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How the Saudi money is hardening the US position toward Iran?
Short after signing a $110 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia to invigorate the Arab kingdom against Iran, Donald Trump administration has apparently taken a new anti-Iran step. The news regarding the appointment of a notorious agent as the head of Iran affairs sector in CIA has sparked many debates.
Tabnak – Short after signing a $110 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia to invigorate the Arab kingdom against Iran, Donald Trump administration has apparently taken a new anti-Iran step. The news regarding the appointment of a notorious agent as the head of Iran affairs sector in CIA has sparked many debates.
The New York Times on Friday published the name of what is believed to be an undercover CIA agent leading US operations related to Iran. The report said that Michael D'Andrea was recently named as the chief of Iran operations and described him as having the most responsibility in "weakening al Qaeda."
The paper cited some unnamed US officials as saying that D’Andrea’s new role is one of a number of moves inside the US spy agency that signal a more muscular approach to covert operations under the leadership of Mike Pompeo, the conservative Republican and former congressman.
The Newsweek writes in a separate report that D’Andrea is remembered among his colleagues for stepping up the CIA’s use of drone warfare, and for his involvement in the hunt to find Osama bin Laden, but some also hold him responsible for the deaths of seven CIA employees killed by an improperly vetted double agent in December 2009.
In the years after the Sept. 11 attacks, D’Andrea was deeply involved in the detention and interrogation program, which resulted in the torture of a number of prisoners and was condemned in a sweeping Senate report in 2014 as inhumane and ineffective.
D’Andrea is known as the Dark Prince or Ayatollah Mike, and was reportedly the mastermind of the 2008 assassination of Lebanon’s Hezbollah commander Imad Mughnieh in Damascus.
The Huffington Post describes the appointment as taking a potential step by the US closer to backing efforts plotted by Saudi Arabia and the UAE to destabilize Iran. According to the paper, Washington is now trying to topple the Islamic government in Iran and also force Qatar to fall into line with Gulf policies that target Iran, political Islam, and militants.
The report further clarifies that by such a move, the CIA is likely to take a more operational approach in confronting Iran in line with President Donald J. Trump’s Saudi and UAE-backed hard line towards the Islamic republic, which involves a possible push for regime change.
In fact, Mike Pompeo, an advocate in the past of military action against Iranian nuclear facilities, wrote last summer before his appointment by Trump as CIA director that "Congress must act to change Iranian behaviour, and, ultimately, the Iranian regime.”
All in all, it seems that Trump’s rapprochement with the Middle East Arab countries has not been restricted to just the arms deals and the US is actually taking steps toward satisfying its Arab allies the most, by entering an actual confrontation with Iran as their main rival and trying to undermine Iran’s power and influence in the region.
