'Pentagon: Iranian Military Doctrine Is 'Defensive' -Security Expert: 'This Is the Very Definition of Incoherence'

 

Garth Kant / WND

WASHINGTON – A Pentagon report claims Iran’s military doctrine is primarily “defensive,” but one of the nation’s top specialists on the Islamic theocracy calls the assertion “completely off the mark.”

In fact, Clare Lopez of the Center for Security Policy points out the Pentagon actually contradicts that claim itself, in its own report.

“In one sentence the report describes the regime’s ‘aggressive policies, such as use of covert action and terrorism’ and then reverses itself by calling such policies ‘primarily defensive,’” Lopez told WND.

“This is the very definition of incoherence,” she added.

The Washington Free Beacon obtained a copy of the report, which is dated January 2015, and was due to Congress at the start of the year. Analysts told the Beacon, “the delay appeared designed to avoid upsetting Tehran and the nuclear talks.”

Lopez, who honed her analytical acumen during 20 years as a CIA field operative and who has served as an instructor for military intelligence and Special Forces students, told WND, “The Pentagon clearly is completely off the mark when it characterizes Iran’s military doctrine as defensive.”

Indicating there was nothing in the report to suggest Iran had changed its stripes, Lopez cited a litany of specific historical instances of aggression either carried out, or supported by, Iran that were anything but defensive:

• The Beirut Marine barracks bombing by its Hezbollah terror proxies in 1983.

• The Iranian operational terror alliance with al-Qaida in the early 1990s.

• The Buenos Aires terror attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets in 1992 and 1994.

• The terrorist attack on Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996.

• The East Africa Embassy bombings of 1998.

• The attack on the USS Cole in 2000.

• The Sept. 11 attacks of 2001.

• All the funding, support, training and weapons (like Explosively Formed Projectiles and Improvised Explosive Devices) that Iran provided the Iraqi Shi’ite terror militias to kill and maim American troops.

• Continuing Iranian regime support to Islamic terror groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.

• Support to the genocidal regime of Bashar al-Assad.

“This list could go on much longer, but there is virtually nothing about the Iranian military doctrine that isn’t offensive,” summed up Lopez.

Read more at WND:

http://www.wnd.com/2015/06/pentagon-iranian-military-doctrine-is-defensive/