Fw: MILINET: Former CIA Chief: Iran 'Single Greatest Destabilizing' Force in 2012

["Don Greenlaw" <dgreenlaw@cox.net>]

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ANTHONY F MILAVIC
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Former CIA Chief: Iran 'Single Greatest Destabilizing' Force in 2012
By Catherine Herridge
Published January 05, 2012 | FoxNews.com




Tehran will be the top threat in 2012, former CIA Director Michael Hayden 
predicted Wednesday as Iran dominates foreign policy debate even while 
national security officials appeared to dismiss the Islamic Republic's 
latest threat to close the Strait of Hormuz.


"It is the single greatest destabilizing element right now with regards to 
global security," Hayden told Fox News, adding that the outlook is not 
encouraging.


"Of all the things that I left, when I was in government, the situation with 
Iran, and particularly their nuclear program has continued on a trajectory 
that gets darker with each passing day, week and month. They seem on this 
inexorable arc in the direction of a nuclear capability and there seems to 
be nothing that we or other like minded nations can do that will stop them."


Hayden who led the CIA from 2006 through 2009 and is now a principal with 
the Chertoff Group, which provides risk management and security services, 
said part of the problem is understanding the regime's intent.


"This government and its decision-making processes are incredibly opaque. 
And here we are, as a government trying to get them to change their mind, 
change their mind in a process that it is very difficult for us to identify 
where are the leverage points."


On Monday, Iran's army chief warned against a U.S. carrier returning to the 
Strait of Hormuz, the critical passageway that the U.S. monitors as part of 
international agreement to keep the shipping lanes open. The USS John C. 
Stennis had vacated the area while Iran's navy conducted war games in the 
Persian Gulf over a 10-day period.


The U.S. dismissed the threat as the result of Iran's growing isolation and 
a lashing out at the international community. Hayden said the threat doesn't 
even make logical sense since he doubts Iran would have the ability to close 
the strategic waterway for any length of time in any case.


"I'm creative enough to imagine circumstances internal to Iran where some 
faction or another might believe it's to their internal advantage to take 
such a dramatic action. But externally it just doesn't make any sense," he 
said.


"Number one, they need the straits as much, perhaps more, than anyone else, 
the free flow of oil, otherwise their economy is more in the tank than it is 
today. Number two, does closing the straits make Iran more or less isolated? 
... Does closing the straits make it more or less likely that someone will 
think it's a legitimate step to attack the nuclear facility at Natanz? I 
think it makes it more likely. So why would the Iranians do that?"


But Hayden warned that such a threat suggests that Tehran may commit an 
unforced error in the next year, which could have profound consequences.


"Who is likely to go dramatic in 2012? It's not us, I don't think it's the 
Israelis. I think it's the Iranians. And I think it's out of desperation and 
miscalculation. The isolation that they are undergoing right now is very 
severe. Their currency is dropped about one-third of its value in the past 
few weeks. And now with the imposition of sanctions against the Iranian 
national bank and the impact that will have on the oil industry, you are 
seeing great stresses within the Iranian leadership structure."


The alleged Iranian-backed assassination plot to target the Saudi envoy to 
Washington DC in November 2011 underscores the possibility of Iranian 
missteps.


"A country that's willing to try to kill Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi 
ambassador, at a Georgetown restaurant, through a Mexican drug cartel, is 
probably capable of a lot of things," he said.


Hayden, who in addition to being CIA chief also led the National Security 
Agency, said there is significant common ground between the Bush and Obama 
White House on Iran strategy.


"This is not an issue that we left the administration with easy answers, the 
current administration, with easy answers. We (the previous administration) 
struggled with this as well. There are no really good options. We have 
tools, we talk about the continuity between the two administrations when it 
comes to the war on terror, it's actually been a fair amount of continuity 
between the two administrations when it comes to Iran as well."


The first intelligence officer to reach the rank of four stars in the Air 
Force, Hayden added that the Bush administration wrestled with the same 
issues the current administration has to cope with, in part because, efforts 
to engage Iran have not gone according to plan.


"We had that interlude where we tried to engage Iran, and that of course did 
not end well. But by and large the administration has depended upon an 
international coalition. The administration has depended upon economic 
sanctions. The administration has depended upon attempts to isolate Iran, 
internationally. All of those are carrying forward policies developed during 
the previous administration. It's just a hard problem."


As for the effectiveness of a covert campaign in Iran, which has reportedly 
targeted nuclear scientists and nuclear facilities, Hayden would not comment 
directly but said from what he's read in the newspaper, "someone has a very 
aggressive covert action campaign apparently, against the Iranian program."


"And it appears to be setting the program back," he added. "The Iranians 
always made claims for their program, that the program was far more advanced 
than, than we knew it to be. I think we still see that today."


Fox News chief intelligence correspondent Catherine Herridge's bestselling 
book "The Next Wave: On the Hunt for al Qaeda's American Recruits," 
published by Crown, draws on her reporting for Fox News into al Qaeda 2.0. 
It investigates the new face of terrorism.


http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/01/05/former-cia-chief-iran-single-greatest-destabilizing-force-in-2012/