Unthinkable (65 page)

19.
 Sadjadpour, “Reading Khamenei,” p. 14.

20.
 Sadjadpour, “Reading Khamenei,” pp. 17–19, 22–24; Sadjadpour, “The Nuclear Players,” p. 126.

21.
 Takeyh,
Guardians of the Revolution,
p. 162.

22.
 Sadjadpour, “Reading Khamenei,” p. 20. See also Takeyh,
Guardians of the Revolution,
pp. 164–65.

23.
 Shahram Chubin, “Iran's Strategic Environment and Nuclear Weapons,” in
Iran's Nuclear Weapons Options: Issues and Analysis
, ed. Geoffrey Kemp (Washington, D.C.: Nixon Center, 2001).

24.
 For those interested, an English translation of Khomeini's Testament can be found at
http://www.imam-khomeini.com/web1/english/showitem.aspx?cid=1341&h=13&f=14&pid=1430
.

25.
 On the 1996 coup plot, see “Bahrain Coup Suspects Say They Trained in Iran,”
New York Times
, June 6, 1996; “Bahrain Holds 44 It Says Are Tied to Pro-Iran Plot,”
New York Times
, June 5, 1996; and Richard A. Clarke,
Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror
(New York: Free Press, 2004), p. 112. On annexing Bahrain, see Saud al-Zahed and Eila Jazaeri, “Iran's Khamenei-Run Newspaper Calls for Bahrain Annexation After GCC Union Talks,”
Al-Arabiyya
, May 16, 2012.

26.
 David Menashri, “Iran's Regional Policy: Between Radicalism and Pragmatism,”
Journal of International Affairs
60, No. 2 (Spring/Summer 2007): 155–56.

27.
 David Crist,
The Twilight War: The Secret History of America's Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran
(New York: Penguin Press, 2012), pp. 514–15.

28.
 Douglas Jehl, “For Death of Its Diplomats, Iran Vows Blood for Blood,”
New York Times
, September 12, 1998.

29.
 The composition and powers of this council are described in Article 111 of the Iranian constitution. An English translation is available at
http://www.iranonline.com/iran/iran-info/government/constitution-8.html
.

30.
 For a superb discussion of the mechanics and politics of succession in Iran, including the potential for a leadership council to retain power rather than an individual successor, see Alireza Nader, David E. Thaler, and S. R. Bohandy,
The Next Supreme Leader: Succession in the Islamic Republic of Iran
(Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 2011), esp. pp. 73–76.

31.
 For a superb account of the 2009 presidential elections and the dramatic events that followed, see Majd,
The Ayatollah's Democracy
, pp. 3–66.

32.
 For scholarly reports making the case that the 2009 election results were fraudulent, see for instance Ali Ansari, Daniel Berman, and Thomas Rintoul, “Preliminary Analysis of the Voting Figures in Iran's 2009 Presidential Elections,” Chatham House, June 21, 2009, available at
http://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files//files/01/90/66/f019066/public/Research/Middle%20East/iranelection0609.pdf
; Walter R. Mebane, Jr., “A Note on the Presidential Election in Iran, June 2009,” University of Michigan, June 29, 2009, available at
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~wmebane/note18jun2009.pdf
.

33.
 Casey L. Addis, “Iran's 2009 Presidential Elections,” R40653, Congressional Research Service, June 22, 2009, pp. 7–8; Robert Tait, Ian Black, and Mark Tran, “Iran Protests: Fifth Day of Unrest as Regime Cracks Down on Critics,”
Guardian
, June 17, 2009; Robert F. Worth, “A Struggle for the Legacy of the Iranian Revolution,”
New York Times
, June 20, 2009.

34.
 Ansari, “Iran Under Ahmadinejad,” pp. 12–14.

35.
 Numbers of killed during the Green Revolution is hotly disputed. A figure of about one hundred seems to be the consensus, but the sources for this figure are unclear. See “Iran Election: Faces of the Dead and Detained,”
Guardian
, January 28, 2010, available at
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2009/jun/29/iran-election-dead-detained
.

36.
 See for instance, Ali Ansari, “The Revolution Will Be Mercantilized,”
National Interest
, No. 105 (January/February 2010); Abbas Milani, “Iran: A Coup in Three Steps,”
Forbes
, June 15, 2009, available at
http://www.forbes.com/2009/06/15/iran-elections-khamenei-mousavi-ahmadinejad-opinions-contributors-milani.html
; Karim Sadjadpour, “Epilogue: The 2009 Iranian Presidential Election and its Implications,” in Tarzi, ed.,
The Iranian Puzzle Piece
, pp. 84–86.

37.
 Emanuele Ottolenghi,
The Pasdaran: Inside Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps
(Washington, D.C.: Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, 2011), pp. 37–39.

38.
 Ottolenghi,
The Pasdaran
, p. 29.

39.
 Ray Takeyh, “Iran's Missing Moderates,”
International Herald Tribune
, March 18, 2012.

40.
 Karim Sadjadpour, correspondence with the author, April 2013.

41.
 On the divisions among even Iran's current, uniformly hardline leadership see Ali Akbar Dareini and Brian Murphy, “Ahmadinejad Rivals Rack Up Parliament Wins in Iran,” Associated Press, March 3, 2012; Yeganeh Torbati, “Iran's Khamenei Warns of Government Divisions After Rial Plunge,” Reuters, October 10, 2012; Thomas Erdbrink, “Iran's Political Infighting Erupts in Full View,”
New York Times
, October 22, 2012; “Iran's Ahmadinejad Denied Visit to Evin Prison,” Reuters, October 23, 2012.

42.
 For a cogent argument that Iran's foreign policy is principally defensive, see Milani, “Tehran's Take,” pp. 46–62.

43.
 On this see, Geneive Abdo, “Iran's Internal Struggles,” in Patrick Clawson and Henry Sokolski, eds.,
Checking Iran's Nuclear Ambitions
(Carlisle, Pa.: U.S. Army War College, 2004), pp. 57–60.

44.
 Quoted in Amir Taheri,
The Persian Night: Iran under the Khomeinist Revolution
(New York: Encounter Books, 2009), p. 189.

45.
 “Iran's Struggle with America Should Continue,” Reuters, November 13, 2009,
www.reuters.com/article/2009/11/13/us-iran-usa-cleric-idUSTRE5AC21I20091113
.

46.
 Charlie Savage and Scott Shane, “U.S. Accuses Iranians of Plotting to Kill Saudi Envoy,”
New York Times
, October 11, 2011; Crist,
The Twilight War
, pp. 562–66.

47.
 Office of Public Affairs, “Two Men Charged in Alleged Plot to Assassinate Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the United States,” United States Department of Justice, October 11, 2011, available at
http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2011/October/11-ag-1339.html
.

48.
 Benjamin Weiser, “Man Pleads Guilty in Plot to Murder a Saudi Envoy,”
New York Times
, October 17, 2012.

49.
 On the Mykonos trial, see Roya Hakakian,
Assassins of the Turquoise Palace
(New York: Grove Press, 2011).

50.
 See David E. Sanger, “America's Deadly Dynamics with Iran,”
New York Times
, November 5, 2011. Most speculation focuses on Israel as having been behind those killings. While not impossible, it seems unlikely that the United States would have participated because of the extreme American aversion to assassination after the firestorm of the 1970s, in which CIA
involvement in a number of assassination plots was revealed, senior CIA officials were interrogated and embarrassed, new congressional oversight tools were established, and a sacrosanct executive order was issued prohibiting CIA participation in assassination. Since then, the CIA (as well as the U.S. military) has, to the best of anyone's knowledge, steered well clear of traditional assassinations.

51.
 On the Tanker War, see, Crist,
The Twilight War,
pp. 235–379; Kenneth M. Pollack,
The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict Between Iran and America
(New York: Random House, 2004), pp. 217–33; Steven R. Ward,
Immortal: A Military History of Iran and Its Armed Forces
(Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2009), pp. 279–96.

52.
 Crist,
The Twilight War
, pp. 511–37; Mohsen Milani, “Iran's Ties to the Taliban,” Iran Primer, United States Institute of Peace, August 10, 2011, available at
http://iranprimer.usip.org/blog/2011/aug/10/iran's-ties-taliban
; Khwaja Basir Ahmad, “Alleged Spies Say Iran's Revolutionary Guards Trained Them,” Pahjwok Afghan News, May 7, 2012, available at
http://www.pajhwok.com/en/2012/05/07/alleged-spies-say-iran's-revolutionary-guards-trained-them
; Aamer Madhani, “Experts Discuss Iran-Taliban Relationship,”
USA Today
, July 22, 2010.

53.
 For a superb encapsulation of how Iran dealt with the first year of the Arab Spring, see Suzanne Maloney, “Iran: The Bogeyman,” in Kenneth M. Pollack and Daniel L. Byman, eds.,
The Arab Awakening: America and the Transformation of the Middle East
(Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2011), pp. 258–67.

54.
 David Ignatius, “The ‘Day After' in Syria,”
Washington Post
, July 25, 2012.

55.
 For instance, see “Egypt's Top Cleric Voices Sunnis' Worries of Iran,” Associated Press, February 5, 2013.

56.
 Lolita C. Baldor, “U.S. Blaming Iran for Persian Gulf Cyberattacks,” Associated Press, October 12, 2012; Dan De Luce, “Cyber War on Iran Has Only Just Begun,” Agence France-Presse, July 13, 2012; Siobhan Gorman and Julian E. Barnes, “Iran Blamed for Cyberattacks,”
Wall Street Journal
, October 13–14, 2012.

57.
 Joel Greenberg and Simon Denyer, “Israel Blames Iran for India and Georgia Bombing Attempts; Tehran Denies Role,”
Washington Post
, February 13, 2012; Nicholas Kulish and Eric Schmitt, “Hezbollah Is Blamed for Attack on Israeli Tourists in Bulgaria,”
New York Times
, July 19, 2012.

58.
 For a good summary of Iranian support to various terrorist groups, see Kenneth Katzman, “Iran: U.S. Concerns and Policy Responses,” Congressional Research Service, RL32048, September 5, 2012, pp. 43–65.

59.
 For an excellent discussion of the anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism among Iran's
current leadership, see Reuel Marc Gerecht, “Should Israel Bomb Iran? Better Safe Than Sorry,”
Weekly Standard
15, No. 42 (July 26, 2010).

60.
 Dalia Dassa Kaye, Alireza Nader, and Parisa Roshan,
Israel and Iran: A Dangerous Rivalry
(Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 2011), pp. 57–77; Takeyh,
Guardians of the Revolution
, pp. 20–21, 62–69.

61.
 For a lovely and informative vignette of this community, see Majd,
The Ayatollah's Democracy
, pp. 212–53.

62.
 Mark J. Gasiorowski,
U.S. Foreign Policy and the Shah: Building a Client State in Iran
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991), pp. 120–24.

63.
 Trita Parsi,
Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2007), p. 145; Ray Takeyh,
Hidden Iran: Paradox and Power in the Islamic Republic
(New York: Times Books, 2006), p. 141.

64.
 Shahram Chubin,
Whither Iran? Reform, Domestic Politics, and National Security
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 73.

65.
 Gawdat Baghat, “Nuclear Proliferation: The Islamic Republic of Iran,”
Iranian Studies
39, No. 3 (2006): 307–27; Kaye, Nader, and Roshan,
Israel and Iran
, pp. 65–70.

66.
 “65 Suspects Arrested on Charges of Blast in Southeast Iran,” Fars News Agency, February 16, 2007; M. K. Bhadrakumar, “Foreign Devils in the Iranian Mountains,”
Asia Times
, February 24, 2007, available at
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IB24Ak$1.html
; “Iran: Many Die in Zahedan Mosque Bombing,” BBC, May 28, 2009, available at
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8072795.stm
; William Lowther and Colin Freeman, “U.S. Funds Terror Groups to Sow Chaos in Iran,”
Telegraph
, February 25, 2007; Mark Perry, “False Flag,”
Foreign Policy
, January 13, 2012, available at
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/01/13/false_flag?page=0,0
. It is worth noting that the United States has denied any involvement in these attacks. In 2010, the U.S. government designated the Baluch extremist group Jundallah a terrorist organization, thereby making it a crime for any U.S. government personnel to provide material support to them.

1.
 David Patrikarakos,
Nuclear Iran: The Birth of an Atomic State
(London: Tauris, 2012), pp. 14–82. See also Chris Quillen, “Iranian Nuclear Weapons Policy: Past, Present, and Possible Future,”
Middle East Review of International Affairs
6, No. 2 (June 2002): 17; Ray Takeyh,
Guardians of the Revolution: Iran and the World in the Age of the Ayatollahs
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 242–43; Steven R. Ward,
Immortal: A Military
History of Iran and Its Armed Forces
(Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2009), pp. 319–20.

2.
 Patrikarakos,
Nuclear Iran
, pp. 50–54.

3.
 Ibid., pp. 102–130; Takeyh,
Guardians of the Revolution
, p. 243.