A former US National Security Adviser has admitted that there are US intelligence agents on the ground inside Iran and says they should focus on influencing Iranian behaviour.
Brent Scowcroft, the United States National Security Advisor under Presidents Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush, also told Josh Rushing, the host of Al Jazeera's programme Fault Lines, that aiding the protesters in Iran would provoke a more intense crackdown by the government in Tehran.
"An attempt to change the situation in Iran is likely to be turned against us and against the people who are demonstrating for more freedom." Scowcroft said.
"Therefore I think we need to look at what we can do best, which is to try to influence Iranian behaviour in the region." he added.
Scowcroft, a former Lieutenant General in the United States Air Force, also served as Military Assistant to Nixon, and latterly as Chairman of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board under President George W. Bush.
"Isn't it naive to think that the US doesn't have some kind of intelligence operatives on the ground in Iran?" asked Al Jazeera's Rushing.
"Of course we do." Scowcroft replied.
"Would they help the protesters in some way?" Rushing asked.
"They might be, who knows. But that's a far cry from helping protesters against the combined might of the Revolutionary Guard, the militias, and so on, and the police, who are so far, completely unified." Scowcroft answered.
Despite the fact that 18-to-24-year-olds comprised the strongest voting bloc for Ahmadinejad of all age groups, as verified by independent voting data, Scowcroft also described a "growing young population that doesn't like the way they have to live," noting that "it's going to change Iran, I think that is almost inevitable."
Watch the exchange below:
On a basic level, Scowcroft's comments highlight the fact that president Obama was being liberal with the truth when he stated Wednesday that accusations of CIA involvement in Iran were "patently false".
As we have highlighted in our continual coverage of the situation, there is no debate over the fact that Western intelligence is entrenched in Iran and has been waging a covert war for a number of years.
It was also revealed just six months ago that a CIA-backed network was seeking to carry out a "soft revolution" in Iran through people-to-people contacts.
The soft revolution plan was uncovered by Iranian counterespionage personnel before it could be fully implemented. It was to be carried out through "NGOs, union protests, non-violent demonstrations, civil disobedience… and (efforts to) foment ethnic strife" all across Iran, an Iranian official stated.
What Scowcroft does not point out is the fact that if US intelligence operatives wanted to foment regime change in Iran, coercing the current government into a brutal crackdown on protesters would be the perfect way to demonize it in the eyes of the watching world.
This would pave the way for the introduction of their own puppet ruler into the equation, directly challenging the authority of the Mullahs, who are clearly not interested in selling Iranian sovereignty down the river to a globalist world order.