It's totalitarianism in Iran. If they know modern COIN, it's incidental:
Rigi's televised confession alleged that he was recruited by high-level CIA and other US intelligence officials and did not strike me as credible as to its details, but it appears to have been widely believed by the Iranian public and to have hurt the image among them of the Obama administration, according to Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett.
-Juan Cole
There are people who insist that Iran's foreign policy is and will be ultimately pragmatic and realistic. They might also suggest that a careful regional understanding of the role of rhetoric should be made, including that people just say things to push buttons, to be evocative as much as provocative.
FULLY DETACHED FROM REALITY
How does one attach a foreign policy realism to a regime whose rhetoric is fully detached from reality and rooted the realm of non-falsifiable mythologies?
But, ask yourself, of what interest is Palestine or Lebanon to Iran? How does one attach a foreign policy realism to a regime whose rhetoric is fully detached from reality and rooted the realm of non-falsifiable mythologies?One can probably take these statements too much at face, and "justify" a pre-emptive strike through extrapolations and inferences. One can make allowances, too, that Iranian paranoia is not without justification - they are, no doubt, a target of probably more than one clandestine service worldwide.
Yet, the better summary is probably to suggest that Iran is a deeply unstable nation, rather than an "aggressor" de jure, especially insofar as it is unable to articulate or express political dissent of these detached views.
So, when people talk about a trust deficit at the heart of Iran's proliferation issues, the issue of who to trust with a full cycle of nuclear material creation becomes obvious. Even the issues of how to build trust and of reliability get called into question by such radical and un-moored "analysis" from the country's "elected" and judicially-sanctioned leader.
