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Jewish World Review July 10, 2009 / 18 Tamuz 5769 Numbering the days of dictators By Caroline B. Glick
Ahmadinejad's accomplishments these past few weeks have been vast and
unmistakable. By securing the unconditional support of Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei for his power grab, Ahmadinejad killed three birds with one stone.
He ensured that the clerical hierarchy in Qom — which is dependent on
Khamenei for its financial stability — acquiesced to his authority. He
expanded the Revolutionary Guards Corps' control over the country by making
them the indispensible guardians of the revolution. And he effectively
transformed Khamenei from the "supreme leader" into a creature of
Ahmadinejad's will. The moment that Khamenei gave Ahmadinejad his full
support and gave a green light to the Revolutionary Guards to repress the
protesters, Khamenei tied his own fate to that of his president.
This means that today Ahmadinejad is completely free to maintain and
escalate his policy of international brinksmanship on all levels. From
Iran's race towards nuclear capabilities, to its efforts to destabilize Iraq
and Afghanistan, to its support for Hizbullah and Hamas, to its support for
anti-American regimes in Latin America and its cultivation of terror
networks in the Western Hemisphere, to its strategic proliferation alliance
with North Korea, Ahmadinejad's continued reign means that the world can
expect expanded Iranian activity on all these fronts.
In the meantime, the rest of the world's response to events in Iran has been
discouraging. The G8's decision Wednesday to wait until late September to
even consider stronger sanctions against Iran means that at a minimum
Ahmadinejad has another three months to enrich uranium without worry. And
given that US President Barack Obama is on record supporting pursuing
negotiations with Iran until at least January 2010, it is hard to imagine
that the international community will take any concerted action against Iran
in the foreseeable future.
As he moves forward, no doubt Ahmadinejad takes heart from the supine US
response to North Korea's July 4 missile launches. Tuesday Yediot
Ahronotreported that Israeli analysts who reviewed videotapes of
North Korea's
missile tests concluded that alongside the various short range Scuds it sent
over the Sea of Japan, Pyongyang also launched a Taeopodong-2 multi-stage
long range missile capable of reaching Alaska. Tal Inbar, head of the Space
Research Center said, "The three seconds seen [of the Taeopodong-2] on the
video prove how much North Korea's long range missile program has advanced."
At the same time, both South Korean intelligence and US Defense Department
sources have accused North Korea of responsibility for launching massive
cyber-attacks against US and South Korean computer systems over the past
week. The attacks temporarily crippled multiple systems including those of the
National Security Agency, Homeland Security Department, the South Korean
Foreign Ministry, the Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange and the
Washington
Post.
In the face of all of this, the Obama administration has been disturbingly
timid. The White House's most consistent response to North Korea's
belligerent moves has been to ignore them and hope North Korea decides to
behave itself.
Matching their meekness towards Iran, the G8 leaders responded to
Pyongyang's most recent provocations with an announcement that they would
like to become friends with Kim Jung Il. As Obama put it, "It's very
important for the world community to speak to countries like Iran and North
Korea and encourage them to take a path that does not result in a nuclear
arms race in places like the Middle East."
Over the past several weeks, as the regimes in Pyongyang and Teheran have
become ever more brazen in demonstrating their belligerent contempt for the
West, the prevailing wisdom has argued that the West has no good options for
containing or defeating them. The traditional take on North
Korea is that the world's leading missile and nuclear proliferator poses
less of a burden to global stability than a post-regime North Korea filled
with millions of starving people who have been cut off from the world for
sixty years. By this thinking, the world is better off living with a
psycho-state capable of fomenting a global nuclear war than caring for its
victims.
As for Iran, as Gabriel Schoenfeld wrote last month in the Wall Street
Journal, due to the gutting of the CIA's capacity to conduct covert
political warfare during the 1970s, today the US lacks the capability to
assist Iranian regime opponents in their efforts to overthrow the
mullocracy. As Schoenfeld put it, "the US appears utterly powerless to
influence the course of events."
Schoenfeld urged the US to move swiftly to rebuild its covert political
operations capacity. While this certainly makes sense, in truth, the US
doesn't need to build up much of a capacity to topple either the regime in
Pyongyang or the regime in Teheran.
Despite Ahmadinejad's success in maintaining his grip on power, it is an
indisputable fact that regime opponents succeeded these past few weeks as
never before in destabilizing the regime and in demonstrating its hollow
core. Even as Ahmadinejad was glorying in his victory, his opponents —
defeated presidential candidates Mir Hossein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi and
former president Muhammad Khatami — were calling for a three-day national
strike.
Thursday, thousands of Iranians risked life and limb to heed the call to
commemorate the ten year anniversary of the regime crackdown on university
students. That the 1999 crackdown occurred on Khatami's orders shows that
regime opponents are looking for fundamental, revolutionary change in the
regime — not cosmetic reforms.
It is worth noting that Iran's current revolutionary ferment arose from the
unlikeliest of sources. The June 12 elections were not supposed to pose a
challenge to the regime. All they were supposed to do was pit one regime
loyalist against three other regime loyalists.
The fact that the public could view Ahmadinejad's decision to steal the
election from former prime minister and regime loyalist Moussavi as an
opportunity to bring down the regime demonstrates clearly the magnitude of
the public's rejection of the Islamic revolution. Quite simply, if the
Iranian people can take these elections as an excuse to call for the
overthrow of the regime, any spark can light that fire.
While a refurbished CIA would no doubt be helpful in this regard, it is not
necessary. The international community already has the necessary tools to do
the job. All it needs — indeed all any one country needs — is the will to
actively assist Iran's disparate dissident groups who separately and
together wish to see the end of the mullocracy.
Iran's borders are porous. Whether through international defense contractors
or covert operatives working for any country, arms can be easily smuggled to
various disaffected minorities from the Azeris to the Kurds, the Baluchis
the Ahwaz Arab, and the Bahais. Iraq's ratlines run two ways. So do
Afghanistan's.
As to the Persians, they are already taking the lead in calling for national
strikes. They should be supported through internet, radio and satellite
broadcasts. Whether through the Voice of America, the Voice of Israel, Radio
Free Europe, or Radio Free Iran, foreign agents can pump in truthful and
relevant information about the regime and enable coordinated, countrywide
unrest that could potentially topple the regime in a matter of days or
weeks.
Then there is North Korea. As ailing dictator Kim Jung-Il uses his
brinksmanship to secure a smooth transfer of control over his malnourished
slave state to his son ahead of his death, it seems as though no one in the
West has a clue what to do about North Korea. The US, we have been told, is
too overextended with its deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq to
successfully deter or prevent North Korea from carrying out further
provocations and proliferation activities. And anyway, for years we have
been told that North Korea isn't really serious about its threats. As far as
the "experts" are concerned North Korea's leaders don't really mean anyone
any harm. They just want to scare us all a little to make sure we don't get
any ideas about bringing them down.
But the fact is that between its own provocations and its massive
proliferation of missiles and nuclear technology, North Korea is an enormous
threat to global security. And it is also a fact that overthrowing the
regime in North Korea is the easiest, safest, fastest, and most humane way
to prevent the likes of Kim Jung-Il from provoking and proliferating the
world into a nuclear conflagration.
All it would take to put an end to this monstrous regime is for South Korea
to open up its borders. How long would it take for the last North Korean to
turn off the lights when Seoul beckoned over the horizon?
The models for overthrowing the regimes in Teheran and Pyongyang are not
new. Modified versions were successfully implemented just twenty-odd years
ago. The model for Iran is Poland circa 1981. The model for North Korea is
East Germany in 1989.
Unfortunately, whereas in the 1980s the leaders of the Free World were
committed to winning the Cold War against the Soviet Union by securing the
freedom of those who lived under Communism's jackboot, today, led by Obama,
the Free World behaves as though the Berlin Wall fell of its own devices.
The will of free men and women risking everything to oppose tyranny had
nothing to do with it, we are told. If we care about peace, we should
appease the likes of Ahmadinejad and Kim, not bring them down.
On Tuesday, an insect wrecked Ahmadinejad's victory speech. As he bragged
that Iranian democracy is a role model for the world, a large moth zoomed
around him, breaking his train of thought. Ahmadinejad was brought low
before his people by a moth he couldn't swat.
If a bug could humiliate Ahmadinejad in what was supposed to be his moment
of triumph, surely the willing nations of the world — or even just Israel — together with the brave Iranian people can bring him down. It would
certainly be more cost effective than trying to negotiate a deal with a
nuclear-armed mullocracy.
And certainly the South Koreans and the Japanese can feed the starving North
Koreans and free them from the bondage of their monstrous regime. Doing so
would be vastly less expensive than living under the shadow of Pyongyang's
nuclear-armed psycho-regime.
Just because the US is currently on vacation from its role as leader of the
Free World doesn't mean that other free people cannot do the right thing.
JWR contributor Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East Fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post. Comment by clicking here.
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