United States History - 20th Century - General & Miscellaneous, Diplomatic Relations, Islam, Terrorism, Middle Eastern History, U.S. International Relations, Middle Eastern Politics

The Iranian time bomb

Name: The Iranian time bomb
Author: Michael A. Ledeen
ISBN: 9780312376550

by Ledeen, Michael A.

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Overview

The War Against the Terror Masters is a must-read guide to the terrorist crisis. Michael A. Ledeen explains in startling detail how and why the United States was so unprepared for the September 11th catastrophe; the nature of the terror network we are fighting—including the state sponsors of that network; the role of radical Islam; and the enemy collaboration of some of our traditional Middle Eastern "allies";—and, most convincingly, what we must do to win the war.

The War Against the Terror Masters examines the two sides of the war: the rise of the international terror network, and the past and current efforts of our intelligence services to destroy the terror masters in the U.S. and overseas. Ledeen's new book also visits every country in the Near East and describes the terrorist cancers in each. Among many revelations that will attract wide attention: *How the terror network survived the loss of its main sponsor, the Soviet Union. *How the FBI learned from a KGB defector—twenty years before Osama's bin Laden's murderous assault—of the existance of Arab terrorist sleeper networks inside the United States. *How moralistic guidelines straight-jacketed the FBI from even collecting a file of newspaper clippings on known terror groups operating in America. *How the internal culture of the CIA, and severe limitations on its ability to operate, blinded us to the growth of terror networks. And much more.

About the Author, Michael A. Ledeen

Michael A. Ledeen, a noted political analyst and highly knowledgeable about the Near East, is a resident scholar at the American Enterprises Institute. He is the author of Machiavelli on Modern Leadership and Tocqueville on American Character. A contributer to The Wall Street Journal, he lives and works in Washington, D.C.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly

Ledeen, a well-known conservative pundit on Iran, argues passionately for a bolder, better-reasoned American policy toward the Islamic republic. He presents compelling evidence that the Shiite regime has collaborated with al-Qaeda and other Sunni terrorist organizations, and that Iran's Supreme Leader has considered the goal of killing Westerners and Jews throughout the Middle East. In presenting his litany of Iranian perfidies, however, Ledeen can seem to overreach: he divines Persian influence in the siege of the Great Mosque in Mecca in 1979 and implies there's consensus that Tehran is harboring Ayman al-Zawahiri. Of 9/11 Ledeen writes, "[W]e have still not unraveled all the threads of the September 11 conspiracy. If we ever do, I suspect we will be amazed at the number of terrorist groups-and their national sponsors-that were involved in the conspiracy." The last third of this short book is dedicated to improving American policy toward Iran. One of the cooler heads at AEI and the National Review, Ledeen presents discussions not on bombs and tactical strikes, but on the moral, logistical and material support for Iranian dissidents, who he claims make up a clear majority of the population. While he may overestimate the potential for regime change in the near future, Ledeen's suggestions merit further discussion. (Sept.)

Kirkus Reviews

The folks who brought you the American hostage ordeal are now plotting worldwide jihad, as witness the recent Hamas uprising in Palestine. That's reason enough, insists Ledeen (Tocqueville on American Character, 2000, etc.), to go toe-to-toe with Tehran. The fundamentalist Iranian theocracy's revolutionary vision "has not changed in the twenty-eight years since the overthrow of the shah," writes Ledeen. That vision sees the West-and more particularly, the U.S. and Israel, its putative client state-as enemies that can only be pacified through annihilation. Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, may be a nutty Hitler worshiper, but, even though he's a member of a sect that Khomeini once outlawed, he's also sitting at the head of a government run by clerics who, it appears, are happy to precipitate a nuclear war in the interest of hastening Islam's answer to Armageddon and the end of the world. By Ledeen's account-and here rigorous documentation would have been welcome-the Iranian government is responsible for al-Qaeda, inasmuch as it trained al-Qaeda operatives, funded the 1998 embassy bombings in Africa, sheltered terrorists after the invasion of Afghanistan and is now busily inserting al-Qaeda operatives into Iraq. What is more, he holds that Osama bin Laden died-yes, died-in Tehran, or else why would Ayman al-Zawahiri have been acting for the last year as if he were in charge? Zawahiri is, of course, in Iran, but al-Qaeda "no longer exists as a separate entity," but is instead, like Hamas and Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, a subsidiary of the Shi'ite mullahs. What is to be done? Thankfully, Ledeen holds that bombing the faithful may not have the desired effect; instead, he urges that theIranian people be funded and supported in whatever way they wish toward the end of overthrowing the Islamic Republic, which has plenty of domestic opponents. Debatable, to be sure-but an urgent, interesting take on current geopolitics.