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LEDEENISM BACKFIRES IN IRAN. Laura Secor reports that Iranian regime-change advocate Michael Ledeen's writings are being used as a pretext to crack down on civil society reformers in Iran:
The reform era, Amir explained to me, may not have accomplished all Iranians had hoped it would in terms of structural political change. But it had opened a space that had not existed before. Khatami had made it possible for some 37,000 nongovernmental organizations to take root, addressing a panoply of social issues and human rights concerns at a granular level. In time, Amir insisted, even when the political space for reform had closed, this civil society could quietly grow, becoming a powerful force for change.But there was a problem. The government had become convinced that the United States planned to finance and train these activists to overthrow the Islamic Republic, much as it had done in Serbia and elsewhere. In leaked intelligence reports Amir had seen, the regime had meticulously documented its case: "They quote the American Enterprise Institute and Michael Ledeen, as well as the statements of President Bush about civil society," he told me. On the basis of such evidence, the regime was pursuing an aggressive campaign against nongovernmental organizations as well as individual activists and journalists it named as part of a "spider's web" woven by the CIA.No response yet from Ledeen.--Garance Franke-RutaAmir implored me to bring the message back to the U.S. government and think tanks to please stop expressing solidarity with Iranian dissidents.
