Iran -- what's the best choice -- coup? -- or revolution.

By Aussiegirl

Herb Meyer offers some suggestions on dealing with the madman with the nukes in Iran. Don't miss this. He makes the salient point that it isn't the nukes that worry us so much as who is in charge of the nuke. He suggests the two kinds of regime change which can be implemented or aided from without in order to forsestall the need for a risky pre-emptive military strike that has been hinted at by Israel.

This is probably the layman's version of the kind of report that Meyer and Casey would have delivered to President Reagan about various situations in the world. This is the situation, these are the options -- coup or revolution -- here is the intel -- here are the risks, here are the advantages, here is what happens if we do nothing, this is the course that promises the best outcome. Clear thinking based on real world reality and good intel. Let's hope this administration has done some or all of those things. Supporting the pro-democracy forces with things.

It was just this kind of support to Poland's Solidarity that led to the eventual fall of Communism, and even in the recent Orange Revolution, part of the strategy was that the pro-democracy forces were well financed and well organized. Those demonstrations in the snow were spontaneous, but they needed organization and support to be able to maintain their momentum for all the days that were necessary. And in the end, even though it was dicey there for a while, the military did not act against the demonstrators and the revolution was successful.

The Bush administration has missed many an opportunity over the last few years to institute this sort of inside out regime change in Iran. Now we have Ahmadinejad in power and they hope to do diplomacy with him. I don't think so.

The American Thinker

To think clearly about how best to remove the looming threat of a nuclear-armed Iran, just keep in mind the National Rifle Association’s much maligned – but perfectly sensible – old slogan: Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.

It’s the same with nuclear weapons. The threat isn’t from the warhead, but from the individual who controls it. For example, right now several countries whose governments aren’t always friendly to the US – China, Russia, France – each have enough nuclear warheads, and the means to deliver them, to obliterate our country. But we don’t lose one minute’s sleep over this prospect because, although the leaders of these countries are surly, petulant, sometimes vicious and often anti-American – they are also sane. There isn’t the slightest chance that any of these leaders actually will press the nuclear button and launch Armageddon.

The president of Iran, on the other hand, is nuts. (The tip-off came a while back when, as mayor of Teheran, Ahmadi-Neshad Amadinejad ordered separate elevators for men and women. His insanity became more obvious – and more serious – when he demanded last month that Israel be “wiped off the map,” and then “clarified” this call to genocide by insisting that the Holocaust never happened, and adding that he had only meant to suggest that Israel be re-located somewhere in Western Europe.) Moreover, it’s clear that at least several of the mullahs who rigged the election that brought Amadinejad to power earlier this year are also dangerous fanatics. Allowing Amadinejad and these mullahs to get their hands on nuclear weapons is a risk the civilized world simply cannot take. It would be like allowing a bunch of escaped lunatics to roam the halls of your childrens’ school, armed with rifles, in hopes that maybe they really aren’t as crazy as they seem to be and won’t, after all, start firing into the cafeteria.

With this weekend’s report in The Times of London that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has ordered his country’s armed forces to be ready by the end of March for a possible strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, the technical complexities of such a strike are starting to get attention. James Lewis’ recent analysis in The American Thinker provides a superb overview of just how difficult such a strike would be to execute.

A Better Option

But if the problem is the individual rather than the weapon, why not expand our thinking a bit? More precisely, why not consider whether it might make more sense to defuse the Iranian threat by leaving the nukes, but removing Amadinejad and the mullahs from power? In other words, perhaps the US – and even some of our European so-called allies – could get cracking and start organizing, or at least supporting, a coup d’etat or a revolution.

[...]Here Comes the Revolution

What is clear is that the prospects for a genuine people’s revolution in Iran are excellent. Indeed, if ever there was a country primed for revolution, this is it. As Michael Ledeen has reported in a brilliant series of essays for National Review Online, Iran today is in a classic pre-revolutionary state. Iran’s population is Muslim, but not Arab, and its people are weary of the fundamentalist regime that overthrew the Shah in 1979 and has held power ever since by turning that country into the kind of police state the Shah himself never came close to building. Despite its oil revenues, Iran’s economy is a mess. And the government’s recent responses to several devastating earthquakes have been inept.

Today, by every credible measure the Iranian population hates its government. And within the population, nowhere is this hatred of the government greater than among the young people – and fully 70 percent of Iran’s population is under the age of 30. These young people have been risking their lives by demonstrating against the regime – week, after week, after week – for at least two years. Moreover, the kids never miss an opportunity to make clear their desire for friendly relations with – of all countries—the United States.

…Or Maybe a Coup

The obviously-leaked report that Ariel Sharon has given orders for the Israeli military to prepare for a strike on Iran will give a huge push forward to the idea of a coup or a revolution. For one thing, it will concentrate minds in Teheran itself. That country’s military leaders – unlike its political leaders – aren’t nuts. The last thing they want is an Israeli, or an Israeli-American, air strike on their weapons plants. If some of the top military people weren’t thinking of a coup before word of Sharon’s orders was leaked, they are now. Moreover, among Iran’s political leaders are at least a few men who aren’t crazy. They know that a military strike – even if it fails to completely destroy Iran’s nuclear plants – will be a disaster for that country. And at least a few of them will now be pondering the thought that the Israelis have shown a real talent for “targeted assassinations” – that if the Mossad doesn’t know today where they live and what cars they drive, it soon will. (If you were an Iranian politician, how willing would you be right now to sit next to Amadinejad at some outdoor ceremony – or accept his offer of a lift back to the office?)