A Daily Briefing on Iran: Opening the Book On Assad's Dark Deeds

George Melloan, The Wall Street Journal:

One consolation in dealing with the political thugs of the Middle East is that, like Jimmy Breslin's "Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight," they have a habit of screwing up. Saddam Hussein is in the dock now because he unwisely convinced the world that he was hiding weapons of mass destruction. The new president of Iran, former terrorist chief Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, thought he was leading a jihad rally when he was actually addressing world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly in New York in September. They were appalled.

Now we are learning just how naughty Syrian dictator Bashar Assad has been. U.N. investigator Detlev Mehlis has found powerful evidence that Bashar's closest buddies were responsible for the murder of former Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri last February. Mr. Mehlis's report fingers Assad's brother and brother-in-law, among others, and reads like a Frederick Forsyth thriller. He alleges that a complex conspiracy led to the huge explosion of a white Mitsubishi van that wrecked Mr. Hariri's armored Mercedes, killing him and 22 others. Mr. Hariri's friends said Assad had warned him earlier to back off on efforts to win Lebanon's independence from Syria. READ MORE

The French, who ruled Syria and Lebanon in colonial times, are now on the American side, unlike in 2003. The U.N. Security Council will meet today to discuss what to do about Assad and his gang. Regime change will no doubt be a topic, although exactly how that would be accomplished without the aid of military force will test the imagination of all those arguing for a "diplomatic" solution.

U.S. problems with Assad go well beyond the Hariri murder. Syria has been funneling foreign jihadists and their lethal roadside bombs into Iraq to kill American soldiers. Some of the worst attacks on the allies have been near the Syrian border. U.S. military authorities in Iraq last week reported that of the 312 foreign fighters -- from 27 countries -- captured since April, the second-highest number, 66, were Syrians. The largest number, 75, were Egyptians. Syria and Iran also support Mideast terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas. Bashar Assad's gang has not only been up to dirty business in Lebanon, it is effectively at war with the U.S.

That makes two. The aforementioned Ahmadinejad is also operating from the shadows to drive coalition forces out of Iraq. Britain has accused Iran of supplying terrorists with sophisticated hear-sensitive roadside bombs like the one that killed a soldier from the Coldstream Guards last week. Iran has responded by trying to link Britain with a bomb blast last week in the southwestern city of Ahvaz that killed six and wounded more than 100.

Both sides are denying involvement but this and evidence from intelligence sources makes it clear that Iran is a clandestine participant in the Iraq war. The election of Mr. Ahmadinejad to the Iranian presidency, carefully arranged by the Ayatollah Khamenei, was a signal that Iran is going onto something equivalent to a war footing, clamping down on internal dissent, placing hard-liners in key posts and strengthening the power of the Revolutionary Guards, who are the sword and shield of the ruling mullahs.

This is a serious trend because of Iran's transparent plans to equip its forces with nuclear missiles. A letter from a Ukrainian legislator, Hryhoriy Omelchenko, last February to President Viktor Yushchenko detailed an alleged sale of nuclear-capable cruise missiles to Iran. He wrote that the government of former President Leonid Kuchma in 1999 to 2001 had sold approximately 20 Kh-55 and Kh-55M air-launch cruise missiles abroad, of which six went to Iran and six to China. The Kh-55 is said to be able to carry a 200-kiloton nuclear warhead a distance of 1,800 miles. The Associated Press quoted an American embassy source in Kiev as saying the U.S. took the report very seriously.

Last month during what the mullahs called "holy defense" week, the Revolutionary Guards paraded ballistic missiles for President Ahmadinejad to view. On display, among others, were six Shahab-3 rockets with a range of 1,200 miles. The missiles carried banners saying "Death to Israel" and "Death to America," and the president shouted that anyone who attacks Iran will be destroyed "by these missiles." A rather hysterical outburst, one would think, given U.S. might -- but a few years from now such a threat will carry more weight if the present trend continues.

Iran's nuclear intentions should be clear to everyone by now. Mr. Ahmadinejad practically flaunted them at the U.N. when he accused the U.S. of "nuclear apartheid" for insisting that Iranian nukes would be unacceptable. Iran is trying to put pressure on Security Council members to vote against U.N. sanctions to punish Iran for its efforts to hide its bomb-making efforts from the International Atomic Energy Agency. Iran already has restricted trade with Britain and South Korea to try to split those countries away from the U.S.

This is the hostile milieu that surrounds the war in Iraq. Critics of George W. Bush and the allied invasion of Iraq are of course charging that Mr. Bush got us into a mess and that we need to get out. That would be a nice thought if it weren't impossible. The argument ignores a lot of history. Iran has been hostile toward the U.S. since the ayatollahs seized the government a quarter-century ago. Indeed, the very same Ahmadinejad is credited with engineering the 444-day imprisonment of American diplomats in the Tehran embassy in 1979-80. The Iranian bomb program began long before the Iraq invasion. And Syria, if anything, has been emboldened more by U.S. tolerance than by threats against the Assad dynasty. A thought to keep in mind: The jihadists started attacking the U.S., not the other way around, and well before 9/11.

Taming the Mideast will be a long, difficult slog, just as Mr. Bush said after 9/11. There is an alternative -- let the Assads, mullahs, jihadists and their ilk run rampant. By choosing that course, the U.S. would be welcoming them to bring their dark deeds once more to American soil.