In an amazing prophetic book written early this year well before its thesis was affirmed by uproarious millions on the streets of Tehran, Ledeen vindicates his decades of uncanny analysis of the apocalyptic cult that rules Iran.
As he points out, revolutions have succeeded the Ukraine, Georgia, the Philippines, Lebanon, South Africa, and even the Soviet Union where the KGB and Stasi failed to suppress the opposition. With concerted aid from the US and Israel, revolution can triumph in Iran as well. He points to evidence of the people's acute demoralization, signaled by the collapse of Iranian fertility since 1980 from between 5.6 in cities and 8.4 in rural areas to sub replacement levels today. Most Iranians hate their leaders.
The key to success is not some feckless campaign using sanctions and diplomacy. This well worn approach will reliably strengthen and legitimate the regime while draping their nuclear and missile programs with a pettifogging cloak of legalism like the one applied by obsequious UN shysters in North Korea. The key is overthrowing the regime. Make them recall vividly what happened to Saddam. Ledeen now believes that Iran is replete with rebel leaders and that U.S. or Israeli support would be welcomed.
Ledeen's theme is the perennial blindness of the enlightened world to the burgeoning darkness. He pillories the willingness of respectable experts to succumb to the devil's wiles of self-denial in a murk of relativism in which evil remains invisible and thus victorious and even ascendant despite its pathetic actual vulnerability to a still hugely more powerful and virtuous West.
The threat today is Iran and its allies in the global jihad, Shiite and Sunni alike (Ledeen usefully refutes the silly idea that Iran's kleptocratic mullahs refrain out of theocratic nuance from alliance with any available horde of antisemites). But Ledeen is correct that their cause encompasses many more nearby accomplices. Crucial are the bearers of the Oslo syndrome of compulsive peace processing that today are mobilizing public sentiment, legal machinations, and military maneuvers to render Israel an international pariah pickeled and parcelled for destruction by its enemies.
I began reading this book impulsively at midnight after taking a sleeping pill and finished it at four thirty a.m. I assure you from experience that no pill or UN placebo or State Department smarm or stupid self-destructive program of syrupy sanctions can save you from Ledeen's imperious challenge. What side are you on anyway?
George Gilder