Iranian Directorate
The Iranian Directorate is a policy unit set up at the Pentagon in policy shop which previously housed the discredited Office of Special Plans. The directorate is playing the same role with regards to Iran as OSP did for Iraq. According to Laura Rozen, '[a]mong those staffing or advising the Iranian directorate are three veterans of the Office of Special Plans: Abram N. Shulsky, its former director; John Trigilio, a Defense Intelligence Agency analyst; and Ladan Archin, an Iran specialist.' It works in close collaboration with the Office of Iranian Affairs at the US Department of State.
According to the Pentagon's spokesman:“As a counterpart to the State Department's new Office of Iran Affairs, the Department of Defense has split off a new directorate for Iran-related policy issues from the existing Directorate of Northern Gulf Affairs in the Office of Near East and South Asia Affairs (NESA)".
The new directorate falls under the new number three at the Pentagon, Eric Edelman. Edelman, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, holds the same position that Douglas Feith held when he ran OSP at the Pentagon in the lead-up to the Iraq war.
While the Pentagon has refused to disclose who heads the unit, according to Inter Press Service's Khody Akhavi, it is Ladan Archin.[1]
Personnel
Related Articles
- Laura Rozen, "U.S. Moves to Weaken Iran," Los Angeles Times, May 19, 2006.
- Larisa Alexandrovna, "Pentagon confirms Iranian directorate as officials raise new concerns about war," The Raw Story, June 15, 2006.
- Larisa Alexandrovna, "Intelligence Officials Doubt Uranium Claims, Say Cheney Recieving Suspect Briefings," The Raw Story, August 18, 2006
- ^Khody Akhavi, Neo-cons take spin to US-backed airwaves, Asia Times Online, 26 June 2007
