Our Spies In Iran

“I want to categorically deny any United States involvement in any kind of act of violence inside Iran.”

(Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist)

“Allegations that Mr. Hekmati either worked for or was sent to Iran by the CIA are simply untrue.”
(U.S. Spokesperson Victoria Nuland on the death sentence for American Amir Mirzaei Hekmati in Iran)

Excuse me for not believing for an instant either of these denials. Not that I don’t think that the Iranian government is corrupt, tyrannical, violent, terrorist, dangerous, and just bad guys all the way around. But can anyone really believe that the United States isn’t thick in Iran with spies and assassins and drones and lord knows what else? It’s what we should be doing. We don’t have spies in Iran? We don’t have assassins – or are at least helping Israel with their assassins? Or course we do. There’s a long history of U.S. denial of spying, going back at least to Francis Gary Powers and the U-2 spy plane shot down over Russia in 1960 (we said at first it was a weather plane), and I’m sure it goes back much further, probably back through the Civil War and even Revolutionary War. Who admits to spying? No one, of course. (Remember last year when the U.S. claimed Iran had planned to kill the Saudi ambassador in a D.C. restaurant? Iran denied it.) But knowing that every country is doing it all the time makes the denials all the more absurd. And our government wonders why we don’t believe anything they say?