Michael "Tehran is the fount of all evil" Ledeen would seem to have a new friend and young soulmate, if not "mini me" at the American Enterprise Institute, Michael Rubin. Here Rubin warns darkly in a recent New Republic article about Iran's efforts to destabilize Afghanistan, Iraq, and Bosnia:
Twice in the last twelve years, large-scale Iranian destabilization efforts have confronted U.S. military interventions. In Bosnia, after significant internal debate, George H.W. Bush's administration chose to block Iranian infiltration, risking revenge attacks against the United States by Iranian-linked terrorists. In September 1992, Tehran attempted to ship 4,000 guns, one million rounds of ammunition, and several dozen fighters to Bosnia. An Iranian Boeing 747 landed in Zagreb, where, in response to U.S. pressure, the Croatian military impounded the weapons and expelled the jihadis. Today, there is little threat of radical anti-U.S. Islamism in Bosnia.
Almost a decade later, the current Bush administration identified an Iranian challenge in Afghanistan. Speaking before the American-Iranian Council on March 13, 2002, Zalmay Khalilzad, senior National Security Council adviser for the Middle East and Southwest Asia, declared, "The Iranian regime has sent some Qods forces associated with its Revolutionary Guards to parts of Afghanistan. ... Iranian officials have provided military and financial support to regional parties without the knowledge and consent of the Afghan Interim Authority." Rather than combat this Iranian challenge, the Bush administration chose diplomacy. "Notwithstanding our criticism of Iranian policy, the U.S. remains open to dialogue," Khalilzad continued. Today, visitors to Herat, a main city in western Afghanistan, consider Iranian influence there to be extremely strong.
In the wake of Sadr's uprising, Washington is faced with the same choice: End Iran's infiltration through forceful action, or wish it away. How long can we afford to keep choosing the latter?
Like Rubin, Ledeen too used to be a correspondent for The New Republic, from Rome, back before he got involved in freelancing the arms deal that became known as Iran Contra. As a kind of reporter-right-wing advocate, Ledeen helped out the Reagan campaign by teaming up with an Italian intelligence agent, Francesco Pazienza, now in prison, to "expose" then President Jimmy Carter's brother Billy meeting with Libyan and Palestinian officials. The so called Billygate affair, exposed (if not engineered) by Ledeen and his erstwhile right wing journalist friend Arnaud de Borchgrave in a New Republic article in 1980, alleged that Billy Carter accepted $50,000 from Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi, and failed to report it to the Justice Department. And Ledeen espoused the great anti-communist canard that the KGB was behind the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II, a theory that has since been discredited.
Such aggressive right wing advocacy cum journalism helped win Ledeen his eventual role as a consultant to Reagan-era Secretary of State Al Haig -- and put him in position to help engineer the Israeli-US arms sales to Iran that became known as Iran-Contra. [Ledeen's role in Iran contra had him testifying before Congressional committees and the independent prosecutor Lawrence Walsh for a good part of the late 1980s. His lawyer? Jim "arm the INC" Woolsey.]
Like Ledeen, Rubin also straddles the worlds of government consulting, academic-think tank-dom, and journalism-advocacy on behalf of neocon causes. Rubin has spent the past few years as a consultant to the the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans and then the Office of the Secretary of Defense [read: Doug Feith], and more recently has served as a political advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. [Why he's left Iraq to be a fellow in the air conditioned offices of AEI may be interesting to explore. Given Rubin's acknowledged expertise in the region, he would seemingly be more useful in Iraq. And the CPA needs nothing if not political advice these days, it would seem.]. It will be interesting to see where Rubin's combination of consulting for neocon officials at the Pentagon, and advocacy on behalf of their pet causes at AEI and in the New Republic and other media, will lead him. He certainly seems to be being carefully groomed for something special over at AEI.
Post-Script: Here Rubin shills for Chalabi, in a piece attacking Bremer's sensible plan to allow lower level Ba'ath party members to be eligible for government jobs. Do the neocons really think their open hostility to Iraq's Sunni Arabs is the way to be considered judicious purveyors of democracy in the Middle East? And aren't they just a bit naive about what good friends Iraq's Shiites will be to the US and Israel? Or is this just all about some previously arranged deals that have been made between Chalabi and Perle? So, is Perle on the Chalabi payroll, or are Perle and Chalabi working for some other ideological or economic end? There seems to be a plan here beyond the friendship between these two most discredited individuals.