In 1952, Whittaker Chambers wrote in his classic autobiography Witness this on the subject of espionage:

There was little about political espionage, it seemed to me, than an intelligent man, who the forces, factors and general direction of history in our time, could not arrive at by using political imagination, backed by a careful study of the available legitimate facts.

I find it rather interesting that something very similar was articulated by Herb Meyer  — the first CIA analyst to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union — who said that he based his forecast almost exclusively on information from publicly available sources. In retrospect it seems almost unbelievable that no one else had come to the same conclusion, since totalitarian regimes are invariably unstable and their lifespan limited. When they are around, however, their bluster and belligerency tend to obscure their inherent fragility and sometimes it takes a prophet to note the obvious.

We should keep all this in mind when thinking about how to deal with Iran. Many of those who oppose taking action argue that we cannot be certain of Iran's unwholesome intentions until we obtain some definite confirmation. But this objection holds no water. Aggressive by nature, totalitarian regimes spoil for confrontation and there is no reason to assume that Iran would be an exception. Even more importantly, we have numerous statements by Iran's president which make his belligerent intentions all too obvious. What more do we need? What intelligence could be more unequivocal?

As a totalitarian regime Iran is a troubled and unstable country. It is absurd that the world's lone superpower should be afraid to deal with it in the way that is necessary to prevent a great tragedy. Iran is not strong and it can only become so if we allow it. History, experience and all the available facts tell us that a nuclear Iran would pose a tremendous danger. By now we know more than enough to do what is needed.

Vasko Kohlmayer   5 04 06