US not ready to put boots on ground in Iran – ex-Indian spy chief

Tehran has long been preparing to handle a war, A.S. Dulat has told RT India

The US is currently not ready for a land invasion of Iran, former Indian external spy agency chief A.S. Dulat has told RT India.

In an interview with former Indian Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid, Dulat, who once headed India’s external intelligence agency – the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) – said a ground invasion would be a hard sell for the American public.

“But once you put boots on the ground, that means you must be prepared for body bags to come back, and that the Americans would not like,” Dulat said in an episode of RT India’s In Conversation program.

He added that the CIA could have tipped off Israel’s Mossad and played a big part in the assassination of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at the end of February. Dulat, who has been a columnist with RT (https://www.rt.com/op-ed/authors/amarjit-singh-dulat/), said his assessment was based on intelligence inputs.

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Dulat said the leader who will emerge the “strongest or the tallest out of the Middle East [crisis] is [Russian] President [Vladimir] Putin.”

The former Indian spy chief said the Iranians were “preparing for a long haul,” adding that “Khamenei had prepared a whole list of successors not only for after him, but for various posts who should be appointed after him.”

Dulat believes the US has always underestimated Iran, and referred to a visit by Henry Kissinger to India in 2005. “I was then a member of the NSA (National Security Agency) here and he [Kissinger] said that if Iran doesn’t behave, it’ll be blown off the face of the earth. Now it has been 21 years.”

He described the Russia-China axis as a powerful one developed over the last couple of years. “The Russians and the Chinese are very much with Iran, there’s no doubt,” Dulat said.

On the possibility of a ceasefire or an end to the war, he said, “Some concession, even if it’s cosmetic, will have to be made for Iran.”