The Emergency U.S. Open And The Covert War To Destabilize Iran

Secretary Of State, Dr. Condoleezza will likely be asking Congress for $75 million in emergency funds to further "democracy" in Iran in the next few days. However the real likelyhood is for the funds to split between the open efforts as well as covert support for the terrorist Mujahedeen E Khalq organization.

While some funds will go to open efforts such as satellite broadcasts into Iran similar to the Radio Free Europe of the Cold War era, and funds to expand efforts fo the young of Iran to study abroad, substantial covert aid to the terrorist MEK organization is more than likely. This organization, while publicly disavowed by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist organization, has nonetheless become the main source of CIA and U.S. military intelligence information about Iranian nuclear and military information. MEK information is even stronger than some Websites operating out of Russia of former Soviet soldiers offering military information and comparing head to head military capabilities of Iran against Israel and other states.

There is actually a sort of behind the scenes clash within the Bush Administration. The State Deparment contines to back actions that involve international community engagement andthe increasingly frail hopes of a diplomatic solution, while Vice President Cheney's office and military intelligence and the Defense Department are secretly moving towards covert support for the MEK terrrorist organization to help destabilize Iran.

Behind the scenes, a MEK front organization was allowed to hold a fund raising event in the U.S. a while back, with major Bush Administration supporter, Richard Perle, a keynote speaker. Covertly there has been building support to arm this terrorist army and use them similar to the Mujahedeen network that the Reagan Administration used to topple the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan during the 1980's, but helped to build the Al Qaeda and Taliban organizations in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, and still provides Al Qaeda a network of villager support and terrorist safe havens in remote and mountainous Pakistan. This network has proven itself to be largely able to withstand both Pakistani government efforts as well as U.S. intelligence, and continues to likely protect Osama Bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leadership.

There is always a high cost to U.S. support for terrorist organizations to topple unpopular governments as the example of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan well proves. But U.S. foreign policy is largely organized around short term goals, with high hopes new policy can deal with the future problems as they are created. But in the case of the Reagan Administration construction of the Al Qaeda network because of the massive covert CIA war in Afghanistan, the short term costs of destabilizing Afghanistan from Soviet control only created the serious conflict that the U.S. faces with Al Qaeda terrorism today. The 9/11 attack was born in the fallout of the covert CIA war that the Reagan Administration hatched to blunt the Soviets.

If the U.S. succeeds in undermining the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejah in Iran, it may only be a case of trading short term goals to prevent nuclear war for long term problems of helping to put MEK backed terrorists into power. Al Qaeda already proved that they are unreliable U.S. allies because of Afghanistan. Going down the same path again is hardly wise but seems likely because MEK is providing the best CIA intelligence of the nuclear threat that Iran presents at this time.