In a statement broadcast into Iran in mid-July, Bush promised unspecified U.S. “support” to “Iran’s people” as they “move toward a future defined by greater freedom.” And early this month, a top Bush aide said the current regime–both the elected government of reformist Mohammed Khatami and the unelected mullahs who dominate public life–was ineffectual. Speaking to an audience at the Washington Institute for Near East Affairs, National Security Council aide Zalmay Khalilzad did not call outright for a regime change in Iran, but didn’t argue when a questioner asserted that this was the policy’s aim. Khalilzad did not indicate any plan to use force, but promised to “reach out” to the Iranian people and find “ways and means” of helping them.
Richard Perle, chairman of Bush’s Defense Policy Board, recently invited a controversial French scholar to brief the outside advisers on “taking the Saudi out of Arabia.” When word leaked to the press, the Bush administration strongly denied it wanted to oust the Saudi royal regime. Still, some insiders continue to whisper about the possibility. Syria and even Egypt are now under discussion in neoconservative circles, along with North Korea and Burma.
“The thinking in the administration is really evolving toward the idea of promoting democracy and regime change–an overhaul of the Arab and Islamic world, rather than dealing with it as it is,” says Kenneth Katzman, a leading expert on Iran who works with the Congressional Research Service. Some military strategists worry that the talk of overthrowing other nations could jeopardize any invasion of Iraq. Tony Blair, the only foreign leader who might join in a U.S.-led intervention in Iraq, is asking tough questions. “He wants to know a lot more about what the administration’s real agenda is,” says a top Blair aide. Some Iraq-invasion scenarios under review have U.S. carriers steaming into the narrow Persian Gulf–a place where they’d be vulnerable to missile strikes from Iranian shore batteries. Richard Murphy, a former top State Department official dealing with the Mideast, warns the United States could lose Iran as a needed ally. “They will be pretty cautious about putting their hands firmly in ours, knowing we have a knife headed for their back.”
