June 8, 2006: Iran is having some serious problems with its intelligence organization. The outfit doesn't work very well, and appears to have spawned death squads, and competing, and unofficial, intelligence collecting operations elsewhere in the government. The current Ministry of Intelligence was formed in the 1980s, to deal with the dreadful reputation the Shah's SAVAK intelligence service had. SAVAK was more of a secret police operation, noted largely for its brutality. The new Ministry of Intelligence was kinder and gentler and, over the years, less and less effective. In the last decade, as the government became more and more unpopular with most Iranians, the inability of the Ministry of Intelligence to keep track off all the unrest, has brought more calls for reforms. The incompetence in the Ministry of Intelligence, which has developed a very "civil service" mentality, has also led to other ministries creating their own, unofficial, intelligence organizations. But these outfits are also prone to SAVAK type abuses. The freelancers feel they are able to do whatever "needs to be done."

While there may be a total overhaul of the Ministry of Intelligence, or the entire operation may be broken up, that does nothing about the basic problem. Most of the Iranian people hate their government, and, at best, improved intelligence collecting will simply let the national leadership know, with more accuracy, how much they are hated.