As
President Donald Trump prepares to host Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu next week, a group of U.S. intelligence veterans
offers corrections to a number of false accusations that have been
leveled against Iran.
by
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
MEMORANDUM
FOR: The President
FROM:
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
SUBJECT:
War With Iran
Part
3 – Limited Military Capability
Tehran’s
Revolutionary Guard is well armed and trained, but much of its “boots
on the ground” army consists of militiamen of variable quality. Its
Air Force is a “shadow” of what existed under the Shah and is
significantly outgunned by its rivals in the Persian Gulf, not to
mention Israel. Its navy is only “green water” capable in that it
consists largely of smaller vessels responsible for coastal defense
supplemented by the swarming of Revolutionary Guard small speedboats.
When
Napoleon had conquered much of continental Europe and was
contemplating invading Britain it was widely believed that England
was helpless before him. British Admiral Earl St Vincent was
unperturbed: “I do not say the French can’t come, I only say
they can’t come by sea.” We likewise believe that Iran’s
apparent threat is in reality decisively limited by its inability to
project power across the water or through the air against neighboring
states that have marked superiority in both respects.
The
concern over a possibly developing “Shi’ite land bridge,” also
referred to as an “arc” or “crescent,” is likewise
overstated. It ignores the reality that Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon all
have strong national identities and religiously mixed populations.
They are influenced — some of them strongly — by Iran but they
are not puppet states. And there is also an ethnic division that the
neighboring states’ populations are very conscious of– they are
Arabs and Iran is Persian, which is also true of the Shi’a
populations in Saudi Arabia and the Emirates.
Majority
Shi’a Iraq, for example, is now very friendly to Iran but it has to
deal with considerable Kurdish and Sunni minorities in its governance
and in the direction of its foreign policy. It will not do Iran’s
bidding on a number of key issues, including Baghdad’s relationship
with Washington, and would be unwilling to become a proxy in Tehran’s
conflicts with Israel and Saudi Arabia. Iraqi Vice President Osama
al-Nujaifi, the highest-ranking Sunni in the Prime Minister Haider
al-Abadi government, has, for example, recently called for the
demobilization of the Shi’ite Popular Mobilization Forces or
militias that have been fighting ISIS because they “have their
own political aspirations, their own [political] agendas. … They
are very dangerous to the future of Iraq.”
FOR
THE STEERING GROUP, VETERAN INTELLIGENCE PROFESSIONALS FOR SANITY
William
Binney, former NSA Technical Director for World Geopolitical &
Military Analysis; Co-founder of NSA’s Signals Intelligence
Automation Research Center (ret.)
Kathleen
Christison, CIA, Senior Analyst on Middle East (ret.)
Graham
E. Fuller, Vice-Chair, National Intelligence Council (ret.)
Philip
Giraldi, CIA, Operations Officer (ret.)
Matthew
Hoh, former Capt., USMC Iraq; Foreign Service Officer, Afghanistan
(associate VIPS)
Larry C.
Johnson, former CIA and State Department Counter Terrorism officer
Michael
S. Kearns, Captain, USAF; ex-Master SERE Instructor for Strategic
Reconnaissance Operations (NSA/DIA) and Special Mission Units (JSOC)
(ret.)
John
Brady Kiesling, Foreign Service Officer; resigned Feb. 27, 2003 as
Political Counselor, U.S. Embassy, Athens, in protest against the
U.S. attack on Iraq (ret.)
John
Kiriakou, Former CIA Counterterrorism Officer and former senior
investigator, Senate Foreign Relations Committee
Edward
Loomis, Jr., former NSA Technical Director for the Office of Signals
Processing (ret.)
David
MacMichael, National Intelligence Council, National Intelligence
Estimates Officer (ret.)
Ray
McGovern, former US Army infantry/intelligence officer & CIA
analyst; CIA Presidential briefer (ret.)
Elizabeth
Murray, Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Near East (ret.)
Todd E.
Pierce, MAJ, US Army Judge Advocate (ret.)
Coleen
Rowley, FBI Special Agent and former Minneapolis Division Legal
Counsel (ret.)
Greg
Thielmann, former Director of the Strategic, Proliferation, and
Military Affairs Office, State Department Bureau of Intelligence &
Research (INR), and former senior staffer on Senate Intelligence
Committee (ret.)
Kirk
Wiebe, former Senior Analyst, SIGINT Automation Research Center, NSA
ret.)
Lawrence
Wilkerson, Colonel (USA, ret.), former Chief of Staff for Secretary
of State; Distinguished Visiting Professor, College of William and
Mary (associate VIPS)
Sarah G.
Wilton, CDR, USNR, (ret.); Defense Intelligence Agency (ret.)
Robert
Wing, former Foreign Service Officer (associate VIPS)
Ann
Wright, Colonel, US Army (ret.); also Foreign Service Officer who,
like Political Counselor John Brady Kiesling, resigned in opposition
to the war on Iraq
Source
links:
Related:
Comments
Post a Comment