Bernard Lewis, Uri Lubrani, and Meir Dagan Walk Into a Bar ...

Clifford May reports on an unusual dinner he recently had with the historian, the diplomat and the spy. The consensus around the table seems to be that regime change, rather than bombing, would be the best course of action for the West in Iran:

The larger point is this: Guns don't kill people; people kill people. It is the regime that rules Iran, more than weapons or the facilities in which they are produced, that constitutes the real problem. From that it follows that changing the regime -- not destroying its hardware -- is the higher goal.

Ambassador Lubrani, who predicted Iran's 1979 revolution -- when then-president Jimmy Carter, among others, saw Iran as "an island of stability" -- believes regime change is a realistic goal. Indeed, he is convinced there will be another Iranian revolution and that it can come about sooner rather than later -- soon enough rather than too late.

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/01/bernard-lewis-uri-lubrani-and-meir-dagan-walk-into-a-bar/250907/