To put it bluntly, I'm amazed that you had the nerve to actually post this. To start we have absolutely no evidence at the moment that any of what you propose would have worked, and given the Bush administrations efforts at regime change in other nations at best this would have sent efforts by the United States to deal with Iran to an even more ludicrous low if such a thing were possible. Furthermore, your mention of recognizing a government in exile would have not only been unrealistic but also would have given Iranian support for their regime the flavor of seeing their nation in immediate peril. Like it or not the Iranian people showed no signs then or now of accepting a government anywhere else but in Iran even if we could find someone with credibility.
The Solidarity movement in Poland only had its incredible success because the Soviet Union was caught in the midst of its largest crisis since its founding. Over ten thousand soldiers were dead from Afghanistan with far more injured, its economy was in shambles from decades of mismanagement and corruption, Gorbachev had recently informed the leaders of the Soviet nations that Russia would not intervene in a (failed) effort to force them to reform, and Roman Catholicism had proven itself to be the real authority in Poland and not Communism, and most importantly of all Communism was in essence something of a Russian export to Poland and not an millenia old part of Poland's culture. To put it another way, we had none of those things in Iran six or eight years ago and we have none of them today. Even with the recent crackdown and its probable effect of setting millions of Iranians against the current regime we have nothing to guarantee that they will even hold a protest against it, much less rebel.
Then there is the matter of nuclear weapons. Iran clearly felt threatened enough by the presence of United States soldiers on both sides (Afghanistan and Iraq) that it began a program for nuclear power. It is important to note that despite that, Iran has to date not produced a single nuclear weapon nor does it have the missiles necessary to actually reach the United States. I think it should be obvious that an actual plan by the United States to overthrow the Iranian government would have led them to acquire those missiles and to produce the necessary uranium to make them nuclear. Also I am unable to trust anyone who thinks in terms of "evil empires".
I find it interesting that in your improbable plan you make no mention of the Baluchi insurgents. Inadequate planning for the different groups in Iraq helped cause many problems, and it would be impossible to ignore a group that was capable only a day ago of assassinating multiple Revolutionary Guard officers in Iran.
Lastly, though I should think it obvious by now, I am very relieved that your plan was never implemented (to my knowledge). Efforts to build liberal democracies in Iraq and Afghanistan met with incredible difficulty and a third might very well have destroyed all our efforts.

You sound like an agent for Iran.

Iran is only buiding nuclear weapons because US troops are in Iraq and Afganistan?
Not their goal of destroying Isreal?

I don't agree with everything in this article but I am not misguided like you.

This idiot is a discredit to Israel's intelligence services.

Why is a criminal convicted of passing sensitive information to another government allowed to write in this magazine? I guess his plan would have been awesome had he worked just a little closer with his chavariim.

Larry, I'm sorry you were convicted in such a useless case. It's not smart to talk to federal investigators without a lawyer.

That said, I should remind you that you were the guy who used to call from the Pentagon to record my license plate number so that I and Dr. Chalabi could visit your bosses; it's no wonder people didn't take you too seriously.

I also remember you as the man who sent Eric Prince of Blackwater to my living room to pitch a "protection" contract. Good thing I sent him packing.

Most of all. I remember you as the man who futilely tried to entrap me during a wiretapped phone call with the FBI on the line. You made the same discredited charge against Dr. Chalabi at that time. I told you it was horseshit then and I repeat it now. Dr. Chalabi is a patriotic Iraqi and has never worked for any intelligence agency - not the CIA nor the Iranian Muhkhabarat nor the Mossad nor MI6 despite unsubstantiated charges by people who should know better. (People say the same things about me -they're not true either.) You'll notice that both Dr. Chalabi and I are free men.

I was in Najaf in 2004 and participated in the talks with Sadr's forces. Not only did we not encourage them to "dig in", we were successful in forging a peace agreement in that misguided conflict. You can check with General Dempsey of the 1st Armored Division if you need confirmation.

Please don't wast everyone's time with further nonsense like this.

Francis Brooke

'I did not confront either my boss in the Office of Special Plans, Douglas Feith, or his boss, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, about my overriding fears that Iran could spoil our plans in Iraq -- and wreak havoc in the region.'

And I'm sure the continued pay checks were well worth not voicing any of your concerns.

I'd also like to pint out that despite the billions spent toppling the USSR, it was glasnost that did the most to topple the Evil Empire.

I hope nobody is paying these neo-cons to write their views in FP? Political Science- one of the few fields where you can be consistently and demonstrably wrong and still make a living.

By his own admission, this guy was afraid to tell his boss what he really thought so instead he told a lobbyist who had no security clearance. Now FP is publishing his views from prison.

Since Larry Franklin is an Iran expert, he should know that the reason the mullah's came to power in the fist place is that we overthrew their democratically elected government and replaced it with our own stooge. Messing around with other people's governments is a practice that's blown up in our faces many times before. Let's not repeat the mistake.

Who here remembers the scene in "In the Loop" in which the younger male lead tries to explain to his girlfriend that he cheated on her to stop the oncoming war...

Has _everyone_ reading this magazine (and far too many of its authors, though obviously not Franklin or many other guest authors here) decided that they love every tyrannical regime on the map?

And it goes so far that a fair number of people seem to be fond of aspiring tyrants as well -- witness ForeignPolicy's sounding of the drums of withdrawal in Afghanistan. What's next, the special edition about how much ForeignPolicy.com and its commentariat love Omar al-Bashir?

As you must be well aware, it is the consensus of the " mullahcracy's" observers and "experts" as well as the reformists that any attempt by America to vilify/slander the government/religious leaders or to ponder, let alone sanction a Bay of Pigs- like offensive incursion, would galvanize ALL Iranians to defend their sovereignty. Your ideas are not only melodramatic but by tainted by the same holier-than-thou jingoism the CIA used in overthrowing Salvator Allende. I'm sorry you're in prison but perhaps it would serve in your best interests to rethink your stated positions

I don't know much about Larry Franklin's backstory, but the disingenuousness of this story verges on rabid frothery. His claims aside, an active destabilizing campaign of the scale described here would trigger a similar response from Iran. Despite inflammatory rhetoric, Iran's leadership has kept a remarkably tight leash on most of its assets - Iran's agents and proxies could stir things up considerably in the Middle East and beyond.

It's extremely likely that Iran and the US have a non-interference agreement in place - we don't mess with them, and they don't mess with us. Sort of a Monroe Doctrine - both sides have tested the boundaries, and talked a lot of smack about the other, but the absence of overt conflict between the 2 nations isn't a lucky coincidence.

Franklin's argument for an active destabilizing campaign against Iran would be acceptably ridiculous, if pushed by your average armchair neocon warrior. Coming from someone who claims insider status tells me that he thinks he can hoodwink his audience by throwing some bones to the left by criticizing Feith and Chalabi. Offensive and annoying, like a confused dog trying to sneakily hump your leg.

Granted, Franklin may be having problems keeping up with the media, in jail, although I'm guessing he's got it pretty cushy, relatively speaking. But the editors of Foreign Policy can't use the same excuse. Nor should they be similarly motivated to undermine fact-based reality by allowing junk like this to be published.

"So ... I asked Steven Rosen, foreign-policy director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, to approach the National Security Council's Elliott Abrams with my concerns."

Our government is infiltrated by agents of a foreign power? How else could anyone imagine this was acceptable behavior?

Franklin may not have had disloyalty on his mind, but that's precisely the badness of it - he should have recognized the error. That he didn't suggests that this may be acceptable behavior in his cultural milleau. His prison term will hopefully send a message about discretion and divided loyalties.

Beyond that, his mental fantasies about regime change in Iran belong in the pages of a cheap novel.

he said straight out that the best way to approach Elliott Abrams is to be a lobbyist for Israel...

The Iranian people have managed to demonstrably embarrass the theocrats on the world stage.
It seems the audience is desensitized to beautiful women getting shot to death by professional rooftop marksmen.
Perhaps if there were a few dogs or cats were shot while marching for their basic animal rights, then the American public and the rest of the free world would have been shocked into action.

As it stands, the contracts are too lucrative for countries other than the US to want to facilitate regime change in Iran.
And the US administration may be over-sold by the hyperactive regime lobby on the Islamic regime’s “stability and the prowess” in the region.
Or perhaps the administration is too mired in the “Blue” and “Red” feud to realize our economic woes would virtually disappear as soon as we get back our other true ally and the economic milk-cow in the region, Iran.

For the US to provide “unwavering support to the Iranian people” would presume a commitment, something the US is perceived to be increasingly lacking, specifically in the region; a factor Tehran has been and is exploiting effectively. Empowering Iranian people takes very little money (we already have the infrastructure in place) and much political resolve.

America has been coaxed to take her eyes off the ball and is distracted by masters of deception.
Our politicians, their ear-marking appetites whetted, are concerned with band-aids to stop the bleeding and employing their best capitol-hill know-how and know-who are jockeying in the dizzying frenzy to take a little money home to their own districts: too enamored to notice the angler dangling the lure.

Dr. Franklin, you have stirred many from a slumber and they are irritated.
You see clearly the reality on the streets in Iran – not just he posh north Tehran, but the projects and the tin-mud huts, where the masses subsist.
Your acute insight seems to shatter the images painted in the minds of some whose only source of information on Iran is fed from certain funded “study” seats at established academia powerhouses and or “successful businessmen and women” who are merely interested in opening of relations between the two countries.
Your acute insight seems to be a trait that has not been appreciated – namely by those whose minds were firmly set on notions they wanted to make happen, whatever the cost, and did.

Throughout all you have done, I see one thing paramount: America first.

Magus Irani

hailey hoob!

Remember how the soviet Union was disintegrated, and what caused its demise. Read a pipe dream propaganda alas Reagan style lebeld "Star Wars" system.

If we use the same tactics, where the West will force the Mullahs to spend all their money on uselss weapon system, until nothing left for civil services, and their economy will collups.

With 80% of its revenue generated from oil income. No serious industrial or knowledge base economy. 80% of the population hates this regime. More then 60 opposition groups in and outside Iran. The farsi sect makes up only 60% of the total population in Iran.

Imagine now that, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait open their faucets a bit more, and flood the market with cheap oil, severely limit Iran's financial and budgetary system. Add the constant military challenge to the regime that is already paranoid. How long do you think these 7th century regime will last, before the people of Iran will rise, aided by agents inside the remove the regime. my guess, not long.

Don't be bothered by the usual audience of this online forum. Most of them are absolutely primitive two-bit cavemen from the far-left, and/or radical extremists. Many of them are blinded by hatred. both the enemy of Isral and freedom-loving common folks in the East, especially Iran. They only have the Mullahs 'interests seriously at heart. I could gauge it all by 2 days since I began to read this site. If it were up to them everybody else could rot in their misery, but not them. They are meanwhile part and parcel of the abjectly hypocritical "University" elites who are swimming in their atrocios wealth on the back of the public.

Larry, you and I both know you don't speak Persian and can't read Persian.