Former CIA Operations Officer Gary Berntsen On Trump And The Gutting Of The Islamic Republic Of Iran

Gary Berntsen, a retired CIA Operations Officer, former Iraq Desk Officer, former Chief of Hezbollah Operations, three-time CIA Station Chief, and author, offers a piece in the Dallas Express on President Trump’s war on Iran.

I entered the Central Intelligence Agency in 1982 as part of the Career Service Trainee Program. By 1983 I was a trainee in the Near East Division’s Arab North section, responsible for Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and Iraq. I became the Iraq Desk Officer the day after Iranian-backed and directed Hezbollah terrorists blew up our embassy in Beirut, killing half a dozen of my CIA colleagues.

I was present at the creation of Hezbollah as a lethal force. For the next three decades my home base remained the Near East Division, covering the Middle East and South Asia. I studied Persian, served in an Iranian Operations Group dedicated to countering the regime, and later became Chief of Hezbollah Operations in the Counterterrorism Center. I served as CIA Station Chief three times. Throughout those years I had a front-row seat to the murderous operations of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. What I witnessed across Republican and Democratic administrations was the same recurring failure: presidents unwilling to confront this self-avowed enemy for fear of “expanding the conflict.”

After Iran and Hezbollah slaughtered 241 U.S. Marines in Beirut in 1983, President Reagan ordered Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger to strike the IRGC at the Sheikh Abdullah Barracks in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. Weinberger balked. Reagan did not overrule him. The signal to Tehran was unmistakable: murder Americans and pay no price. George H.W. Bush refused to hold Iran accountable for its continuing terrorism. The Clintons suppressed intelligence implicating Iran and Hezbollah in the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing that killed 19 U.S. airmen in Saudi Arabia. George W. Bush never confronted Iran over the deadly explosively formed penetrators (EFPs) its Quds Force supplied to Shia militias that killed and maimed hundreds of American troops in Iraq.

Then came the deepest betrayal: Barack Obama and Joe Biden sought to realign the Middle East by accommodating and legitimizing this murderous regime through the disastrous JCPOA nuclear deal and its successor policies. For fifty years, from Reagan to Biden, both parties chose restraint, diplomacy, and wishful thinking over decisive action.

Only one president in that half-century has shown the courage and fortitude to face this enemy head-on: Donald J. Trump. Trump’s decision to align fully with Israel in a sustained offensive has gutted the Islamic Republic of Iran in ways previous administrations could only imagine.

You can read the rest of the piece via the link below:

OPINION | Trump And The Gutting Of The Islamic Republic Of Iran 

You can also read my Counterterrorism magazine Q&A with Gary Berntsen via the link below:

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