Kevin Sullivan

Smuggling Incompetence

Posted by Kevin Sullivan under Uncategorized

Michael on Iran’s Gaza gun smuggling:

It’s as simple as this: this constitutes an act of war against the state of Israel. For some reason, the international community responds to actions like these however by either ignoring them or pretending that it is a minor criminal act. It’s not. It’s very significant, and it should be treated as such.

Nuclear energy / weapons isn’t the only problem with Iran. Another major problem is that Iran is actively supporting terrorist organizations. We all know that, yet the West seems to be willing to accept it (probably because those terrorist organizations do not attack us directly, only our allies in the region).

Well, maybe.  Quite frankly, Iran and the United States have been engaging in a coldish proxy war since the Revolution.  The problem with turning it into an episode of diplomatic grandstanding is that such displays go both ways.  The Iranians have made an issue of alleged American support for Iranian separatist groups, most notably the Baluchis. 

I’m not a fan of this strategy of soft subversion.  A part of me would like to chide the Iranians for so incompetently dumping guns into the water, hoping the tides can do the Jihad for them.  But our own efforts in Iran are equally questionable, and their utility is debatable.  Despite the paranoia of the Iranian public, The CIA has never had very strong intelligence gathering capabilities in Iran, mostly due to the dearth of Farsi speaking super-spies.  The Shah kept us at arm’s length that way, and it has probably gotten worse since his fall.  Now we rely on expats for information, which is always a dubious proposition.  Point being–both sides have labored for over 25 years to subvert and irritate the other, with varied degrees of success.  If we want to take the Gaza smuggling as a direct act of war, than we had better be prepared for war. 

I don’t believe that we are.