Who gets the Chalabi role in the sequel? -- Manucher Ghorbanifar?

Laura Rozen has another piece in The American Prospect today, and as usual it's very good, and brings out quite a bit of new information.

One of the questions about the "next phase" in Iran has always been who the neocons would use for the "Chalabi role" -- the Westernized English-speaking Iraqi/Iranian who would tell them what they want to hear ("the Iraqi/Iranian people want an American invasion to liberate them from the Baathist dictator/clerical regime and will welcome you with flowers/pistachios -- you can almost make a MadLib off this!") and give them juicy "intelligence" about the awe-inspiring threat posed by the government the neocons want to take down.

We've known for some time that Michael Ledeen, Harold Rhode, and Larry Franklin had met with Ghorbanifar in Europe in late 2001. This article fleshes out his current links to Washington, including connections to Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA) via Fereidoun Mahdavi (one of the Shah's former ministers), and a possible backchannel by which Ghorbanifar deals directly with the White House.

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