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kalikshama -> 'The Twilight War' Between The U.S. And Iran (7/24/2012 6:05:49 PM)
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Very interesting interview today. The author has an incredible level of access. He's also a senior historian for the Defense Department, and has written books that are so classified that only 5 people have read them.
Romney's rhetoric indicates that he will also make "axis of evil" blunders.
http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=157248254
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. My guest David Crist has written a new book about the secret war between Iran and the U.S., one that has gone on for 30 years. The book is called "The Twilight War," and it details conflicts that have frustrated six American presidents, involved Iranian-backed acts of terrorism, ongoing failures of diplomatic dialogue and several times that nearly led to war.
This history explains how we got to where we are today, with no diplomatic contact and the U.S. coordinating international sanctions against Iran's nuclear program. Crist has a unique perspective on this conflict. As a colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps, he made two tours with the elite Special Forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. His father, General George Crist, was the commander of CENTCOM from 1985 to '88.
David Crist is now a senior historian for the Defense Department, but the book reflects his own analysis and does not represent the views of the government. The book is based on documents released through his Freedom of Information Act requests, his father's papers and hundreds of interviews with people ranging from CIA officials to members of Hezbollah.
...GROSS: So after the U.S. government turns down Iranian President Khatami's request to go to ground zero and light a candle and to bring additional Revolutionary Guard officers to the security talks in Geneva, shortly after that, President Bush gives his axis of evil speech, and Iran is surprised to hear that they are included in the axis of evil. What did you learn about Iran's reaction to the axis of evil speech?
CRIST: They were stunned. In fact, what it leads to is a complete cutoff by the Iranians of the talks we were having in Geneva and Paris, these quiet talks we were having that started with Afghanistan. They completely cut them off. They released a pretty nasty Afghan warlord they'd been holding, deliberately to tweak the American nose. And it really soured many Iranians who had been hopeful that this might lead to better relations between the two countries.
It seemed like the U.S., from their perspective, was back to its old habits of name-calling and bashing Iran and lumping them with the likes of al-Qaida and North Korea.
GROSS: And so tension increases between the two countries. How serious do you think the Bush administration ever was about making Iran the next Iraq, the next target of regime change?
CRIST: It might very well have come up had Iraq - had the war in Iraq gone better. However, having said that, there is no evidence that I've uncovered - and I've gone through just about everything - that there ever was a secret Iranian war plan, that after Iraq, we're immediately going to take on Iran. There wasn't much stomach, even amongst the hardliners in the Bush administration, for a real war with Iran.
It's just a big country. It's much more powerful than Saddam Hussein was. What they had hoped Iraq would do was have a - the term they used in their memos was a coercive effect on Iran, that between the sight of free elections, or the Shia in Iraq would make Iranian people think that why can't we have that same thing here, and that it would sort of start to subvert the regime, as well as make the regime nervous that maybe there are next with U.S. forces on their border, both of Afghanistan and Iraq.
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