The Iranian Conundrum

As Barack Obama and John McCain thrash it out over how they would deal with Iran, voices from inside Iran are weighing in with an unusual message: If the United States strikes hard and fast, we will support you. Emissaries from inside Iran have been meeting with Iranian exiles in Europe, the United States, and elsewhere in recent weeks to deliver this provocative message, which they claim comes from pro-U.S. dissidents at the upper-most levels of the regime. “U.S. airstrikes must be powerful and sustained enough to break the myth of the regime’s absolute power and reveal the weakness of the leadership,” a former official who traveled outside of Iran recently said.

“The conventional wisdom is that limited strikes will allow the regime to rally the people around the flag,” says Mohebat Ahdiyyih, an Iran media analyst at the office of the director of National Intelligence. “However, if the U.S. launches a major strike that goes after the leadership in Iran, that’s different,” he told Newsmax. “Most Iranians hate the regime. People would be very happy to see a major strike that took out the leadership.” Mr. Ahdiyyih and other Iran analysts speaking at an American Enterprise Institute conference on Monday painted a picture of a bitterly-divided regime in Tehran that is “unstable” and fighting for its survival. “The situation is so bad that former president Mohammad Khatami has said that the hard-liners [close to president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad] are worse than al-Qaida,” Ahdiyyih said.