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OPINION

Jim Woolsey: Iran Pursuing 'Maniacal' Goal

Ronald Kessler By Wednesday, 29 February 2012 11:12 AM EST Current | Bio | Archive

Ronald Kessler reporting from Washington, D.C. “Speak softly and carry a big stick” was Teddy Roosevelt’s credo for America.

Former Director of Central Intelligence Jim Woolsey says President Barack Obama needs to go one step further in dealing with Iran.

“What we need to do is stay calm and reinforce our military,” Woolsey tells Newsmax. “We should send five carrier battle groups to the Indian Ocean with B-1s and B-52s and B-2s to Diego Garcia and go Teddy Roosevelt one better and don’t just speak softly: Don’t say a word, and they’ll get the idea.”

The forces should be capable of taking out the Revolutionary Guard, the main instrument of control in Iran.

Former Intel chief Jim Woolsey says President Obama must go further in dealing with Iran.
Former Intelligence Director
Jim Woolsey

(AP Images)
“The Revolutionary Guard is the principal element of oppression of the Iranian people, and it is also the principal element where the rulers have concentrated those parts of their national security program that are the most lethal and the most dangerous,” Woolsey says.

“Our forces should be prepared to take out their ability to close the Strait of Hormuz and to take out as much as one can of the ballistic missile program, the nuclear program, the training camps for the Quds Force, and everything related to the Revolutionary Guard,” the former intelligence director adds.

At the same time, the U.S. should “crack down finally, totally, and completely on the Iranian Central Bank, using all of the financial instrumentalities, including the Swiss system,” Woolsey says. “Don’t delay for a few months and have waivers and all of that. Go do it and crack down completely.”

Woolsey is not ready to say that Iran’s nuclear program should be taken out now. But he says, “We ought to be ready to do it and to deal a devastating blow to the Revolutionary Guard — not to the Iranian civilian infrastructure.”

Woolsey says there is no reason to take out the electric grid — as happened in Iraq — or the main Iranian army.

“They are not particularly a problem, and large portions of the army are very skeptical about the government in Tehran,” Woolsey says. “The point is to put the kind of force into the region that would let you quickly devastate the Revolutionary Guard, if you decide to do it.”

Asked if he agrees with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey’s recent comment that Iran is a “rational actor,” Woolsey likens Iranian leaders to Adolf Hitler.

“Hitler was one of the shrewdest and most rational operators the diplomatic world has ever seen,” Woolsey says. “He had the chanceries of Europe eating out of his hand. His objective was to kill all of the Jews and set up a thousand-year empire in Europe.”

While his objective was “sociopathic,” Hitler was intelligent and effective.

“He was a very shrewd operator, and just because somebody is shrewd and rational in his tactics, doesn’t mean that he has normal objectives that you and I would find reasonable and rational,” Woolsey says.

So, the former head of the CIA says, he “strongly disagrees” that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s objectives are rational.

“He has said many times he wants to wipe Israel off the map and to destroy Israel and the United States,” Woolsey notes. “Some of his followers want to start a war that would end the world. Now, you know, Ahmadinejad may be behaving quite rationally given that objective. You and I would say that objective is stark raving mad.”

The Iranians are “rationally following the steps they need to take in order to be able to destroy Israel and heavily damage the United States and exert their power in that part of the world,” Woolsey says. “They are shrewdly pursuing their theocratic, totalitarian, genocidal, maniacal goal.”

Aside from giving it unimaginable power over Israel and the U.S., Woolsey says, if Iran develops a nuclear weapon, “You will not have to wait a day before the Saudis, the Turks, and the Egyptians are busily constructing reactors and, under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, saying that they have every right to enrich uranium. And thereby, they will embark on a nuclear weapons program.”

Woolsey says he doesn’t know if Obama is up to taking out the Iran nuclear program and the Revolutionary Guard.

“If we haven’t taken all of the steps to shut down their finances yet,” Woolsey asks, “what in the world is it going to take?

Ronald Kessler is chief Washington correspondent of Newsmax.com. Read more reports from Ronald Kessler — Click Here Now.











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2012-12-29
Wednesday, 29 February 2012 11:12 AM
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