1. Ayatollahs Want Regime Change in… Washington
They have decided they don’t particularly care which Democratic candidate is elected US president in November so long as George W. Bush is prevented from spending another four years in the Oval Office.
As this issue went to press, first reports reached DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources in Tehran of a failed attempt to assassinate the senior Iraqi Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Ali Sistani in Najef. This attempt was part of Tehran’s strategy to loosen US control in Baghdad and test Washington’s responses. (See Step 3 of Iran’s master plan below.)
This strategy is complex and innovative.
For the first time, Iranians will be working actively on behalf of whichever presidential contender is selected by the Democratic Party according to a detailed master plan.
In 1980, many political analysts attributed Democratic president Jimmy Carter‘s failure to win a second term and the Republican Ronald Reagan‘s election to Carter’s inability to negotiate the freedom of 52 Americans held hostage in the Tehran embassy. Gary Sick, a White House aide during the hostage crisis, has alleged that Reagan’s campaign chief and future CIA director, William Casey, was in Iran in early 1980 for secret negotiations on delaying the hostages’ release until after the presidential election.
Iran was unhappy when the Democrats’ Bill Clinton took office in 1993, although his administration proved very accommodating toward the Islamic Republic. Iran now feels it missed a golden opportunity by failing to respond to then-secretary of state Madeleine Albright’s rapprochement feeler that came in the form of a public apology for the role the United States played in bringing the shah to power in 1953.
Now, the Iranians fear American military action will come down on them hard if they stand by their refusal to scrap their nuclear weapons program. Saddam Hussein’s fate is a scary precedent. Therefore, to prevent this peril they have convinced themselves that Bush must be defeated and have drawn up a comprehensive game plan to this end.
Co-authors of the plan are, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s exclusive sources in Tehran: former foreign minister Ali-Akbar Velayati, Revolutionary Guards commander Yahya Rahim-Safavi and his deputy Mohammad Baqer Zolghadr, Revolutionary Guards chief in the holy town of Qom, Hojjat-Ol-Eslam Zol-Nour, national security council secretary Hassan Rouhani (who led Iran’s nuclear talks) and Mohsen Rezai, secretary of the Expediency Council.
The plan was drawn up under the eyes of supreme leader Ali Khamenei, Expediency Council chairman Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and President Mohammed Khatami.
Tehran’s master plan for Bush’s downfall
Iran will rally Muslim and African-American voter support for the Democratic candidate and work to bring out the Muslim and Black vote. At first, terrorist attacks were weighed, but it was decided that bloodshed in the United States would backfire and boost support for the president. Plenty of Iranian-sponsored violence is plotted in other parts of the world.
Just before the US election, Iran will instigate a row of “mega-attacks” to inflict maximum casualties among US troops in Iraq. Tehran hopes for hundreds or even thousands of dead and wounded. American command centers and Navy ships docked in Iraqi ports or on-station in the Persian Gulf will also be targeted.
Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq’s Shiite spiritual leader will be assassinated. The blame will be laid on the United States in order to stir up Shiites in Iraq and worldwide for revenge attacks against US targets. The Iranians believe that Sistani’s removal will yield the added dividend of liquidating Tehran’s foremost political-religious rival, who is revered by his followers and suspected moreover of striking secret pacts with the United States to cooperate in charting Iraq’s future.
Iran will unleash a sweeping guerrilla offensive against US soldiers in Afghanistan and its pro-American president Hamid Karzai. There too the objective is heavy American losses and a graphic demonstration to American voters of how far their president has failed to put down the armed resistance to the post-Taliban regime.
US interests in Saudi Arabia will be subjected to mega-attacks on the pattern of the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing that killed 19 US air force personnel and maimed hundreds.
Iran will offer favors to European leaders and fat contracts to European firms in return for stepping up their invective against the Bush administration’s foreign policies.
Iran will sponsor strikes against undercover US forces attached to military bases in Turkey.
To spearhead its campaign to sabotage the Bush run for re-election, Tehran is staging an ingathering of its agents, operatives, proxies and allied troops for strikes at America’s most vulnerable points.
Iranian agents are inside America disseminating their gospel in the mosques, religious schools and seminaries of the Muslim and African-American communities.
As we reported in our last issue, Iran recently dispatched hundreds of its best agents to Iraq. The melt easily among the 50,000 or so Iranians in Iraq at any given time. They are also helping to smuggle into the country operatives of al Qaeda and other radical Islamic groups once the Islamic Republic’s deadly rivals for the crown of the Muslim world. Now they are all fighting the common enemy together. Several hundred more non-Iraqi agents have been sent into Iraq via the porous Syria frontier.
Some of Tehran’s undercover agents in Pakistan have been ordered to link up with Al Qaeda in the mountainous southeastern region of Afghanistan; others, to join up with Al Qaeda in the Kandahar region, Kabul and the Shiite Herat enclave of western Afghanistan, where underground cells await operational orders.
A large group of expatriate Sunni Iraqis loyal to Saddam Hussein who fled to Iran are being formed into a militia, trained in guerrilla warfare and sent back home. These and other resistance fighters are supplied by Iran with shoulder-held anti-aircraft missiles for use against US helicopters and aircraft.
In Turkey, Iran is working hand in glove with local radical Muslim groups and nurturing the Kurdistan Workers Party, the terrorist PKK, and other violent groups, who also gather information for Tehran on the locations of US troops at Turkish bases.
At home, Iranian officials have assured senior Al Qaeda fugitives to whom they have given sanctuary that they will not be surrendered to the United States or extradited to their native countries. They will continue to be pampered guests of the Islamic Republic. Tehran may put out word of secret trials of certain al Qaeda operatives, but DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s counter-terrorism sources say it will be no more than a charade. None of their names will be released and they will remain free to carry on with their usual terror pursuits.
