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?

The Iranian Hikers

First off, I’m glad that Sarah Shroud, the 32-year-old American hiker, has been released from imprisonment by the Iranian government, and I would hope that Iran would soon release her hiking compatriots, fiancé Shane M. Bauer and their friend Joshua F. Fatall, still being held on suspicion of espionage. Maybe they are all spies. I doubt it (though there’s a long history of the public not knowing what the government is up to). Let Iran prove it. But one thing I do know is that they are idiots. What in the fuck were they doing going for a hike along the border of Iraq and Iran, the former a country we’re at war with, the latter a country we may soon be at war with (and both countries on the Department of State's no travel list)? Why not hike the Appalachians? The North Shore of Lake Superior? Somewhere in Argentina? And to claim that the Iran/Iraq border is not well-marked (as Shroud did in explaining how they got into Iran, by mistake) is but to underscore their stupidity. But they are being portrayed in the press, if not as heroes, at least as victims. No, they’re not heroes or victims, they’re idiots. They shouldn’t be touted as champions of — what? freedom to hike? the right to be clueless? to be Americans? — but rather the inanity of youth. Chastened rather than acclaimed.