Iran's formula for success
Michael Ledeen has had his eye on Iran and the issues Iran raises for American foreign policy since the fall of the Shah in 1979. Ledeen's 1982 book Debacle: The American Failure in Iran (co-authored with William Lewis) is the essential account of the emergence of the mullahcracy. In his 2002 book The War Against the Terror Masters, Ledeen identified Iran as "the driving force behind international terrorism." Over the past three years in his numerous NRO columns and elsewhere, he has argued that our difficulties in Iraq would not be resolved so long as the terror masters remained ensconsced in Iran. Thus the refrain concluding many of his columns urging that we grasp the Iranian nettle: "Faster, please."
Michael Rubin is the current editor of Middle East Quarterly and one of America's most reliable observer of affairs in the Middle East. In today's Wall Street Journal, Rubin outlines circumstantial evidence pointing to the hand of Iran in the "insurgency" and perhaps even in the mosque bombing: "Are we playing for keeps?" Rubin argues that "Tehran has a formula for success in Iraq." His column seems to me one of the most important pieces of the past year on the war. (Courtesy of RealClearPolitics.)
