Guest post by Daniel Luban:<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, Danielle Pletka<\/a> and Ali Alfoneh of AEI published a New York Times<\/em> op-ed<\/a> claiming that the real and unnoticed story of the Iranian elections is that the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) have \u00e2\u20ac\u0153effected a silent coup d\u00e2\u20ac\u2122etat\u00e2\u20ac\u009d overthrowing the clerics. Pletka and Alfoneh (a frequent collaborator of AEI\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Michael Rubin and Frederick Kagan, who have been spearheading the think tank\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s anti-Iran campaign) took a notably dim view of the protesters\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 prospects, arguing that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the uprising is little more than a symbolic protest\u00e2\u20ac\u009d that has been crushed by the IRGC.<\/p>\n But on Wednesday, Michael Ledeen<\/a> lashed out at Pletka and Alfoneh<\/a>, calling their op-ed \u00e2\u20ac\u0153embarassingly silly\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. Ledeen argues that far from being ineffectual, the protesters are actually on the verge of toppling the Islamic Republic, and that the IRGC and clerics are united against them. (This is in line with Ledeen\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s longstanding view that the secular-minded and pro-American Iranian populace despises the Islamic Republic and is simply waiting for American aid to rise up and overthrow it.)<\/p>\n Regardless of the issues at stake, it is quite striking to see neocons go after their own in such harsh language. We suspect that Ledeen\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s bellicosity may have less to do with his actual policy disagreements with Pletka and Alfoneh, and more to do with the fact that Pletka is rumored to have purged Ledeen<\/a> and others from AEI last year, necessitating his move<\/a> to his current perch at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Guest post by Daniel Luban: On Tuesday, Danielle Pletka and Ali Alfoneh of AEI published a New York Times op-ed claiming that the real and unnoticed story of the Iranian elections is that the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) have \u00e2\u20ac\u0153effected a silent coup d\u00e2\u20ac\u2122etat\u00e2\u20ac\u009d overthrowing the clerics. Pletka and Alfoneh (a frequent collaborator of AEI\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Michael […]<\/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-5791","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\/5791","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=5791"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5791\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5792,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5791\/revisions\/5792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5791"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=5791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}