In today’s NY Times, David Sanger provides us with the latest silliness from the Intelligence Community, which continues to live in some alternate universe in which the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps freely does whatever strikes their fancy, and the ruling tyrants just cope:

One senior official, who like some other officials who discussed the issue spoke on condition of anonymity because he was discussing internal assessments of Iran’s motivation, said that the administration’s internal assessment of the episode, while incomplete, suggested that the seizure of the Britons was “probably not directed from the upper reaches government.” The official said that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad decided on the release because “he understood that they had exploited whatever they could from the incident” and that “declaring them guilty and letting them go was the cleverest way to get out of it.”

Very funny. The IRGC report directly to the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ali Khamene’i, who approved the orders to take hostages (especially American, British, Canadian and Australian) several months ago. Acting on those orders last September, Iranian troops in Iraq attempted to capture some Americans. Unlike the Brits, the Americans defended themselves, killed at least one Iranian, and escaped the trap.

There are certainly fractious disputes within the Iranian regime, but no military officer would take such action without such orders. Anybody who believes that should be reassigned to the study of academic politics.