhaviat, as the belief is called), see Scott Peterson, "Waiting for the rapture in Iran," Christian Science Monitor, December 12, 2005. And for an alternative view, see Noah Feldman, “Islam, Terror and the Second Nuclear Age,” The New York Times, October 29, 2006)

Iran's determination to proceed with a nuclear agenda - whatever the motivation - has, Woolsey says, already inspired a nuclear arms race in the region. Why else, he asks, would both Saudi Arabia and Egypt have recently announced their own intentions to develop nuclear power (albeit for energy purposes) if not to counter for Iran's nuclear program?

Woolsey is pessimistic that banning the sale of dual-use materials to Iran could ever force Tehran to abandon its nuclear agenda as he says that Iran could easily buy what it needs from what he calls “its co-conspirator North Korea” who is believed to have built a nuclear weapon.

Instead, he argues that sanctions should target the Iranian leadership, and not the Iranian people. He suggests, for example, banning the Iranian leadership from travel or perhaps pursuing Ahmadinejad in an international tribunal for his violations of the Geneva Convention because of his calls for the destruction of Israel.

Woolsey says he doesn’t think anything less than regime change will work but he doesn’t think this needs to involve the U.S. military, however.

He says the U.S. should state its goals for Iran clearly and then support the domestic players inside Iran that could effect this change. He believes that Iran’s minorities – Arab, Kurdish, Azeri, and Baluch – as well as Iran’s young have enough grievances against the regime to want to change it. In other words, Woolsey rejects the recommendation made by the Iraq Study Group, that the U.S. should try and engage the Iranian regime, says instead, “we should indeed engage, but with the Iranian people, not their oppressors.”

Woolsey says to reach the Iranian people, the U.S. should resuscitate a Cold War method, and tell the Iranian people what is really taking place inside their country as opposed to what we are doing now, that is broadcasting popular music and world news briefs into Iran, and occasionally even ones that have a distinctly anti-American slant.

Woolsey claims that last year a Voice of America correspondent, in a broadcast into Iran, characterized the arrest of 21 individuals in Britain who were said to be plotting to use liquid explosives to blow up transAtlantic airplanes as “a conspiracy against Islam” designed by the U.S. and Britain to distract world attention away from the "victories" Hezbollah was racking up in Lebanon. (On this Woolsey cited Richard Benkin in Asian Tribune Aug. 12, 2006, vol. 6 no. 41.)