The recent revelation of Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates’ January memorandum to senior White House officials apparently outlining a range of options for dealing with Iran’s persistent drive to achieve nuclear-weapons capability is most timely. On April 19, hard-line Iranian authorities banned the country’s two remaining official “opposition” parties – the Islamic Iran Participation Front and the Mujaheddin of the Islamic Revolution Organization. Neither of these organizations was a pillar of democracy or threatened Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s “religious” dictatorial control of the country. Nonetheless, the elimination of these two parties shows the paranoid mentality of the Ahmadinejad regime.

Personally I think that the report is mind-blowing. Not because the information is new (we have tried to give most of this information to different stakeholder-states, including the U.S. for some years now), but rather because the report clearly reveals that the U.S. is very well aware of Iran’s military activities, but at the same time the U.S. seems completely lost regarding how to thwart Iran’s efforts to attain nuclear weapons and become the dominant military power in the region.

Just a couple of days ago Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a forum at Columbia University that “Iran getting a nuclear weapon would be incredibly destabilizing. Attacking them would also create the same kind of outcome.”

It is quite obvious that the Obama administration essentially has no strategy for dealing with Iran; they are only pondering two alternatives attacking Iran (which they are not really thinking about) and letting Iran attain nuclear weapons and hope for the best.

But there is a third alternative that would benefit everyone, and that is to support and empower Iran’s democratic and secular opposition in order to bring about regime change. But it seems that the Obama administration doesn’t even consider this as an alternative.

Iran’s selected president, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, is currently in Afghanistan to meet with Afghan president Hamid Karzai. During a press conference yesterday Ahmedinejad claimed that the United States has created the terrorists in Afghanistan.

It has been evident for years now that Iran supports different armed groups in Afghanistan. Iran even supports its former archenemy, the Taliban’s. From the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in 1996 to the US invasion, the Taliban confronted Iran. The Taliban undermined both the Iranian regime’s claim to moral leadership of Muslims in the region and they also threatened Iran’s security by conducting cross-border attacks from time to time.

But this has not stopped the Iranians from supplying the Taliban with both weapons and money:

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Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has also opened a corridor for drug smuggling inside Iran for the Taliban to use to export Afghanistan’s vast amount of opium to countries outside of the region.

As in the case of Iraq, Iran has a large influence in Afghanistan and one of the major threats to the stabilization of Afghanistan comes from Iran and its proxy war against the United States.

The election process has been hailed as relatively democratic, despite evidence of fraud (tens of thousands of Kurds was according to reports denied the right to vote). The election results haven’t been announced yet, but whatever the result the different blocs will be forced to negotiate some kind of coalition government.

But beneath the surface of the election process the influence of Iran is evident. Long before the election campaign began Iran provided millions of dollars, campaign materials, political training to several groups and political parties in Iraq in order to influence the election.

Both influential and less influential Iraqi politicians travelled to Tehran before the election to secure Iranian backing and Iran welcomed all of them. The different political organizations that do not have any direct link to Iran attempts to avoid any form of conflict with Iran; everyone knows that a conflict with Iran will have serious consequences for any organization in Iraq.

For most Iraqi politicians Iranian support is vital and Iran is utilizing this need of support to its own benefit. The Iranians are everywhere in Iraq, in the political, economical and social sphere. There is no other country in the region that has as much influence in Iraq.

Iran supports everyone from secular to Islamist to militant groups and from small to large political organization. The strategy seems clear; Iran wants to have influence in all of the different political groupings in Iraq and Iran is some times pitting the different groups against each other and at other times Iran attempts to force them to collaborate with each other when it suits the interests of Iran.

And now that the election is over the political process of forming a government in Iraq will begin and Iran will do everything in its power to secure a pro-Iranian government. Iranian diplomats and secret agents are jockeying back and forward between different political groups attempting to bribe them and if that fails they will try to force them to do what Iran wants.

Based on the United States decision to pull its troops out of Iraq different political groups in Iraq are more inclined to do as Iran wants, because Iran will without a doubt become the major power in Iraq when the Americans leave. The different political groupings in Iraq knows this and this will have an crucial mark on the formation of the next government in Iraq.

Obama’s remarks on the election in Iraq and his decision to pull out the American forces (see video below) might sound as a President keeping his election promise, but in the ears of Iraqi politicians it sounds like a signal to start rethinking their political future and for the Iranians it sounds like another victory.

Iran will also continue to use its influence in Iraq and other parts of the region, like Lebanon, Afghanistan and Palestine, to push back the United States from the region. The Iranians will also use their nuclear program to continue to push for more power and as long as the United States only focuses on Iran’s nuclear program and don’t take pre-emptive measures to halt Iran’s growing influence in the region, the regime in Iran will be able to continue to do as they want in the region.

The Obama administration’s Iran policy has failed dramatically. Obama’s efforts to engage the regime in Iran failed, its efforts to pressure Iran on the nuclear issue are failing and has even led to a potential conflict with China. The EU follows suit. But a noteworthy change is that the IAEA, after that El-Baradei left the agency, has stepped up its pressure on Iran. But this will not change Iran’s policy to pursue nuclear weapons, because the framework in which the agency works makes it possible to manipulate.

Efforts to impose sanctions on Iran (especially in its “crippling” form) will most probably fail; China and Russia will hinder any such efforts. A military attack, especially if it only targets Iran’s nuclear plants, will also fail and could even lead to strengthening the regime. The IAEA’s new approach could help the U.S. and its allies to put more pressure on Iran, but it in the end it will not bring about any real change.

As for the self-described experts proposal to unconditionally engage Iran, one can only hope that the proposal is rooted in some kind of ultra-radical realism and that the individuals working for this approach are not stooges of the Islamic Republic. The proposal to ignore Iran and hope that the problem will wither away is quite amusing but not a practical.

The mistake that both governments and pundits in the West does in regard to Iran is that they change their policies and views based upon social and political changes in Iran, which they often misunderstand or misinterpret due to lack of understanding and information about the reasons behind these changes. A very recent example is that when the expected demonstrations on the anniversary of the 1979 Revolution in Iran didn’t turn out to be as large and as violent as expected, pundits and so called experts declared the opposition movement, that staged several anti regime demonstrations after the June 2009 presidential elections, dead.

Assuming that the regime has total control and that there will be no more demonstrations because the regime managed to prevent large demonstrations on the anniversary of the revolution is wrong. The opposition will grow and become more effective.

Even though the first demonstrations began as a reaction to the election fraud that took place during the Presidential election, the actual reason behind the demonstrations was a deep-rooted dissatisfaction with the rule of the Islamic regime.

Realistically, the only chance that Iran’s nuclear program is halted is if the regime is changed and the system of the Islamic Republic is changed into a secular and democratic system of government.

The fact that the demonstrations have not spread to regions in which Kurds, Balochs, Arabs, Turkoman and Azeris are in majority is the largest problem that the movement faces. These nationalities fear that their legitimate demands will not be met if individuals that are loyal to the Islamic Republic comes to power.

But as the demonstrations have continued and the real demands of the people in large cities like Tehran have become similar to those of the different nationalities, the possibility that these nationalities will join the demonstrations have increased dramatically.

For this to be possible, the struggle of the freedom-seeking people of Iran needs the support of governments that have a direct interest in removing the current regime. This support should not be short termed and it should not depend on the current regimes willingness or unwillingness to negotiate about its nuclear program.

Western governments should support the opposition morally, politically and in any other way that could help the democratic opposition to overthrow the Islamic Republic. Regime change will not only be in the interest of the people of Iran, but it will also bring about stability in large parts of the Middle East and it will also be in the direct interest of Western states.

After listening to Hillary Clinton talking about how Iran’s Revolutionary Guard is “supplanting” the government of Iran one really becomes bewildered by the United States Iran-policy.

Apparently, the US believes that the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, and Mahmoud Ahmedinejad are powerless figures, who are being controlled by the Revolutionary Guard. It seems that the fact that both Ahmedinejad and Khamenei have roots in the Revolutionary Guard – and that one of the main reasons behind the ever-increasing power of the Revolutionary Guard is the support that Khamenei bestows upon the organization – has eluded the Obama administration. This is somewhat disturbing, most of us presumed that a state that has been in a constant conflict with Iran during the last 31-years should know more about the power structure of its enemy.

But what is more disturbing is that the US apparently believes that Khamenei and Ahmedinejad are the legitimate rulers of Iran, but they have the unfortunate luck of being “supplanted” by the Revolutionary Guard.

In the video above, Congressman Rob Andrews expresses the fundamental problem with the United States policy towards Iran, the Fox News anchor makes a couple of important points, but it is strange that the U.S. still doesn’t understand that:

1. Sanctions will not cause a change in the Islamic Republics behavior.

2. The U.S. will not be able to persuade Russia and China to go along with the United States Iran policy.

3. The only way to stop Iran’s nuclear program is through regime change.

4. And regime change will only be possible if the democratic and secular opposition is supported and empowered so that they can change the regime from within.

Read – US investigates nuclear trigger as Tehran damns bomb ’scenario’

Read – US House passes Iran sanctions bill amid nuclear row

Read – Iran’s Mottaki defiant on UN nuclear sanctions threat

Read – Iran will not bow to sanctions

Watch – Iran’s Smoking Gun:

It is quite absurd to expect anything else from Iran, they will prolong this Cat and Mouse game as long as they can, and the U.S. only seems more and more desperate by refusing to accept the reality that Iran will not go along with he p5+1 proposal to send large portions of its uranium to Russia and France.

But as always, the possibility of new sanctions is always in the air, and new meetings are planed to talk about how to handle Iran. The whole Iran nuclear deal is becoming more and more ridiculous, everyone knows that Iran won’t go along with Western demands, but the U.S. and its allies insist on grasping for straws.

The poll shows that:

worries about Iran developing nuclear weapons most common among Americans: 82% say that this would be a major threat to the well-being of the U.S. Similarly, concerns are widespread in Western Europe — large majorities in Spain (81%), Germany (79%), Italy (78%) and France (74%) view Iran’s emergent nuclear capabilities as a major threat.

But the poll also shows that:

This view is less common among Eastern Europeans. Still, 69% of Czechs view Iran’s potential nuclear capabilities as a threat, as do more than six-in-ten in Poland (65%), Bulgaria (63%) and Lithuania (62%). Roughly half in Slovakia (52%) and Hungary (46%) express worry about Iran developing a nuclear capacity.

By contrast, there is less concern about this issue in Russia, which, as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, has veto power over any UN effort to impose sanctions on Iran. Just over four-in-ten Russians (41%) say Iran’s potential nuclear status poses a major threat to their country, while 48% deem it only a minor threat or not a threat at all. Ukrainians are even less worried — only 27% say Iran’s emergent nuclear status is a major threat to their country, while nearly half (48%) say it is a minor danger or no danger at all. Many in Ukraine say they don’t know (26%).

The difference between the West and East in this regard has a lot to do with Russia and China’s policy to downplay the threat of Iran developing nuclear weapons. Both Russia and China has economic and strategic interests in Iran, and they are afraid that any pressure on Iran could lead to those interests being threatened, but both of these countries are also using Iran as tool to get more incentives out of the U.S. and other Western countries.

The problem with Russia and China’s policy is potentially twofold, first these two countries believe that Iran would never become threat towards them, but the reality is that Iran wants to play a major role in world politics and it could be just a matter of time before Iran grows strong enough to challenge Russia and China. But more important than that is the growing feeling amongst Iranians that Russia and China do not act in the interests of Iran and that they are a major reason why the regime is able to hold on to power.

An example of this is that we have heard demonstrators in Iranian cities shout “death to Russia and China” when the regimes supporters shout “death to America and Israel”. And this shift of opinion should worry Russia and China more than any possible pressure from the U.S. or other Western countries.