The sense one gets on the ground that the regime will endure is shared by experts at the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies, according to U.S. officials who are familiar with current intelligence reporting and analysis but request anonymity because of the sensitive subject matter. In public testimony to Congress last year, John Negroponte, then the U.S. intelligence czar, noted that "hard-liners have control of all the major branches and institutions of government."
This is no small matter. How secure is the mullah regime? The CIA says secure enough. Or rather, this reporter says some officials willing to leak say that the intelligence says so.
Some say that Iran is teetering and that we must pursue regime change rather than bombing to solve our approaching mullah-with-nukes problem.
Others say Iran is so secure that we must accomodate Iran under the mullahs and learn to love the bomb, and teach the Iranians to keep it holstered free of any threat from us.
Others say that the mullahs are so secure that we must destroy the bombs from the air even if this is just a temporary solution.
Certainly, the Iranians want us to believe they are secure. So secure that we must learn to live with Iran--well, live them long enough for Iran to get the bomb and then the mullahs do what they wish with them.
In these three broad options, you have to toss in the factor of time. The Iranian mullahs might be atop a seething mass of angry people, but the mullahs might be secure enough for long enough to get the bomb. And then the equation could change.
The people of Iran might give up hope for another generation. And we'd have to factor in a much higher price as the cost of defeating the mullahs.
So I hope the mullahs are so weak that we can push them over the edge. But we have limited time before we must bomb them to buy more time and hope for the best. I've written it time and time again, I'll feel no better knowing that the Iranian people feel really really bad that the mullahs destroyed Charleston with a nuclear blast.
I hope no serious people in charge really think the middle option of hoping for the best from the Tehran thugs is a good idea.
