Summary
Iran announced a secret court’s guilty verdict against four Iranian nationals convicted of organizing a “soft regime change” in Tehran at the behest of the Bush administration. The Iranian announcement follows reports of a U.S. covert-ops program targeting Iranian nuclear facilities.
Analysis
Last summer, during U.S.-Israeli arms sales negotiations to facilitate an Israeli proposed attack against suspected Iranian nuclear facilities, the Bush administration revealed to the Israelis their own covert-ops program aimed at sabotaging suspected Iranian nuclear sites and the R&D program.
The New York Times revealed the U.S. covert-ops program on January 12th, 2009, the same day Iranian officials revealed the capture and detention of four Iranian nationals involved in a $32 million joint U.S. State Department-CIA spy network operating in the Islamic Republic.
This weekend, an official of the Iranian intelligence ministry’s counter-espionage department revealed that the four principals had been doing more than just spying, as they were plotting to organize a coup using soft power. According to the official, the four principals, though just now sentenced, were in Iranian detention since summer of last year, roughly the same time-period that the Bush administration was revealing to Israel its anti-Iranian covert-ops program.
Further, since Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari, Commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), had also reported on an Israeli spy network last November, it cannot be ruled out that the U.S. State Department-CIA covert-ops program in Iran is in fact a joint venture with its Israeli counterpart.
Because the Iranians conducted the trials of the four principals in ‘secret court’, it is impossible to determine the veracity of the claims.
Yet it should be noted that Iranian officials claim that the secret covert-ops program is an extension of the anti-Soviet “Riga” doctrine as applied to Iran, a claim first confirmed by the former Bush administration’s Undersecretary of State, R. Nicholas Burns back in March, 2006.
This weekend, Iran warned the incoming Obama administration against continuing Bush’s policy of “soft regime-change” covert-ops programs in Iran.
Only time will tell whether Obama truly represents change vis-à-vis U.S.-Iranian relations.
U.S.-Israeli negotiations
At the end of summer last year, Israel approached the Bush administration seeking permission to violate Iraqi air-space en route to proposed attacks against suspected Iranian nuclear facilities, after being informed that the U.S. would not unilaterally or jointly launch an attack against the Islamic Republic. The request came in the dying months of the Bush administration, before the expiration of the U.N. mandate sanctioning U.S. troop presence in Iraq.
After rebuffing a further Israeli request for a large cache of heavy GBU-28 bunker-buster bombs to be used against Iranian targets, the Bush administration agreed to supply Israel with the lighter GBU-39 bunker-busters. The $77 million Israeli order for 1,000 lighter bunker-busters, produced by Boeing, was approved by the Democratic controlled Congress in September, and delivered to Israel in November, just in time to for Israel to utilize them in their planned invasion of Gaza. This may explain the timing of Israel’s breaking of the ceasefire in early November with Hamas.
Manjit Singh is a contributor to Geopoliticalmonitor.com
