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Fear of a global Islamic fundamentalist takeover seems trite when we consider that Christians have been doing the same thing for centuries-converting ‘the unwashed masses’ by force or by choice…

There are plenty of religious representatives in Iraq trying to convert the country-and they’re not Muslim, they’re Christian. The sooner that Christian-based policy leaves American politics, the better. When [religion] becomes the basis of our intellectual approach to the world, you need to get away from it.

You mention that one option is to withdraw from Iraq and leave Iran as the ‘occupier state’.  Is that likely?

I think we’re gonna withdraw and effectively leave the country to Iran, but I don’t think we’re ever gonna say that. Iranians understand Americans very well, and what they understand is to let America back out of Iraq. They’re not gonna send troops in to fill it because they’re Persians – they know they can offend the Arabs in Iraq, so they’re going out of their way not to offend the Arab Shia; they’re very careful to guard themselves against that.

The Iranians know their limits, they’re not asking for a lot. They want to close down the MEK [People's Mujahadeen Organization of Iran], they want Americans out by 2011 – all the demands are very easy [and, in return, they say] we’re gonna protect you, we’re gonna help you take Baghdad and the other major cities and they’re gonna be Shia, and we’re gonna do this in a very reasonable, systematic way. That’s the message coming across.

So the US should just quietly withdraw while the world’s eyes are on something else?

Yeah, and then people forget it. These wars you can’t win. We’re not losing in Iraq, but you can’t win in Iraq. You just claim victory and leave.

I think President Bush did that on an aircraft carrier five years ago…

[laughs] Yeah, but what Obama doesn’t want to happen is for the Iranians to start crowing about this. If they’re smart, the Iranians will just deny they have any influence on the outcome at all and allow us the fiction.

That’s another point you detail succinctly in the book, that Iran is happy to not take credit, to keep the wires hidden.

That’s right. They don’t want to take credit because that reveals the [rule by] proxies. But it’s strange, the [former] Iranian ambassador to Syria [Mohammad Hassan Akhtari] admitted in an interview about a year ago that Iran supported the Islamic Jihad Organisation, which is extraordinary. It’s extraordinary that we ignored it. It’s fascinating that they’re coming to terms with the truth. The Iranians have the capacity to mess us up-we do, and so do the Iranians. And what’s really gonna make the difference is the Israelis.

How so?

If [Avigdor] Lieberman got his way and expelled the Arabs [The 2004 Lieberman Plan proposed a population exchange between Arabs and Jews], or if it gets to the point where people are starving on the West Bank, or Hamas takes it over, or they go into Gaza and really make a mess of it, then all bets are off. There’s also the price of oil. If the price of oil goes down to US$10 a barrel and there’s chaos in the Gulf – as there will be in China very soon – then I can’t tell you what’s gonna happen.

Hillary Clinton says she will push for diplomacy in US/Iran relations because “nothing else has worked”. Does this offer hope for legitimate gains via new security for oil and gas?

There’s hope. Iran will give it a chance, but wait and see. Look, I live in a world of patriots-ex-CIA and security people-and even they’ve had enough. They say, “Let it [the Capitol] burn.” People are so fed up with Washington and Wall Street; they’re disgusted with foreign policy. No-one’s in charge of the State Department at the moment. There are so many personal power plays.

The Devil We Know: Dealing with the New Iranian Superpower (Scribe) is available in bookstores nationally.

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