Lying About Regime Change

Over at The Corner today, Michael Ledeen cranked out an angry response to a Washington Post op-ed by Zbigniew Brzezinski and William Odom. Specifically, he took issue with Brzezinski and Odom's claim that "The United States would have a better chance of success (with Iran) if the White House abandoned its threats of military action and its calls for regime change."

Here's Ledeen's (abbreviated) response:

It's a hoax. This White House ( I say with great regret) has NEVER called for regime change in Iran. On the contrary, this administration has constantly said that they want a change in behavior, and have not advocated a change of regime. . . .

This nonsense gets published and debated, as if there were anything to debate.

Never called for regime change? Here's a passage from a March 2006 front page story in the Washington Post:

The internal administration debate that raged in the first term between those who advocated more engagement with Iran and those who preferred more confrontation appears in the second term to be largely settled in favor of the latter. Although administration officials do not use the term "regime change" in public, that in effect is the goal they outline as they aim to build resistance to the theocracy.

"We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in Senate testimony last week. "We do not have a problem with the Iranian people. We want the Iranian people to be free. Our problem is with the Iranian regime."

In private meetings, Bush and his advisers have been more explicit. Members of the Hoover Institution's board of overseers who met with Bush, Vice President Cheney and national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley two weeks ago emerged with the impression that the administration has shifted to a more robust policy aimed at the Iranian government.

"The message that we received is that they are in favor of separating the Iranian people from the regime," said Esmail Amid-Hozour, an Iranian American businessman who serves on the Hoover board.

"The upper hand is with those who are pushing regime change rather than those who are advocating more diplomacy," said Richard N. Haass, who as State Department policy planning director in Bush's first term was among those pushing for engagement.

Ledeen may be right that the Bush Administration has never officially called for regime change in Iran, but I'm pretty sure the Iranian government looks beyond our official statements when attempting to decipher our intentions. And it doesn't take a very sophisticated intelligence operation to read the front page of the Washington Post.

So the idea that this is all some "hoax," that the Bush has never supported regime change in Iran, is ludicrous. Moreover, the idiocy of Ledeen's "point" becomes even more apparent when you consider the actual argument that Brzezinski and Odom were making, i.e., that when you threaten regime change in a country like Iran, all you do is strengthen that regime's desire and motivation to acquire nuclear weapons. The Iranians aren't stupid; they know that if they go nuclear, regime change will be instantly off the table and their hold on power will be secure from outside interference.

And they know that what our diplomats say in their official statements isn't the sum total of our government's thinking on foreign policy issues. When top Bush administration officials are telling reporters that the preferred policy is regime change, that has an enormous effect on our diplomatic posture vis-a-vis Iran. It's absurd to pretend otherwise.

Ledeen is a fool.