Expert to Congress: Iran ‘Wants Us Dominated or Dead'

WASHINGTON -- Michael A. Ledeen, a former consultant to the National Security Council and to the U.S. State and Defense Departments delivered scathing testimony on Iran to the House Committee on International Relations this week, citing his fear "that the obsession with the nuclear question often obscures the central policy issue: That the Islamic Republic has waged war against us for many years and is killing Americans every week."

The author of the book, "The War Against the Terror Masters," held little back from the lawmakers with such polemics as, "They want us dominated or dead. There is no escape from their hatred, or from the war they have waged against us. We can either win or lose, but no combination of diplomatic demarches, economic sanctions, and earnest negotiations, can change that fatal equation. They will either defeat us, or perish."

The former commissioner of the U.S.-China Commission warned the lawmakers that in his opinion the terror war in Iraq is a replay of the strategy that the Iranians and the Syrians used in the 1980s to drive the United States and its French allies out of Lebanon: "Those Americans who believed it was possible to wage the war against terrorism one country at a time, and that we could therefore achieve a relatively peaceful transition from Saddam's dictatorship to an elected democracy, did not listen to the many public statements from Tehran and its sister city in jihad, Damascus, announcing in advance that Iraq was about to become the ‘new Lebanon.'"

The expert outlined a worst-case scenario that he suggested might unfold once Iran managed to put nuclear warheads on their intermediate range missiles: Read the rest here.