Ex-Cia agent: 'We have no clue what's going on in Iran'

June 28, 2:23 PMForeign Policy ExaminerAimee Kligman

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Robert Baer

Robert Baer is a man you've seen on your TV screens before; he's not ubiquitous, but recognizable enough as an authoritative voice on world events. He's an ex-CIA operative, now living in California, and provided some insight on Iran today in a conversation with Fareed Zakaria.

Read Robert Baer's piece in Time Magazine: Baer, a former CIA field officer assigned to the Middle East, is TIME.com's intelligence columnist and the author of See No Evil and, most recently, The Devil We Know: Dealing with the New Iranian Superpower.

His assessment of what has happened in Iran is what he calls a military coup d'etat by the Revolutionary Guard against  the clerics. The Revolutionary Guard has kept its activities within Iran's border for the last thirteen years; it is nationalistic in nature, hardline and boast a terrorist past, and at the moment, they represent the ultimate authority in Iran.

Baer warns against intervention, which has been the call from Republicans. He cautions that any intervention or endorsement by the United States will give the police fodder to crack down on its citizens in very harsh ways. He also alluded to the fact that there is a semblance of American involvement in Iran from the borders of Iraq and Afghanistan, but yields absolutely no information, and is just a tactic to appease certain people in Congress.

So how do we find ourselves in a situation where we know practically nothing about Iran? The absence of an embassy which would usually put our people on the ground is missing; the void usually filled by American press is wide open. Only Iranian/British reporter Amanpour has been able to go into Iran and miraculously manage to question Ahmadinejad directly. Of course, the president's answers were never satisfactory.

The dissidents who give us information are the ones who have fled the country and are now exiled in either Europe or the U.S.

Baer recommends that the U.S. needs to let this play itself out, and that eventually the volcano will explode, much in the way communism saw its death in Eastern Europe. He added that Iran's government is more paranoid than ever, and can be compared in some respects to North Korea. Baer does say, however, that what has happened and continues to happen in Iran is nothing short of historic.