I wouldn’t be surprised if the Iranians were feeding disinformation to the Bush Administration as John Walcott, writing for McLatchy, asserts:
WASHINGTON — Defense Department counterintelligence investigators suspected that Iranian exiles who provided dubious intelligence on Iraq and Iran to a small group of Pentagon officials might have “been used as agents of a foreign intelligence service … to reach into and influence the highest levels of the U.S. government,” a Senate Intelligence Committee report said Thursday.
A top aide to then-secretary of defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, however, shut down the 2003 investigation into the Pentagon officials’ activities after only a month, and the Defense Department’s top brass never followed up on the investigators’ recommendation for a more thorough investigation, the Senate report said.
The revelation raises questions about whether Iran may have used a small cabal of officials in the Pentagon and in Vice President Dick Cheney’s office to feed bogus intelligence on Iraq and Iran to senior policymakers in the Bush administration who were eager to oust the Iraqi dictator.
(hat tip: memeorandum). I mean they would, wouldn’t they?
The specific examples given in the article puzzle me a bit, though:
_ Iranian “hit teams” they said were targeting U.S. personnel and facilities in Afghanistan.
_ What they claimed was Shiite Muslim Iran’s longstanding relationship with the secular Palestine Liberation Organization.
_ “Tunnel complexes in Iran for weapons storage or exfiltration of regime leaders,” and about the alleged growth of anti-regime sentiment in Iran.
Why would it be helpful to the Iranian regime for U. S. officials to believe these things about Iranian activities? Trying to goad Washington into an attack? Somehow that doesn’t sound right to me.
Perhaps some cleverer (or, possibly, more devious) person can explain it for me.
Oh so now its Iran’s fault that Bush invaded Iraq too, and Bush & co were just innocent dupes. LOL!
Ummm…why automatically assume the “foreign intelligence services” are Iran’s?
The “foreign intelligence service” mentioned in the Senate report could just as easily have been Israel’s intelligence service (which, according to Israeli general Shlomo Brom, was “exaggerating the Iraqi threat” to push the US into attacking Iraq) as well as the Italian intelligence service (US intelligence agencies received several reports from the Italian intelligence service SISMI of a supposed agreement between Iraq and Niger for the sale of yellowcake uranium.)
Hass makes a good point about the foreign intelligence services. The article kind of points to Iran, and Iran may have been behind the misinformation coming from the Iranian exhiles, but that isn’t really established in the article – not even tenuosly.
However, I will take a crack at why Iranian intelligence circles (or elements thereof) may have been trying to goad Washington into an attack.
First, someone in the Iranian intel services might be pushing for an attack solely as a means of advancement, either through the elimination of superiors in an attack or from having made the right call before hand and getting favorable attention from superiors. This seems unlikely to me for several reasons, but the biggest one is that it wouldn’t have any guarantee of success and the risk of discovery would be great.
The second idea is a variation of the first. Someone in the Iranian intel services has decided that the regime really does need to be replaced and is working from the inside to use whatever leverage they can to get the US to intervene. This seems like something that could happen, but I would question the intelligence of someone attempting this kind of plan.
Third, the Iranian high command (the ayatollahs, Ahmadinejad(sp), high level commanders of the Iranian military and intel services) or some combination of those groups may have decided that the USA is militarily over-extended and can’t do anything more than a limited bombing campaign against Iran. Provoking such an attack might quell a restless Iranian public once nationalist pride surfaced after the attack. Perhaps they might also calculate that whatever damage they sustained would be worth it for possible gains in their international standing, or that the economics of likely higher oil prices might benefit them.
(I firmly believe that the Iranian people, even most of those Iranians who would otherwise want to see a different regime in place, would not want USA military action against their country, either in limited campaign or a full invasion.)
I think this third scenario, while more likely than the first two, also doesn’t quite hold up. The Iranians would be taking a big gamble that we couldn’t seriously hurt their nuclear program, not to mention that we would likely take a BIG bite out of their air defense capability, even in a ‘limited’ bombing campaign. And that ignores the possible dangers of targeted US strikes on Iranian leadership.
Plus the Iranians are more vulnerable economically than militarily. It would be a hell of a lot easier for us to blockade the country and keep their oil from going to market (or bombing any other route leading out of the country) than it would be for us to try and bomb the regime into submission or out of existence. The US is vulnerable on that front too, as the world economy can only accept so much uncertainty in oil supplies.
In other words I think Hass is correct that we should cast a wider net for other possible influences. Also we shouldn’t discount the possibility that the Iranian exhiles are merely acting on their own in an attempt to benefit personally.
As should have been apparent from the title of my post, I’m skeptical of the report since I really don’t see any credible reason for the Iranians to plant the particular sort of disinformation that’s being alleged. Do I think that the Iranians would plant disinformation? Of course they would if they could. We would if we could. Anyone capable of doing so would.
But what benefit do they get from it? I still don’t see it.
Although I’m skeptical (as is Dave) that the Iranians planted the misinformation implied in the article, it does occur to me that there is one truly excellent reason to do so – to muddy the waters. Any erronious information floating around will make it that much harder to discern what’s really happening. That would be a credible reason for the Iranians to do such a thing.
I’ve quoted you and linked to you here: http://consul-at-arms.blogspot.com/2008/06/re-cui-bono.html