{"id":5299,"date":"2009-02-09T13:22:58","date_gmt":"2009-02-09T21:22:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=5299"},"modified":"2009-02-09T13:22:58","modified_gmt":"2009-02-09T21:22:58","slug":"ledeen-once-again-has-his-hand-on-the-iranian-pulse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2009\/02\/09\/ledeen-once-again-has-his-hand-on-the-iranian-pulse\/","title":{"rendered":"Ledeen Once Again Has His Hand on the Iranian Pulse"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michael Ledeen<\/a>, who 25 months ago announced to the world that Iran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had died \u00e2\u20ac\u201d he got this from such an exclusive source that not even Amir Taheri<\/a>, another neo-con fantasist, could confirm or deny the story \u00e2\u20ac\u201d once again has his hand on the pulse of the Iranian people (and possibly a mind meld on the Supreme Leader himself). In an op-ed<\/a> published by the reliably hard-core Wall Street Journal<\/em> editorial page today, Ledeen, who, apparently due to apparently irreconcilable differences with Danielle Pletka<\/a>, took his \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Freedom Chair\u00e2\u20ac\u009d at the American Enterprise Institute<\/a> (AEI) to the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) front known as the Foundation for Defense of Democracies<\/a> (FDD), not only connects last week\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s successful Iranian satellite launch with \u00e2\u20ac\u0153medieval Shiite texts\u00e2\u20ac\u009d heralding the return of the 12th Imam and the end of days, but also reprises his certitude (dating back many years now) that the Iranian people are ready to rise in revolt against their regime.<\/p>\n

The argument predictably concludes that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153(T)he U.S. must not make the mistake of limiting demands (on Iran) to the nuclear program. A free Iran must be the objective,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and, while the logic of the whole article is a howl \u00e2\u20ac\u201d no doubt adding fodder to the Journal<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s news staff\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s contention that the paper doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t need a comics section because you can find it on the editorial pages \u00e2\u20ac\u201d what is most interesting is the direct appeal to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as the Obama official most likely to argue Ledeen\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s position within the administration. So it seems as if even hard-line neo-cons like Ledeen see Clinton as the link in the new power configuration that may be most susceptible to their arguments for aggressive \u00e2\u20ac\u0153democracy promotion\u00e2\u20ac\u009d abroad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Ledeen, who 25 months ago announced to the world that Iran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had died \u00e2\u20ac\u201d he got this from such an exclusive source that not even Amir Taheri, another neo-con fantasist, could confirm or deny the story \u00e2\u20ac\u201d once again has his hand on the pulse of the Iranian people […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-5299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5299"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5300,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5299\/revisions\/5300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5299"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=5299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}