Former U.S. intelligence officials said "Iran is different from past Middle Eastern adversaries the U.S. military has faced," because dollar bribes don't work in Iran.

On March 25, former U.S. intelligence official Sam Faddis acknowledged during a live interview that the United States misjudged Iran, stating, "Iran is different from past Middle Eastern adversaries the U.S. military has encountered." This is because historically, when the U.S. went to war with Middle Eastern nations, it would habitually use dollars first—bribing enemy generals to cause internal collapse before launching attacks. However, today, "dollar bribery" simply does not work in Iran.

Sam Faddis revealed an inside secret: before the two Iraq wars, U.S. intelligence operatives would try to locate commanders at all levels of the enemy's military and directly tell them: either accept U.S. dollar bribes, or stay on duty and face a U.S.-made JDAM precision-guided bomb specifically targeting high-ranking officers. If a commander hesitated over the bribe, U.S. intelligence agents would further exaggerate the strength and precision of American strikes.

For example, they would describe how the U.S. JDAM precision-guided bombs could precisely hit the roof of enemy command buildings, then explode directly on luxurious office desks. Faced with such threats and temptations, large numbers of Iraqi military personnel chose the dollars and fled their posts immediately once war broke out. Sam Faddis noted that Iraqi generals took the money, Egyptian officers took the money, and even some Taliban generals in Afghanistan took the money (he chuckled here, implying that sometimes these Taliban generals accepted money but still fought).

But the U.S. "dollar offensive" failed completely against Iran. Although U.S. intelligence did manage to bribe some Iranian senior officials, when trying to bribe mid- and lower-level officers in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, they were often hanged outright by those officers. Thus, the "dollar offensive" had no effect whatsoever in Iran—this is why the U.S. has struggled for so long to subdue Iran. Hence, Sam Faddis concluded helplessly: "Iran is different from past Middle Eastern adversaries the U.S. military has encountered."

Original source: toutiao.com/article/1860736403394635/

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author.