A couple of days ago I commented on an article that indicated that Iran Republican Guards were active in Nicaragua, with the tacit approval of the Nicaraguan government. Yesterday the folks over that the Counterterrorism Blog pointed to an article in the Washington Post, as well as recent congressional testimony that corroborates some of the statements that I made in my rant.
I would ask that you read this news article that appeared in yesterday’s edition of the Washington Times, which reported on testimony by Director of National Intelligence McConnell about Iran’s increasing influence in Latin America. Clearly the situation where Iran making serious inroads into Latin America should give our nation’s leaders serious cause for pause! Over 45 years ago our nation stood on the brink of a war with the former Soviet Union when missiles from that communist nation were found to be situated in the Western Hemisphere. That moment in history is remembered as the “Cuban Missile Crisis.”
Go here to read the whole thing.
Mark Bowden’s book, Guests of the Ayatollah provides a deeper look at how our relationship with Iran turned with the fall of the Shah, and the hostage crisis of the 1970’s. Since this is not a discussion on US – Iranian relations of the 20th Century, please no flaming comments on the Shah or US Foreign Policy of the time.
I have been working my way through the Reagan Diaries lately as well. There are some telling entries in there as well, for example from 18 Jan 84:
…settled an action that we will take immediately against Iran if the Hisballah terrorists carrout their threat to punish as spies the 5 Americans they are holding in Lebanon.
It is amazing to me how much we have known about the reach and aspiration of Iran, and have not (apparently) taken action to better combat the threat. My apologies to those that may have been involved in direct action that has not come to light yet, but I am afraid that we are on the verge of entering a high threat period that can be traced back to Iran, and I get a bit up tight about that.
While I am on the topic, the good folks down at StratFor had some observations on a Mcain presidency that impact both Iran and Russia.
…implications of a “President McCain.” The deepest impact would be felt in Russia and Iran. McCain has become rather famous in Russia for saying that all he saw when he looked into Putin’s eyes were three letters: K, G and B. And Iran is more than a touch nervous about McCain’s assertion that the United States needs to think of its Iraq deployment in a manner similar to that of Germany or South Korea — a decades-long commitment.
If you do not know about and subscribe to StratFor you might want to look into it. I wish I had the ability to do the work that they do, and came up with the concept of building a business around it. It’s good stuff.