For a while now, I’ve been picking up from across the Atlantic alarming signs of drift, irresolution mixed messages and suicidal in-fighting — even now — within the Bush administration over Iran. Now the veteran Iran-watcher Michael Ledeen has issued this trumpet-blast of despair — and savage denunciation of British spinelessness or worse:
We are not alone in this suicidal self-deception. Our friends across the water, those tough-minded Englishmen who have recently decided to abolish the Royal Navy for all intents and purposes, have been frenetically seducing us into one diplomat failure after another with regard to Iran for many years now. It is no surprise, then, that the London Times yesterday quoted British officials are denying there is a ‘smoking gun’ to show Iranian support for terrorists in Iraq. I think the unnamed officials who are saying that are either out of the intelligence loop or lying. American intelligence has known for at least a year and a half that the frightful shaped charges that have killed and maimed so many American soldiers were manufactured in Iran — they traced the serial numbers back to the Iranian manufacturer — and it is inconceivable that we would have failed to share that fact with our British allies.
I can well imagine the debates now raging inside the Bush administration over what is apparently a substantial trove of devastating information about Iranian activities in Iraq, and perhaps also Afghanistan. American officials long opposed to any serious challenge to Iran pronounced the information ‘a bombshell,’ and some of them now say they have changed their minds about going after the mullahs. So those who still want to take the diplomatic route, and continue to appease Tehran, must set up a series of obstacles: first try to keep the intelligence bottled up; if that fails, discredit it; and if all else fails join the ‘war is not the answer’ crowd, whose credibility rests on the hope that nobody in America has read any history.
Ye gods. Isn’t there one single politician capable of actual leadership in the whole of the west, other than in Australia?
